Prayer 2743: For Caregivers, Doctors and Medical Staff

God of Compassion,
our hearts rise to your light
as we praise You and bless You,
each breath a prayer that You have given us.

May we live with expansive joy and compassion,
and sing out our praise to You
by living lives worthy of You,
O Shepherd of Our Souls.

You formed us from the common heritage of earth:
we share the breath You breathed into us,
and reflect the spark of your image.
May we join hands with each other as beloved kindred,
seeing our shared humanity as a bond and pledge
to care for each other as You love each of us.

Blessed Jesus,
your touch healed multitudes:
bless and guide the hands of healers and caregivers,
and pour out your wisdom on those
who work to cure and alleviate suffering
and the spread of disease, we fervently pray.
Give us the heart to do all we can
to care for each other with steadfastness
and generosity of spirit,
walking in the way of wholeness and integrity.

Spirit of Truth,
grant us strength and courage
to center our actions in love,
and grant your blessing to those
whose concerns we lay before You.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2742: Seeking the Nourishment of God

Wondrous Creator,
all that is has been hallowed
and shaped by your loving hand:
help us to see the wisdom and beauty
You have woven into the fabric of creation,
and knit into the bones of all living beings,
from rock and tree to stranger and friend.

We are tiny seedlings seeking your light,
O Holy and Blessed Maker:
make us mighty redwoods in the grove off your kingdom,
interconnected at our roots by love and faithfulness.
Help us to grow upright with integrity, Blessed Savior,
generously giving comfort to others
like the cool shade of a glade at noonday.

Lead us, O Spirit of God,
to stretch our arms ever toward each other,
and to be a blessing for the world.
Grant your mercy, O God,
on all the concerns we bear in our hearts,
and grant your peace to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2741: the Feast Day of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of Bethany

Almighty God,
we ask that you bless our endeavors today.

Let us be awakened by your love,
and brought to new life through Christ our Lord.
Beloved Jesus, You call us into new life:
may we hear and respond with wonder and joy.
Give us Martha hands
and Mary hearts,
seeking to serve you
and be guided by your Word and Wisdom.
Unite within us
knowledge and action,
for we know that work without learning
and learning without work
gain nothing.
Let us proclaim your glory
in words and actions this day:
make us your hands in the world.
Untangle us from the bonds
that hold us in pain and despair,
and give us power to walk into the light of Jesus.

Extend your sheltering love
over those for whom we pray this day.

Amen.

Prayer 2740: A Prayer for Guidance and Service

All-Merciful, Bountiful One,
Our Pole Star and Guiding Light,
we center our hearts and our minds in You,
grateful for your Love.

Fashioner of Light,
all the beauty that dances before us
is a gift from your bounty and loving-kindness:
may we glorify your Name in all the Earth!
Set us upon the rock of integrity and compassion,
O Benevolent God,
that we may survey the world
through the eyes of love,
and live this day steadfast in our faith.

Life Giver of All,
may we breathe in your Spirit today,
and place our wills and intentions
in the service of your gospel,
working for justice and liberation
in fulfillment of your commandments to us.
May we give thanks
for the communities in which we dwell,
and labor for the good of our neighbors
in testimony to your transformation of our lives,
O Birther of Creation.

Bend near, Lord Christ,
to gather us within your embrace this day
as we offer our prayers to you
in humility and trust.
Remember, O Lord,
the lost and the searching,
and grant your blessing to those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 2739: In Gratitude for the Earth

O Creating, Sustaining God,
your mercy gently drops upon us like a cooling rain,
and your grace spreads before us in beauty,
like the flower-dappled resplendence of a summer field.
We lay our hearts before You,
and give you thanks and praise.

Awaken us to a deeper devotion to You,
an abiding commitment
o the care and love of each other
in your Name and for your glory.
Teach us to walk gently and mindfully upon this Earth
which You have placed as a foundation
for all we do,
to delight in wonder at its beauty,
and to protect it as your handiwork and gift.

May our voices join with the sparrow and thrush
to sing out our joy in your goodness and love,
in the harmony and mutuality
You have woven into the fabric of creation,
in the warp and weft of the web of life that supports us.

For the sake of our Savior and Redeemer,
accept these prayers and prayers,
O God Most High,
and pour out the oil of blessing
upon all those for whom we pray.


Amen.

A Kudzu Gospel: Sermon for Proper 12A

Once when our kids were young and Bill and I were obviously insane, we took a car trip from St. Louis to Disney World. The plan was to drive to the Georgia coast and then skim southward to Walt’s Reclaimed Swamp of Dreams. Even Bill’s meticulous planning did not prevent certain hiccups along the way, like the endless construction in Tennessee near Dollywood, or arriving near the stadium where the Atlanta Braves played right before game time.

Yet on we pushed. And as we approached Savannah and I was regaling my completely bored kids with the fact that we were following the path of Sherman’s March to the Sea we suddenly entered a tunnel of darkness. The cloudy evening sky suddenly winked out and we went from twilight to pitch-black faster than flipping off a light switch. For the life of us, we couldn’t figure out why there would be a tunnel in the middle of a coastal area. Suddenly, just enough light broke through that we realized we were in an area where the kudzu had climbed up the pines we had previously been admiring and the telephone poles and had basically tried to eat the highway. Voila, a kudzu vine tunnel.

This was my family’s introduction to the agricultural bane of the South: kudzu. An incredibly fast-growing weed imported from Asia for the nation’s Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, kudzu had actually been promoted by the federal government during the Great Depression as a useful plant to prevent erosion due to its fast growth and resilience to disease.

And it looooooved the heat and soil of the Southern US. The federal government actually paid Southern farmers 8 bucks an acre to plant it in the 1930s, and ironically launched probably one of the greatest offensives against the former Confederacy since Sherman’s March. Within a few years, kudzu had almost eaten the South.

That mustard tree that Jesus talks about in the first parable we hear this morning was the Middle Eastern equivalent of kudzu. The mustard shrub is not to be confused with the food item called mustard. This common plant was actually probably rarely planted except as a windbreak or to hold down the soil. According to this article I found, they grow in India, Africa, and the Middle east, vary from 6 to 20 feet in height, and spread wide. They tolerate heat and dryness well, and aren’t even fussy about poor soil. Yet as wide as they are, their roots are even more impressive, exploding out in a knotty fan seeking water in those arid climates. Therefore, they should never be planted near wells or cisterns because their roots will seek them out and take over. In a place as dry as Judea, therefore, one can also see why deliberately planting one where fresh water was so hard to come by might be considered crazy.

So Jesus’s listeners probably laughed in disbelief at this image, the same way Southerners nowadays would laugh at the idea of deliberately planting kudzu anywhere. Many commentators have tried to explain away the craziness of this image. They assume gospel writers somehow got Jesus’s story garbled, that Luke just didn’t know what he was talking about, city-slicker as he must have been, rather than considering the possibility that Jesus wanted the crowds to laugh in disbelief at the ludicrous image of deliberately planting a weed in the middle of your good field and letting it stay there just so birds could have a home.

Likening the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed is like saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a patch of clover or an oak tree in the middle of the outfield in Busch Stadium.” That’s a prospect that would make sense to no one, except for maybe the Rally Squirrel that led us to the World Series in 2011.

God plants this weed in the field and urges us to admire it to show us how powerful and how subversive the gospel of Christ really is. But there’s hope in that description too, because we are also led to understand how resilient and enduring Jesus’s gospel is.

We live in a time when for many hope is in short supply. We live in a time when the forces of division and darkness seem to be growing ever stronger, trying to choke out the message of stubborn, persistent love that brings each and every one of us into the embrace of God. This sense of hopelessness is sown so that we will feel alone, isolated, and afraid, and thereby strengthen the powers of darkness and evil that grow whenever we lose sight of the compassion and embodied love that is the foundation of Christian existence. We need the shelter and the power of a kudzu-like gospel to help us remember our own power to deny the sway of hatred, violence, and selfishness over us as children of God. We are nourished by the bread of the gospel that grows by the yeast of love that lifts and strengthens our hearts.

When we feel lost or forsaken, God is there, reminding us of the power of unity and care for each other as signposts of God’s reign. As our psalm reminds us today, “Search for the Lord and his [sic] strength….” God is with us always. And Paul continues in our epistle: “If God is for us, who is against us? Nothing can separate us from the love of God."

Jesus is not our accuser, but our advocate and intercessor. Thus within this reading from Romans chapter 8, we see a description of the working of the Trinity: the Spirit helps us to pray when we are overcome; God the Creator is for us when all else seems to be arrayed against us and everything seems to be conspiring to break our spirits; the Son, Jesus Christ, has died for us and intercedes for us when we cannot intercede for ourselves. When we are suffering, God is with us. When everything tells that hope is foolish, the gospel of Christ stubbornly, resolutely spreads its branches and invites us to rest in its shade until we are strong enough to continue our new life as God’s children and heirs in the kingdom of heaven, a kingdom built on love.

How much more, then, can we trust the promises of God to love and hold us and protect us and comfort us? Family is not a matter of blood. It is a matter of love. And Jesus brings the love that is God into the world and, if we let him, into our hearts. Then we, as children of God, are expected to also carry that love into the world. The only thing that can separate us from the love of Christ is ourselves. Our own lack of faith, our own fears, our own lack of hope, are all that can separate us from the love of Christ, for that love is always present. When we do not feel that love, it is because we have hardened our hearts. God loves us unceasingly, and we will always be assured of this, if only we will allow that Love to rule over us and guide us and protect us.

If we rest on the promises of God's love for us, but do not act on that love toward others, we have nothing.

The only thing that can separate us from the love of Christ is ourselves, if we do not trust that love of Christ enough to understand that it is demanding that we work for the love of others. And by others, I do not just mean our own families, tribes, or nations. That is easy discipleship. That kind of love responds to our own instincts and preferences.

No, we are also called to love those whom the culture of our time despises, for they also are loved by God as surely as we who are more fortunate are. I wish that those in power or seeking power who claim Christian credentials would be asked this one question: If you are a Christian, what have you done for the least of these? What have you done to not just feed the hungry at a photo op but to help the hungry be able to feed themselves, or clothe themselves? What have you done to end poverty, to end disease, to end oppression?

For those who are led by God are the children of God. Those who are led by the love of Christ know that they are Christ's own without making grandstanding claims about belonging to this church or that church. The love of Christ does not gain us membership in an exclusive country club heaven, but enjoins us to build the kingdom of heaven right here on earth, right now,
built
and sustained
and imbued
and animated
by love.

Love that is waiting to be reborn into the world not just as we celebrate on Christmas but that is born into the world every time we comfort someone who is suffering or in sorrow or in want, every time we truly care for another.

Our adoption lays on us responsibilities for loving our neighbors as ourselves as we love the Lord our God. That is why these are the two great commands we subject ourselves to when we open ourselves to the love of God.

"The creation waits in eager anticipation for the children of God to be revealed." And the children of God will be revealed in us and to us and though us by that love.

That tiny little parable about mustard seeds today reminds us that even a little is enough. In the Kingdom of Heaven a tiny bit of faith is enough. A tiny bit of understanding is enough.As we look at church attendance decreasing in the West, we are also assured that the Church started small, like a mustard seed, and yet eventually became big enough to even grant all nations of the earth a place to live, like those “birds of the air.” Resting inside those branches, all divisions and separations fall away, and we become just one family—the family of God.

We are children of God when we realize that all those around us-- every single person from the protester on the streets crying out for freedom to the job-seeker desperate to sustain her family to the person who feels friendless and alone to the ones who love and treasure us no matter what physical ties we have to each other-- are the children of God as well. We have to love those who we feel deserve it as much as those who we tell ourselves don't deserve it, because certainly God loves us when we don't deserve it. It is when we aren't very lovable that we need to be loved most of all. We are "more than conquerors" against all the troubles in the world through the One who loves us as surely as I love my children or my friends or my family.

All we have to do is love. Love is Everything. Love will abide within us if we leave open a space in our hearts, each and every day. It is through our love that each of us are known as a Christian and as a human being. And from that small seed of hope, the beautiful kingdom of heaven is planted in each of us so that love can grow and endure. 

Like a mustard tree. Or yeast. Or kudzu.


Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on July 26, 2020.

Readings:

Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Images:
1) Mustard Seed Window at the Washington National Cathedral, mine.
2) Kudzu eating a house from Flickr.
3) Mustard Tree in the Middle East from Flickr.
4) Unhoused man and dog in Barcelona, mine.
5) The Mustard Tree, by Juliet Venter.

Prayer, day 2738: Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

Blessed Savior,
God of All Mercy, we gather before You in joy and gratitude,
drawn before your altars to sing your praises.
May we make our hearts fertile fields
to produce abundant love and healing for the world.
May we receive your gospel, Lord,
and plant it deep within us
to reconcile with all of creation
and live into your dream for us.

May we seek to serve You, Blessed Jesus,
as faithful witnesses and healers in the kingdom of heaven.
By the power of the Holy Spirit,
unite us as one body,
filled with grace,
remembering always our redemption.
Pour out your blessing upon us, O Creator,
and uphold and bless those whose hope is in You.

Amen.

Prayer 2737- Prayer for a summer morning

Blessed Savior,
we gather in the shade of your mercy,
refreshed by the cooling breeze of your truth,
that we may praise You and proclaim your gospel
with joy and gratitude.

Let us lift up our prayers
unto our Creator and God,
who watches over us tenderly,
calling us to wisdom, whole-heartedness, and faith.
May we embody the virtues of love and healing
that Jesus modeled for us to walk in,
that we may testify to God's saving power
before all who see us.

Spirit of Power and Grace,
make us a blessing to our neighbors
and grant the comfort of your blessing
over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2736

Almighty, Merciful, Beneficent One:
we bow before You in prayer.
We thank You and bless your holy Name,
which hearts sing out when tongues cannot.
You are our God:
bless us and mold us, and hear our prayers. 

Loving One,
help us to never be a stumbling block for our neighbors,
but give us generous, loving hearts for all.
Make us gentle, grateful stewards of your creation,
that we may love it and care for it
as we do our own body.
Purify our hearts and minds,
that we may serve You night and day
with alleluias on our hearts and minds. 

Remembering our faults,
may we be filled with mercy and compassion for all we meet,
who are made in your image.
Now, in your goodness and grace,
send your healing, comforting Spirit, we pray,
upon these who call upon You.

Amen.

Praying Without Words: Speaking to the Soul July 23, 2020

Romans 8:26-39

How do you pray when words fail you?

That’s the first image we get in verses 26-27 in our reading this Sunday from Paul’s Epistle to the Church in Rome. That phrase certainly resonated with me, as I remembered how I felt when I experienced a devastating loss, or when I nearly bled to death after the birth of my first child. Yet I needed to pray at those times more than ever, and as they say, “words failed me.” Yet God did not.

At times such as that, it is good to remember Jacob’s dream of the ladder between heaven and earth from last week’s Old Testament reading. That ladder was filled with angels ascending and descending from heaven to earth, and back again. Angels are, we’ve been told, the messengers of God. Those angels remind us as we read that story that the channel is always open with God. This reminds us that prayer is a two-way street, as Paul also notes. At times when we have no words and can’t “pray as we ought,” God reaches out to us, as God always does. In all the cases in my own life where it could be said that words failed me, I had a wordless certainty that the Spirit of God was indeed with me, and with all those others who were suffering with me, and I knew the abiding presence of God.

When we feel lost or forsaken, God is there. As our psalm reminds us for Sunday, “Search for the Lord and his [sic]strength….” God is with us always. And Paul continues: “If God is for us, who is against us? Nothing can separate us from the love of God. There is a reason why some of today’s verses, beginning at verse 34, are among those that can be selected be read at a Burial service (Romans 8:14-19, 34-35, 37-39).

Jesus is not our accuser, but our advocate and intercessor. And within this reading, we see a description of the working of the Trinity: the Spirit helps us to pray when we are overcome; God the Creator is for us when all else seems to be arrayed against us and everything seems to be conspiring to break our spirits; the Son, Jesus Christ, has died for us and intercedes for us when we cannot intercede for ourselves. When we are suffering, which has been Paul’s topic since chapter 5 when combined with the idea of sin, God is with us.

The phrase “too deep for words” reminds me of a poem by William Wordsworth, entitled, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality.” It is long, but lovely, and speaks about the loss and recovery of childhood wonder at the beauty of nature. The final four verses are as follows:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

It is when we have thoughts that lie too deep for words or tears that God knows our prayers and longings, and come to us to meet us where we are.

How do you pray when words fail you?

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 23, 2020.

Prayer 2735

Most Generous God,
You have brought us in safety to this new day:
help us use it to your glory,
that we may reflect your light and witness before all.

Blessed Savior,
you took on human vesture
that we might see how to live
according to God's commandments:
may we be healing hands in the world,
reconciling the lost and freeing the oppressed
in your Name.

Spirit of Truth,
draw us deeper into community
and enflame our hearts with charity and wisdom
as we answer the cal of discipleship
dependent upon your grace and truth.
Holy Trinity, draw us into your dance of love,
and welcome those who seek You,
for we lift up these beloveds as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2734: On the Feast of Mary Magdalene

Almighty One,
we center our hearts in prayer
and listen for your guidance as we seek you:
grant us your counsel
and strengthen us in purity and hope.

Roll back the stone of our hearts,
O Resurrected and Living Savior,
and help us to recognize you
in the creating power of the Holy Spirit
moving through our lives,
and in the faces of those we meet,
especially those in need or trouble.

Make us steadfast, brave, and loyal disciples,
and grant us discerning spirits and steadfast devotion
like Mary the Magdalene, Beloved Jesus,
in our faithful witnessing to your spirit and love,
in never abandoning you,
even in times of persecution, mockery, or fear.

Lord Christ, you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us--
you know our pains, our sorrows,
our bereavements and our trials:
scatter the seeds of your peace within our hearts,
and spread the awning of your mercy
over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2732

Let us draw near in our hearts to God
whose hand sustains us in tenderness and peace.
Our praise we offer to the Lord of Life,
and we lay our petitions at your feet, O Savior,
asking your blessing and renewal to rest upon us.

Give us strength for the day before us,
and the heart to work for the release of captives,
the welcome of refugees
and the care of the forsaken,
that we may claim the name of Christ
only by walking in his ways.
May we proclaim the beauty of the gospel of Jesus
through the integrity and hope that informs our lives,
renouncing cruelty, avarice and falsehood,
purging our hearts of all callousness.

Beloved Savior, take us by the hand
to pull us up to the higher ground of love,
and grant your blessing upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Down Among the Weeds: Sermon for Proper 11 A

When I was a girl, I would visit Woodward Park in Tulsa, the crown jewel of all the parks in town. In the springtime especially, this large urban park would be ablaze with large azalea bushes covered in blossoms of pink, orange, and white exploding in bloom lining its streams and pathways. The park was kept pristine and beautiful, the grass neatly mown, brooks burbling like laughing babies. Next door to this park was the Tulsa Garden Center, which displayed an astonishing array of dozens of varieties of roses in its own gardens, and inside the greenhouses there were collections of orchids and other fragile, temperamental, hothouse flowers. As you walked through these two adjacent nature centers, no sign of a native plant would you find back then. Wildflowers were considered to be weeds, things to be plowed under or plucked up to make way for exotic, domesticated flowers or crops that were profitable.

Now, however, there is a movement among gardeners to use native plants. We realize the benefits to ourselves as well as to our precious pollinators, their ability to thrive in their native environment with very little care or extra watering or soil adjustment through chemicals. And finally, we are coming to see the beauty of wildflowers in and of themselves. Some of us have come to realize the benefits of clover in our yards for the bees. Some of us have even embraced the lowly dandelion for its benefits to native insects, although that’s often a harder sell. Here in St. Louis, the Butterfly House offers for sale milkweed, bee balm, cardinal flower, and a host of other plants that support bees and butterflies—coincidentally, plants that in my childhood would have been sneered at as weeds and mowed down.

As a lover of what formerly were called “weeds,” when I hear this parable, with its condemnation and threat of destruction for weeds, I get uncomfortable. I am very reluctant to divide people into “wheat” and “weeds.” In fact I am convinced that a lot of what plagues our world today is that tendency toward division and condemnation. Especially as we confront the reality of systemic racism throughout human societies everywhere, we see the urge to divide people up into “us” and “them,” in to neighbor and stranger, as leading to terrible tragic consequences—consequences that hurt everyone, even those who believe they benefit from inequality. We all want to believe that we are the wheat, and that those who are different from us or those that disagree with us are the weeds, and we eagerly await for them to “get what’s coming to them.”

We see this tendency to throw people away operating in our criminal justice system all the time. Once someone gets branded as a “criminal” there is no limit to the punishment that can be rained down upon them. People with felony convictions, even if those convictions are decades old, can be excluded from housing, employment, the right to vote. And yet we also know people who have changed their lives for the better, who have seen and acknowledged the weeds that they have allowed to flourish in themselves and chosen to remove them and grow—a possibility that lies at heart of the gospel for everyone. Who are we to decide who is worth saving, and who can be thrown away?

Jesus tells us that’s not our job. The field doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to God.

Since St. Augustine, a common interpretation of the field in this parable is that it stands for the Church, and that the Church has a mixed nature—encompassing both the good and the bad. The Church is filled with real people, people who are struggling with sin and anger and fear and resentment just like the world around them. This parable has been misused against individuals repeatedly throughout the Church’s history—and used to cut them off from the community as hopelessly lost due to their supposed “sinfulness,” contrary to the gospel of grace that sustains each and every one of us. This parable then, could be a reminder to us that it is not up to us to judge whether people are weeds or not and whether people should be expelled from fellowship for wrongdoing—instead, such judgment is solely up to God. And God never gives up on us.

However, this does not lead us to deny that evil exists. This parable calls us to acknowledge the existence of evil in this world—to take that concept seriously. Yet evil almost always is dependent upon systems to exist—it’s hardly ever the work of one person alone. You’d think, after the genocides of the 20th century alone, we wouldn’t have to be persuaded of this, but we often seem to be squeamish about naming evil as evil, and especially systems that perpetuate evil, even when it is right in front of us. Maybe that’s because evil often sneaks up on us—what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil,” where she talked about how ordinary people can be persuaded to do terrible things under the guise of “just following orders” or “just going along with what others were doing.” We must ever be willing to examine ourselves to determine whether we are being inured to or made numb to cruelty, injustice, or prejudice.

But evil exists collectively, systemically, and often through our unquestioning acceptance of it. Evil exists because of our failure to question the costs that systems impose. Evil succeeds because it keeps pushing the boundaries ever so gradually from decency and compassion toward dehumanizing or “othering” people around us, or scapegoating them to distract from our own responsibilities toward each other. Those are poisons we must never take into ourselves.

And poison is at the heart of what Jesus is talking about. The weeds Jesus speaks about here are not just some benign sunflower. The tares he speaks of, also known as bearded darnel or Lolium temulentum, is defined in the Bible Dictionary as “a species of rye-grass, the seeds of which are a strong soporific poison. It bears the closest resemblance to wheat till the ear appears, and only then the difference is discovered. It grows plentifully in Syria and Palestine.” In small quantities, this plant when ingested could cause hallucinations and a kind of drunkenness, but as a toxin it could also cause blindness in higher concentrations.

And the worst part is, this plant didn’t look that different from wheat as it grows, even to the trained eye. As the tares and the wheat grow up together, they were virtually indistinguishable. It was only when the heads of the grains developed that a slight difference could be seen—and at that point it was important to root out the weeds so that the flour would not be contaminated with a toxin that could cause blindness and even death. But it was only at the harvest and at the processing of the grain into flour that the danger becomes crucial.

As much as we may think we know sin and evil when we see it, this parable also reminds us that we humans are fallible. That means the Church can be fallible because it is made up of fallible people and who are fallible in our understanding of the revelation of God in the world, who exists not just in the words in the Bible but in the Spirit of God revealing Christ to us right now, today.

More often than not, we confuse sinfulness with evil, or sometimes we conflate the two together. But proportion, perspective, and evaluation are also important parts of discernment—as much as remembering that we all have areas in our lives where we are sinful, and where we fall short of the behavior we are called to models as disciples of Jesus.

This is where our epistle comes in—to remind us to take a great big dose of humility with each other. We are all adopted children of God, as Paul points out. Many people, unfortunately, see adoption as a kind of lesser relationship than those of blood. Not so, says Paul in this passage. “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.” Not ersatz children. Not second-class children. We are “heirs with Christ,” as we are reminded, and so members of the family of God—all of us. Family members share both privileges and responsibilities. Family is not a matter of blood, but of shared values, shared sacrifice, shared goals.

And as many of us know from experience, being a member of a family can itself bring pain and heartbreak if members of that family treat each other with contempt or disregard, taking each other for granted. Because it is such a close relationship, the possibility to be hurt by those we acknowledge as family is magnified that much more, and the hurt can go much deeper.

Although it is not meant to be, the Church, is no exception, and the pain that can be inflicted by the Church almost inevitably comes from losing sight of an important point about human nature: that rather than being either wheat or weed, we all have parts of both, and that we can delude ourselves into acting from selfish motives by believing that all we are doing is pulling weeds, when instead, we are harming the good plants too.

But what if we were, each of us, to see ourselves as the field, rather than the plants? God is the sower, and sows the good seed in each and every one of us. However, sometimes, weeds sprout up in each of us as well. Things like envy, and tribalism, and greed, and racism, and selfishness— even violence. Those are all there inside of us, sown by the enemy of fear and suspicion and the myth of competition that tries to fool us into seeing everyone else as competitors rather than companions, colleagues and collaborators.

As we see in the parable of the field, the good and the bad go through life alongside each other. But you know, the truth is actually a lot more messy even than that. But if you are only looking for weeds in others, it also makes it much easier to ignore the poison ivy growing in your own back yard.

As Jesus points out elsewhere in scripture, it’s really easy to point out the speck in someone else’s eye even when you’ve got a log sticking out of yours. As much as we wish it otherwise, judgment about each other quickly descends to hypocrisy and hubris if we forget that we all sin, that we all are upheld in our spiritual life by a heaping helping of the grace that God’s gives us to decide to uproot the tares that grow within our own lives. When it comes to people, we should be very careful about pronouncing final judgment on anyone and considered them a “throwaway” person simply because they have made mistakes.

It is our job to acknowledge that evil exists, and it is our job not to align ourselves with those who take pleasure in hurting others but to resist them with all we are, no matter how profitable going along with their cruelty might be. But when it comes to our actions as people of faith living in a world awash with ambiguity, that means we all acknowledge that each of us as individuals will have times when we are struggling, and our job is to work to support each other in all our trials rather than judge each other.

Ultimately, it’s important to place this parable alongside last week’s parable, and to remember that the lesson Jesus is teaching us here is one of empowerment, self-examination, and self-discipline rather than casting out others for their lack of perfection. Jesus calls us to be the good soil, to receive the seeds of the gospel and to nurture them in our hearts so that they bear fruit—especially for the good of others.

May all who have ears to hear, listen.



Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service at St/Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on July 19, 2020.

Readings:

Genesis 28:10-19aPsalm 139: 1-11, 22-23

Romans 8:12-25Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Prayer 2731: Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Most Merciful God,
You are the root and ground of our being:
hear our prayer.
Let us make visible the kingdom of heaven
here on earth right now.

Guide us as your Church
to proclaim your gospel of abundant grace
by embodying your healing love.

Forgive us our offenses,
and help us rededicate ourselves
to living in true peace and justice with all. 

Open our minds and hearts
to learn and act upon your call to radical compassion.
Make us brave enough
to love and serve you without fear or hesitation.
Root us in your abundant grace,
that we may always remember our blessings.
Draw us into a new life of unity
knowing that You are God and Creator of All.

Extend the healing shade of your love
over those we now name.


Amen.

Prayer, day 2730

You are near, O God.
Remind us to draw close as well.
Thru the night watches
we have called You between dreams:
Your love never sleeps.
We thank You, Loving One,
for your word in which we trust.
We meditate upon your promises,
for You are always at our right hand when we need You.
With our whole heart we call to You,
for you redeem us and give us strength.
Give aid, we pray
for these whom we now name,
that they may be comforted and praise your Name.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2729

Eternal God, we open the doors of our hearts:
enter into our lives this day, and make us whole.
Reconcile us to You, and one another
 that we amend our lives
and repair our relationships.

Let the radiance of God's glory
shine forth from our countenance
and testify to God's unending mercy.
May we embody
the compassionate, healing love of Christ,
living as true disciples and companions in the Way.
Teach us to cast wide our nets,
drawing all to you in freedom, justice, and peace.

Draw near, O God, to the broken-hearted:
give your angels charge over those wait upon You.

Amen

Prayer 2728: For Unity in the Face of Trial

Encompassing God,
who gathers all creation within your mercy,
and sustains all that is by your grace,
we rest within your light,
grateful for this day and its possibilities.

Grant us the wisdom and empathy
to seek to fashion our path in the imitation of Christ,
our model, our teacher,
our Savior, our guide.
Lord Jesus, mold and shape our hearts
and anoint us to your service,
to care for each other as a testimony
to your compassionate reign over us.

Lord, we bow before your throne of love,
and ask your protection over the healers and the caregivers
who serve the vulnerable and the suffering.
Spirit of Truth, burn bright within us
and purify us of our carelessness and greed,
we humbly pray.

Merciful One,
gather within your loving embrace
all those in need, anxiety, or sorrow,
especially those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2727

O God, creation is shot through with your beauty,
and the round earth joins in praise of your Holy Name!
Surely the Lord is in this place:
let us worship God with all our hearts!
Holy One, you have searched us out and known us:
your love is our shade and our strength.
May we walk in your truth, Lord Christ,
and our hearts rise on the wings of morning.
May we reflect your healing love into the world,
that our kindness shine like the sun at midday.
May your right hand lead us in charity and holiness,
that we may serve You and each other with joy.
By the power of the Holy Spirit,
bless and preserve us, O God,
and all those for whom we pray.


Amen.

Prayer, day 2725

Eternal God, we open the doors of our hearts:
enter into our lives this day, and make us whole.
Reconcile us to You, and one another
 that we amend our lives
and repair our relationships.

Let the radiance of God's glory
shine forth from our countenance
and testify to God's unending mercy.
May we embody
the compassionate, healing love of Christ,
living as true disciples and companions in the Way.
Teach us to cast wide our nets,
drawing all to you in freedom, justice, and peace.

Draw near, O God, to the broken-hearted:
give your angels charge over those wait upon You.

Amen.