Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11A, July 23, 2017; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O God of grace, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

Listen!  Very early on Tuesday mornings in July, people have been gathering in the Emmanuel Room to do some exploration of the Gospel lesson appointed for the coming Sunday.  We follow a process of reading the passage three times and after each time we respond to a question.  After the first reading the question is “what did you notice?”  After the second reading the question is “what is speaking to you?”  And after the third time through the question is “what will be different about your week because of this encounter with the passage?”  In other words, “how will you be changed by this experience?”  As a group we generally don’t like that question and it takes considerable discipline to make sure that we have time in the hour that we spend together to ask and respond to it.

I don’t know exactly why others dislike the question but I can tell you why I don’t like it.  I like to read scripture to confirm what I already know or affirm the way I already am.  In addition, I’m well organized and I typically have my next few days already planned out. I would usually prefer not to be challenged to change the way I think or the way I go about my week (unless, of course, I am choosing to make a change).  It’s discomfort that leads me to choose to make a change.  Comfort never leads me to make a change.  Do you hear me?  When I’m comfortable with the way things are (or the way I am), I have little interest in changing.   And to tell you the truth, even when I’m uncomfortable, I’m still a little slow to change my ways.

Let anyone with ears listen!  Listen.  It’s the central command of the Hebrew Bible and in the Gospel of Matthew, the word appears about two dozen times.  If I say the word in Hebrew many of you will recognize it.  Sh’ma.  It’s the most essential prayer, the most important commandment of Judaism.   Hear.  Listen deeply. Listening deeply requires slowing down, getting quiet, and sometimes, listening deeply requires falling asleep.  I once heard a nun lead a group into a day of silence with the invitation to feel okay about falling asleep because, she speculated, sometimes God has an easier time being heard by us when we are asleep.  We’re not on the run.  Our guard is down.  Listening deeply requires doing nothing.

And so it was with Jacob.  He’d taken advantage of his brother Esau’s empty stomach to outwit Esau into giving away his birthright as the firstborn.  Then he’d tricked his dying father Isaac into giving him the blessing intended for Esau.  When Esau found out about the deception,  he was mad enough to kill Jacob and he planned to do just that.  Their mother Rebekha warned Jacob to run for his life from his twin brother who was known for his skill as a hunter.

I imagine that he’d gotten as far as he possibly could when he had to stop for the night because the sun had gone down.  He was by himself – no tent, no servants, and apparently no place to stay in the city where he stopped for the night.  He found a stone to use for a pillow.  Here we have a poster picture of “uncomfortable.”   And Jacob dreamed about God.  He dreamed about God’s angels going back and forth to heaven and of hearing God’s promise of protection and companionship and the abundance of children.  When he awoke in awe and wonder, he named the spot “Bethel” which means “House of God.”  Then there’s that little bit at the end of the story about what Bethel used to be called before Jacob renamed it “House of God.”  It was called “Luz” which means devious or crooked or tricky.  In other words, this tricky devious city was last place on earth that Jacob would have expected an encounter with the divine, and who was more devious or crooked or tricky than Jacob himself?

And so we have this story alongside of our Gospel passage this morning about the wheat and the weeds.    The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is like a field planted with good seed.  But while everybody was asleep, the enemy came along, sowed a big bag full of weed seeds and then went away.  In other words, Jesus is saying, the kingdom of heaven (or the Rule of Love) is kind of a mess right now.  It started out as a field sown with good seed, but bad seed has gotten all mixed in with the good.  And if that isn’t bad enough, it turns out that it’s not that easy to tell the difference between the good plants and the bad plants growing side by side.  Getting rid of the weeds will do damage to the good plants.  Notice that in this parable, the real threat is not the enemy or even the weeds, but the servants who are impatient, enthusiastic and overly confident about their ability to discern good from bad.  Leave the plants alone, Jesus says.  Don’t do anything about trying to kill the weeds mixed in with the wheat.  Let both of them grow together and let God and God’s angels take care of the weeds – the weeds in the world, the weeds inside of each one of us.

As I said last week, one thing that all of Jesus’ parables teachings have in common is that   they are each surprising and disturbing.  They’re about disrupting the order or the framework that the hearer takes for granted.  They are designed to disrupt the way we think things are (or the way we think they should be).

So here again is a surprising and disturbing message.  Slow down.  Do nothing.  Get some sleep.  Be uncomfortable, challenged, and changed.  Grow!  There’s an old rabbinic saying that every single blade of grass has an angel bending over it saying, “Grow, grow!”  Know that according to Jesus, the Rule of Love is kind of a mess right now.  And dream of God being in the last place on earth (or the last place in your own self) that you would expect an encounter with the divine.  Grow!  If you have ears, listen.