Sermon at The Church of
the Holy Apostles, New York City
July 20, 2008, The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
The Reverend Barry M. Signorelli
Genesis 28:10-19a
Psalm 139
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
In the Name of
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Mother of
Creation. Amen.
Like Mother Liz, when she preached a few weeks ago,
I am acutely aware that this is the last time Father Bill will
hear be preach while he is Rector of Holy Apostles. And so I
began to think of how I might make it a sermon worthy of the
occasion – something memorable from “the ever-dramatic Father
Barry.” Singing from the pulpit? Oh, it’s been done. The old
“ten minutes of silent meditation?” Probably not the best
approach. Maybe I could pull out all my secret heresies and
load them into one homily; well, no, the Bishop might not
appreciate that. So, I finally decided to settle on one small
bit of blasphemy: Jesus was a lousy gardener.
No offense to the Almighty, but based on the parable in
today’s Gospel, that certainly seems to be the case. I mean,
letting the weeds grow all season right beside your crops isn’t
good for your harvest. I know, I’ve tried it with my tomatoes!
The weeds take up just as much soil space, water, and nutrition
as the good plants, and yield nothing in return. The result is
that the harvest is diminished, and the potential of the plants
you want is never fully realized.
Of course, Jesus isn’t speaking as the county
agricultural agent, and he’s not giving advice on a talk radio
gardening show. The fact that what he’s saying is so unexpected
and contrary to common sense is exactly the point – he’s trying
to describe what the Kingdom of God is like, and apparently
things are very different in God’s garden. For one thing, God
is content to let Creation play itself out, with all its “good”
and “bad” elements; I’m reminded of when Jesus notes that God
sends rain and sunshine on the evil as well as the righteous.
God isn’t as quick as we are to judge whether a plant is wheat
or weed, productive or not, but rather assumes that the true
nature of each plant can only be revealed in the fullness of
time. In the Kingdom, it appears, weeds can sometimes turn into
wheat.
Now, I’ve never really liked the explanatory passage,
where Jesus spells out for the disciples what every element in
the story means. It’s likely that this was tacked on by the
Gospel writer as a way of making sure that the reader would “get
it.” Personally, I think it’s much more likely that Jesus would
have put the parable out there for people to wrestle with, doing
the work of figuring out what it means for themselves. Of
course, it’s obvious that the weeds do represent something else,
and our first inclination might be to think of them just as the
explanation does, that they are the wicked people who live among
the righteous, the children of the enemy whose evil ways will be
punished on Judgment Day. And that is one way of looking at
it. But is it the only way? I look at this parable and see
other possibilities, too. What if the weeds are not just
people, but events and twists of fate that befall us? When life
is going really well for us – when, if you will, we have a
beautiful field of wheat planted that’s growing splendidly – and
then something unexpected happens, something goes wrong, it’s as
if suddenly there are these strange weeds growing up among our
beautiful crop. These unforeseen mishaps that threaten the
steady, stable progression of good fortune that we’ve
anticipated can seem like they are the work of some malignant
force – the enemy came and sowed havoc just when everything was
going great.
Now, in that case, isn’t our typical reaction to do
just what I do when I see clover coming up around my tomatoes?
Just reach in there a pluck it out, do what you need to in order
to rid your life of these pesky weeds that threaten to ruin
everything! Act precipitously to save what you imagine must be
God’s will for you.
But remember, we’re talking about God’s Kingdom, not my
flowerpots, and in His garden, it’s not a zero-sum game. As I
said before, God is much more patient about letting things play
out than we are. If we try to live in the reality of the
Kingdom, then we might see more easily how God seeks to
transfigure every misfortune into God’s perfect will. Maybe
life won’t proceed according to our own carefully-constructed
plan, but that doesn’t mean we won’t get to where God wants us
to end up, weeds or not. In fact, we might just need those
weeds to help us along our path.
I hope you’ll indulge me if I tell a personal story to
explain what I mean. As many of you know, I started out life as
an actor/singer/dancer/waiter. In high school, I auditioned for
every play, I worked in community theatre, and after a couple of
years in college, I decided to transfer to a professional
theatre conservatory. Far and away my first choice of all the
places I auditioned was the Juilliard School here in New York.
I felt that the audition went well, and I went back home to West
Virginia to await their decision. In the meantime, I also
auditioned for the Theatre Conservatory at Webster University in
St. Louis – a lesser-known school, but one that was attached to
a leading regional theatre. My audition there also went well,
and shortly thereafter I received my acceptance letter from
them. There was one catch – those of us who were transferring
in would need to take an intensive summer course that crammed
the entire first year into eight weeks, and then join the
second-year class in the fall. Faced with the need to make a
decision, and having still not heard from Juilliard, I packed up
my things, rented an apartment in St. Louis and moved halfway
across the country. My first night there I called home to say I
was settled in, when my father reluctantly told me, “You got a
letter from Juilliard today.” And yes, it was an acceptance
letter – I had been on the waitlist, and a spot had opened up.
In my carefully-planned new life, suddenly a huge dandelion had
sprouted. It felt like an enemy had snuck in and deliberately
messed up my plans that were going so well.
So, what to do? I could have acted precipitously,
reached in and torn out the weed by packing myself right back up
and going to New York; but in doing so I would have uprooted the
new life I had just barely begun. Instead, I let it be – the
irony and disappointment gradually fading away as I grew into
that new phase of my life in St. Louis. And in hindsight, who
can say that my life did not unfold just as God wanted it to?
Had I come to New York back then, might I not have listened as
carefully to the quiet voice urging me toward Holy Orders?
Might I not ever have met my beloved partner Bruce, never come
to Holy Apostles, and certainly never have been blessed with
nearly twenty years of collegiality with Father Bill and Mother
Liz? It’s hard, sometimes, to discern what is a weed, and what
is wheat; in the Kingdom, it’s best to let God sort it all out
at the harvest.
Because so many things can happen – weeds can bear
fruit, and misfortune can yield blessings. That is the reality
of how the Kingdom of God works, and here at Holy Apostles, I am
proud to say that we are open, with faith and trust, to the
often-strange unfolding of God’s will. For so many years, we
have been led in that effort by Father Bill, who has set the
tone of this community by urging us to live, not in the economy
of scarcity, but in God’s economy of abundance. He has
understood the wisdom of not acting precipitously when what seem
to be weeds appear, but he has always trusted in the Spirit to
guide us in our stewardship of each other. Now his time of
tending this corner of God’s garden is coming to an end, and
that in itself may make it feel like weeds are encroaching on
our common life. But even as we prepare to bid him farewell,
let us emulate Father Bill’s example of trust in God’s wisdom
and faith in the goodness of each other and all that God gives
us. For if we do, then at the final harvest we may just find
that there are no weeds to be burned, only a bountiful and
glorious harvest.
Amen.
.
