Sermon - 7-19-26

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost Faith Lutheran, Okemos July 19, 2026 Isaiah 44:6-8, Psalm 86:11-17, Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43   [Hear Matthew 13:24-30:  the parable of the darnel and vss. 36-43: the parable explained…                                                                                                                                  from The Jerusalem Bible ] Grace to you and peace…   Last Sunday afternoon I walked the sidewalks on Artisan St. and Provincial House Drive in south Lansing, urging folks to vote for one of the congressional candidates, a friend and longtime ardent advocate addressing the growing climate crisis.  My first visit was with a devout Christian who wasn't sure she'd vote at all.  She was done with so much corruption and broken promises she experienced in politicians of all stripes.  She believed we are in the "end times," and longed for the soon return of her Lord, her only hope.   Though not her words, I'm sure she could relate to words of this parable of Jesus, the wheat and the weeds.  In some translations these weeds are called "tares" or "darnel", poisonous plants that until fully matured look very much like wheat.  If inadvertently mixed in with wheat flour to make bread, these seeds can cause dizziness, trembling, and vomiting and in extreme cases unconsciousness or death…   At another home on my walk that afternoon, I met a young couple.  One told me he had chosen to remain neutral, chosen not to get involved in politics.  But his partner said she'd already voted and was passionately involved in trying to make things better, more just, more caring, more honest: "I want to do everything I can to help."   Both visits were very moving for me, a microcosm of the landscape where many of us may find ourselves, especially as the primaries and mid-terms draw near, and especially as the climate crisis deepens, most notably for us on Thursday and Friday with the pervasive and hazardous smoke caused by increasingly frequent and rampant wildfires, this time more than 800 in Canada and Minnesota.    These visits last Sunday spoke to me of resignation, withdrawal, maybe indifference, and yes, hope; hope, for the person in my first visit, that will only be realized when Jesus (in our text, the Son of Man) returns, she fervently hopes soon in both judgment and glory.  And in another "I want to do everything I can" person an implicit hope that Jesus is already here, inviting us, through and with the Holy Spirit, to commit our lives to work and struggle and suffer with others to make things better for the most fragile and vulnerable of all our kin, people, animals, and, yes, plants.   The wheat and the weeds.  In our Bible Study on Tuesday, we talked about the reality of the "wheat and weeds." Both are in every community, perhaps in every congregation, and more broadly these days in every political party.  Weeds are people we don't trust, people who "bother" us, people we find very hard to love. We may wish we could "uproot" them, and in our darkest moments, just dispose of them. And yes, perhaps at times they are the noxious weeds in our own souls.   But alas, Jesus says "no."   God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, revealed in all of our texts today, the God of mercy and steadfast love, including for sure the God Incarnate, our Lord and Savior, Jesus, says "no!"  No, because until we die, the Holy Spirit continues to work in ways only she can do in all people "good" and "bad", both life-giving and loving folks and death-dealing, oppressive, and hateful souls.  Do not move with haste, says Jesus, to uproot and cast away anyone, both the "righteous" and the "unrighteous," all for whom Jesus died and rose again.   As we confess in the Apostles' Creed, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead.  In the bolder and more severe words of our text today, Jesus, the Son of Man, will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom, all causes of sin and all evil doers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire… Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.   It is so important to remember, to take seriously this parable and its meaning, as disturbing and as reassuring as it can be.  But we also need to remember it in context, what can we do while we wait for Jesus to come in glory.  In Matthew 18:15-18 Jesus gives us a step-by-step process whereby chronically unrepentant, very needy, self-centered trouble-makers can be excluded from the fellowship of the church.  But nowhere are we to condemn these controlling, hate-filled trouble-makers to hell.  Our Lord alone is their judge.    It may be that given the very essence of God, the mercy and love of Christ Jesus, of the Holy Trinity, we may well imagine that after a time in the furnace of fire, all the dross, all the unrepented, arrogant, narcissistic sin will be burned away and the newly cleansed persons will be welcomed into the gracious embrace of God, seated with all the saints at God's table of love.    And, while this a bit of a leap, in our life as citizens of our 250-year-old country, in our government, both state and federal, with due process, we too have the right to exclude from leadership those whose behaviors are abhorrent, hateful, and unjust.  That is why it is so important that we, whether young adult and old, take seriously our responsibility to vote.  Still, even if in rare situations like for my new friend on Artisan St., our faith in people is so deeply shattered, leading some like her to not vote at all, we all must pray for our leaders, knowing that God steadfastly loves even the worst and most toxic of our sisters and brothers.   Please listen now to these words from The Message, a contemporary rendering of a portion of Romans 8: But if God has taken residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him.  (Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about.  But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells – even though you still experience all the limitations of sin – you yourself experience life on God's terms.  It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself?)  When God lives and breaths in you, you are delivered from that dead life.  With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!   So don't you see that we don't owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent.  The best thing to do is to give it a decent burial and get on with your new life.  God's Spirit beckons.  There are things to do and places to go!  This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?"  God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are.  We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children.  And, we know we are going to get what's coming to us – an unbelievable inheritance!  We go through exactly what Christ goes through.  If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him!   That's why I [Paul] don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times.  The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next.  Everything in creation is being more or less held back.  God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead…      All around us we observe a pregnant creation.  The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs.  But it's not only around us; it's within us.  The Spirit of God is arousing us within.  We're feeling the birth pangs…  That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother.  We are enlarged in the waiting.  We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us.  But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.   Let us pray. Lord Jesus, dwelling in our hearts and minds and hands and feet, help us to wait.  Help us to wait patiently even as we ourselves, with you and with all of creation, groan and suffer so deeply.  Help us to wait expectantly for that glorious day when all will be made new, when peace and honesty and compassion will reign.  God, our Papa, dwelling in our pregnant souls, lift us up when we are down, when so much is getting too hard to bear.  Indwelling Holy Spirit, empower us to overflow with love for each other, and perhaps especially, dear Lord, for those so hard to love, those "weeds" whom we perceive so wrong-headed, some so full of evil.    Holy Trinity, we praise you, we bless you, we thank you for your abiding and steadfast love.    Amen.                                                                                                                     JDS