10th Sunday after Pentecost
July 20, 2008 Isaiah 44:6-8 / Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 “Maximum Harvest” First Lutheran, Temple Children’s Sermon “Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matthew 13:30). Good morning, children. Do any of you play in the yard, or help your parents or grandparents with a garden? Have you ever seen something like this growing in your yard or garden (show the weed)? What do we call these things? Do you like weeds? We don’t like weeds because they spread out in the yard, and they damage the grass or garden plants. When you are trying to grow flowers, or beans, or carrots, you don’t want weeds! What do you do about the weeds in the garden? Sure, you very carefully pull them out, or sometimes, your parents spray them so that the plants or grass can grow, but the weeds die. Jesus told a parable, or story, about a farmer who planted a field of wheat—but lots of weeds came up with the wheat plants. Jesus said in the story that the farmer told his helpers to just let the plants and the weeds grow together until it was harvest-time, because it was too hard to tell which was which. What do you think Jesus was trying to teach us with his story about the weeds? Well, whenever Jesus talked about “the harvest”, he was talking about those who would live with him in heaven. In this story about the “harvest”, Jesus was talking about some people who are bad—do you know any bad people? It’s sort of hard to define “bad”, because none of us are perfect! But we hear about some people who really are bad. Do you ever wonder why God lets people who do really bad things live? Why doesn’t God send a really big storm that will get rid of all the bad people? God can’t do that! If there was a bad storm, good people and bad people would all be hurt by the storm. God doesn’t cause those kinds of thing to happen. Maybe you remember hearing about Hurricane Katrina a few years ago, or the flooding that happened this summer in Iowa—God DID NOT cause those storms to punish anyone. There are bad people, and bad things that happen everywhere on earth. That does not make God happy, but God knows everything, and God promises that God will take care of everyone—good and bad alike. We don’t have to worry about who goes to heaven and who doesn’t. God will take care of that, too! All God asks of us is that we be faithful. Let’s pray. God, thanks for promising to take care of us. Thank you for promising us a place in heaven. Amen. Sermon Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Please turn to page 80 in the ELW, the third prayer on the page, entitled “Our Enemies”. Let us pray. Gracious God, your Son called on you to forgive his enemies while he was suffering shame and death. Lead our enemies and us from prejudice to truth; deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen. I once saw a bumper sticker that declared, “If you’re waiting until the eleventh hour to accept Christ, you’d better hope you don’t die at 10:45!” There’s a kernel of truth in the middle of the humor there: a relationship with Christ is not something to put off. Even so, we all come to know Christ at different times and in different ways in our lives. My parents and grandparents made sure I was in church every Sunday—and sometimes in between. It was important to them that I be brought up in the faith. And I’m grateful for those deep roots of faith. But that doesn’t make me any better than my friend Helen, who didn’t grow up in church, and went through life searching for meaning and understanding for the heartaches and troubles she had encountered in her life. Not long ago, she visited a little Baptist church in our neighborhood, and now she says she has the support and the peace she was always searching for in the wrong places. I have another friend, Pam, who used to attend church regularly, but then for some reason stopped going. I don’t know if someone said something, or did something to disillusion her, or what, but I keep hoping and praying that she will go back one day. I have another friend who professes to be a Christian, but is always looking for ways to “cheat the system”. Her 14-year-old can pass for 11, so she’ll buy the child’s ticket for Disney World instead of the adult ticket; she’ll buy one ticket at the movie theater, then stay all afternoon, going to 3 movies and paying for only one. Her methods of saving a buck or two seem unethical to me, and I feel uncomfortable around her. It’s natural for Christians to care about each other and even for people we don’t know—we should be doing that! We want to support them in their growth in Christ—but sometimes it can be hard to do that without making judgments: is this person on the right path? Maybe I can lead her in the right direction… I’m trying to help them here, but they don’t want to follow my rules, so I’m not going to help them anymore… I’m glad I’m not like him! It’s easy to make judgments about someone else. Jesus told this parable to help us see that it is not our job to make those judgments. The farmer in this parable planted his good wheat seed, but weeds grew up along with the tender young wheat. The slaves wanted to pull the weeds, but the farmer said no. It’s too hard to tell the wheat from the weeds, the good from the bad. Better to wait until the harvest; then we’ll know for sure. Jesus’ message in this parable is that it is pointless for us to try to figure out how another person will end up. Wheat or weed—it’s not ours to judge. Instead, Jesus’ farmer says, “Let them both grow together.” Of course, as the young wheat plants are watered and nourished, so are the weeds that are growing along side of them. Everyone knows you can’t make a weed into a stalk of wheat—but with God, anything is possible. God desires a rich and abundant harvest—God wants to gather all of us in. There’s a little rhyme that goes like this: There’s so much bad in the best of us, And so much good in the worst of us; That it hardly behooves any of us To speak any ill of the rest of us. As the Apostle Paul said, “we all sin and fall short of the glory of God.” There is good and bad in all of us. Thank God, we don’t have to be the judge—of ourselves, or of anyone else! God wishes to protect the good, to nourish and encourage the good to grow. But there are weeds—all kinds of evil and bad things in this world. What about those weeds?! Should we start pulling? God is the final judge, and God can even make a miracle out of a weed. It is our task, as God’s servants working in the field, to nurture the growth of the wheat and the weeds together. Who knows what can become of our humble work? God’s love, compassion, and mercy are offered to everyone, regardless of where we think they are on their walk of faith. All God asks of us is to be faithful. Ultimately, God will gather in a rich and abundant harvest. God wants to gather all of us in. Amen. SERMON ARCHIVES July 20, 2008 - 10th Sunday after Pentecost July 13, 2008 - 9th Sunday after Pentecost July 6, 2008 - 8th Sunday after Pentecost June 29, 2008 - 7th Sunday after Pentecost June 22, 2008 - 6th Sunday after Pentecost June 15, 2008 - 5th Sunday after Pentecost June 8, 2008 - 4th Sunday after Pentecost May 6 - Fifth Sunday of Easter
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