07/22/2008
Bring Your Messes To Me And I will Give You Rest
by The Rev. Bob Blackwell
Bring Your Messes To Me and I will Give You Rest
I served on the diocesan Commission on Ministry for about 8 years. This is a group of priests and lay people who advise the bishop on who should be considered for ordination to the priesthood in our diocese. We were given an article once concerning ordination, which advised us against choosing "professional photographers" or "professional printers" for ordained ministry in the church. Can you guess why? Why would professional photographers or printers not make a good priest? The article did say, however, that policemen have the personality and characteristics which DO make for a good priest. The article went on to explain that if you are they type of person who has a need to keep everybody "in focus", and to have everybody "stand still", like for a photograph, then you are going to be miserable in the church. Or if you are the type of person who likes to have every "I" dotted, and every "p" and "q" in place, and all your margins straight, then, life as a minister in the church is not for you.
Maybe I don’t need to tell you this, this morning, but life in the church is not always neat, focused, or even predictable. In fact, life in the church is often pretty messy. People are always getting out of focus, and the church is the place we bring our messes. The church is a place for living, and life can be messy, a lot of the time.
Norman Vincent Peale told the story of meeting a friend on the street one day, and offered the man a casual: "How are you today?" The man, not so casually, began to give Peale a 15 minute run down on how bad things were going for him. He concluded by saying: "I’ve got so many problems, if you could get rid of half of them, I would give $5000 to your favorite charity." This caught Peale’s attention, so he told the man he had just been to a place the day before where there were thousands of people who hadn’t a care or problem in the world.
"I could take you there, if you like?" "When can we leave?", the man responded. "That sounds like my kind of place." "We can go right now," Peale told him, "It’s called Woodlawn Cemetary... because the only people I know who don’t have problems are all dead!"
The truth of the matter is, we all have problems, To be alive is to have problems. Some of our problems may be big, and some may be not so big, but we all have problems. Life is messy. The church is messy.
But our scripture lessons for today, are not about problems, but about HOPE. They are about the CHURCH, and our creator God, who is at work, right now, bringing "order out of chaos", "Joy out of pain", and "character out of conflict".
Jesus tells us this parable: The kingdom of heaven is like the farmer who planted his fields with some good wheat seed. When the wheat began to grow, the servants noticed that there were a lot of weeds in with the wheat. When the servants suggest trying to pull the weeds, the farmer replies, "No, just let the weeds and wheat grow together. We can sort it all out later."
Just like with last week’s parable about the gracious farmer who sowed seeds all over the place: on the paths, rocks, briers, as well as on good soil; today’s parable makes us question what kind of farmer we have here? What kind of God do we have in the Kingdom of heaven?
Let me remind you that these are parables about the CHURCH.... and a messy church at that. It would appear that God has a high tolerance for messiness within the church.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Him that there may saint and sinner sitting next to one another in the same pew. (And you know who you are!) It doesn’t seem to matter to Him that there appears to be so much evil in our world today, while the good that is here, seems to be withering.
It was out of this same messiness of life that the psalmist wrote: The arrogant rise up against me, O God, and a band of violent men seek my life...but you, O Lord, are gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and full of kindness and truth.
The same God of the Old Testament, and of the New Testament, is our God today... a God we can turn to, when the world seems to be falling apart. A God who is in control, even when the world seems out of control. A God whose graciousness and compassion, kindness and truth, wins out over arrogance, violence and corruption.
St. Paul paints us a magnificent picture in his letter to the Romans, of a world in which HOPE is triumphant. It is not just our hope, but all of creation is waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the glory of God. For in hope we are saved.
Perhaps God knows something we do not know, as He allows the wheat and the weeds to grow together...and good and evil to dwell all around us. Perhaps His hope for the world, and for our lives, is greater than any mess we may find ourselves in. I know all of us wish life were a little neater, a little more focused, fewer weeds in our lives, in the church, and in our world. But God says: "This is my farm. I will run the farm the way I want to."
How often do we act as though the harvest depends on us, and our manipulation of people and situations. The servants in the parable made some understandable errors in judgement. First, they assumed that their goal, should be a fine, pure, pristine field of wheat.
Second, they supposed that they could accomplish this through their own efforts, of "weeding" the field. Third, and this is the most serious error, they questioned their master’s goodness and purpose. Verse 27 says that the servants came to master and asked: "Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then did these weeds come from?" In essence, they were demanding that their master give an account of himself, or risk being blamed for the weeds.
Do we ever blame God for the messes we find ourselves in? Do we ever try to bring everybody into line with what we know is God’s plan for our lives? Do we ever assume that our lives, and the church, and maybe even the world, is supposed to be a perfect?
The parable of the weeds and wheat help us to see the field, as God sees it. The fishermen and farmers who were gathered around Jesus on the sea shore that day probably understood better than we do that we do not have ultimate control over our lives, or livelihood. There are powers and principalities beyond our control which effect our lives, our crops, our harvest, or our catch for the day. Farmers and fishermen know this. They live with the HOPE, that there will be a catch of fish, or at least a calm sea; that there will be sufficient rain, and a good harvest. But so much is out of their control.
So much is out of our control. This is God’s world, His creation. We are God’s church, His bride. We are God’s children, His sons and daughters.
We are a part of His kingdom, His rule, His plan... He is in control, not us.
And the sufferings of this present age are not worth comparing with the glory which is to be revealed to us. Living in the kingdom of God, is about living in HOPE, ....not about living in a neat, tidy, focused world. As followers of Jesus, we can take our place along with the servants in the parable. It is a blessing and a privilege to be called to work in the master’s field. We can take our cues from the story by watching what our Lord is doing in our midst, watching the growth that is happening, until it comes to completion.
Thankfulness should fill out hearts that we are able to participate in God’s ongoing work in the world. Welcome to the Kingdom... where God is in control, Christ is by our side, the Holy Spirit is within us, and all creation’s straining, on tiptoe just to see, the children of God come into their glory. AMEN.
