Wheat and Weeds - 20 July 2014 - RCL Lectionary 16

God alone is God. God is source, sustaining power, guiding light, and ultimately in charge. This confession of God’s centrality in all things pervades all of the lessons for this week.

This Sunday is a fine opportunity for the preacher to explore the human thirst to pronounce on the virtue of others. 

Isaiah 44:6–8

The message of the passage appointed from Isaiah parallels this proclamation. It takes the form of a trial where the issue at hand is idolatry. These opening verses are in the form of an interrogation, challenging the people to bring evidence of any other who can be God. It is reminiscent of Elijah’s contest on Mt. Carmel. Following this text, God exposes the impotence of idols fashioned by hands.  . . .  The preacher can easily lift up all the pretender gods of our day and reveal them as false. Money, wealth, power, success, self-sufficiency, and nation are but a few examples of gods that call us to stray from the one true God. The preacher can easily ask Isaiah’s closing question: "You are my witnesses! Is there any god besides me?"

            –– The Rev. Timothy V. Olson, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Ankeny, Iowa

Other idolatry––the idolatry of our own judgment––is also a danger for us in every age. The parable of the wheat and weeds makes us prone to think in terms of final determinations: who is wheat and who is a weed.

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 

Do we decide that a person is either "all wheat" or "all weed," from the moment of their planting? Surely not, for we would likely argue that no one of us is purely wheat, and we would hope that no one of us is purely weed. Yet, in stretching the image to suggest that the weeds are not people, but rather sin growing among all of us, we interpret the parable in a way that perhaps, according to Jesus’ explanation, was not intended. We are left with a metaphor that is thornier and more tangled than we might like—one in which, it might be said, we ourselves cannot distinguish weeds from wheat. Perhaps this is the point!

The Master doesn’t leave us with the charge to let the weeds grow and forget about them. The Master says, the weeds aren’t your problem. I’ll handle them. I’ll handle them at harvest time. 

We know the end of this story. We know what’s going to happen at harvest time. We know that, no matter what it looks like now, the weeds will not have choked out all the grain. There will be plenty of grain to harvest. The Master wouldn’t have it any other way. So what is our job in the meantime? Our job is not to worry about the weeds, to pluck them out, and our job is not to stop throwing seed in desperation at the weeds. . . .  Our job is to live in the promise of victory at the end (a bountiful harvest for God’s kingdom) and failures in the short term (frustrations, weeds, and burnout all around). Knowing that failure is at least a high probability in the short term but God’s success is promised for the long term can lead to only one way of living: radical faithfulness. God’s given me a job to do and I’m going to do it no matter what the immediate results look like. Preach what’s been given to you and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. Amen.

            –– The Rev. Seth M. Moland-Kovash, All Saints Lutheran Church, Chicago, Illinois

Homily Service 38, no. 8 (2005).

Interreligious Worship--Finding a Faithful Way

As we continue our exploration of interreligious/interfaith worship, we turn to David Gambrell's reflections on the response developed by the Presbyterian Church USA to some of these questions, published as Respectful Presence: An Understanding of Interfaith Prayer and Celebration from a Reformed Christian Perspective (the link takes you to the full document and an accompanying study guide).

Gambrell sets up his reflections with the following questions: 

From questions about prayer in public places … to the dynamics of diverse neighborhoods … we live in a religiously complex and changing society. How do people of faith find faithful ways to navigate this strange and shifting land? Specifically, from a liturgical perspective, how do people of faith practice their faith in religiously plural contexts? Is it better to adopt a via negativa, wrapping our religious belief and identity in the comfortable ambiguity of “silent prayer or silent reflection”? Or should we boldly pour out our prayer and praise, even at the risk of flooding an already “oversaturated” religious landscape? If some combination of strategies is called for, how do we discern which approach might be appropriate for a given situation?

He then provides the following summary of the document, beginning with its definition of "respectful presence":

Respectful presence is ... “authentic attentiveness to the symbolic expressions of other religious communities” and “Christian willingness to offer witness in our liturgical expressions of the presence of God.” [It] “goes beyond mere tolerance,” and ... it “engages Christians in receiving as well as giving testimony to deep religious convictions and actions.” Within this carefully nuanced approach, there is room for participants to worship out of the integrity of their own tradition, simply to observe others engaged in worship, or perhaps even both, within the same event. (Quotes from Respectful Presence, 8.)

As Gambrell notes, 

the second part of the paper … delineates three broad scenarios in which interfaith prayer and celebration might take place:

when people of other faiths are present in Christian worship;

when Christians are present in worship activities of other faith communities;

when people of different faiths are together for interfaith prayer,          celebration, or worship. (Respectful Presence, 12.)

In each of these scenarios, Respectful Presence provides helpful and practical guidelines for ... (1) extending hospitality to people of other faith traditions, (2) being a respectful guest and an authentically Christian participant/observer, and (3) planning events with people of other religious traditions in the spirit of openness and mutuality. [From David Gambrell, "Finding a Faithful Way: Respectful Presence in Interfaith Celebration and Prayer," Liturgy 26.3 (July-September 2011): 46, 48-49.]

These last points are suggestive of a range of questions for every faith community: What does "hospitality" look like in our communities? What does it mean to be a "respectful guest" and "an authentically Christian participant/observer"? What does a "spirit of openness and mutuality" look like from the perspective of our Christian communities? Does it look the same from the perspective of other (non-Christian) faith communities? David Gambrell is an associate for worship in the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a candidate for the PhD in liturgical studies at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary.