Wait for the harvest

from my message on July 20, 2014, from Matthew 1324-30, 36-43

Picture this:  Bend, Texas.  Not Big Bend on the Rio Grande, but Bend on the Colorado River, just above lake Buchanan. We are next to the Bend United Methodist Church, under a brush arbor.  It is just a roof overhead, open sides.  The valley is back here.  Can you hear the cattle lowing?  The cicadas?  The Doves?  The lay leader of the church is also the song leader.  We are singing out of the old Cokesbury hymnal.  The piano is out of tune. It's alright.  There is a thunderhead building across over there in the distance.  The lay leader says, "some of you who are not from around here are afraid it might rain.  Some of us who live here are afraid it might not rain."  We are at the Bend UMC revival.  Three days of preaching and singing, hoping to get people to make a commitment to Christ.  The lay leader introduces the preacher, Dave Mosser.  Dave and I went to seminary together.  We played on the  soccer team together. I was a midfielder.  He was a striker, one who scored goals.  Dave preached on this passage from Matthew. I will never forget it. I won't do it with exact words, but it went something like this:

This parable that Jesus told, maybe it is just a simple story about judgment.  In Matthew's gospel, just before these kingdom parables, the religious leaders, the Pharisees have hit Jesus pretty hard.  They have questioned his authority.  They have even begun a plot to kill him.  Jesus' own family has started to doubt him.  Maybe Jesus told a story about God's judgment at the last days when the harvest would reveal who was good and who was not.  Harvest was an Old Testament metaphor for judgment.  Do you think that's what this parable is about?

Maybe it is a simple story that got made into an allegory by the early church.  They were the ones who made each part of the story stand for something:  sower is the Son of Man, the good seed are the children of the kingdom, etc.  Maybe there were undergoing the same kind of persecution that Jesus went through.  They interpreted the parable for their time, saying that God would judge at the harvest.  That truth gave them assurance.  Is that what this story is about?

Maybe this story is about the inner workings of the church itself.  Maybe as the church grew in numbers, maybe there grew a concern about purity.  Maybe some persons were lax in their faith or even denied their faith.  Surely they would need to be removed, rooted out.  I know that this never happens in the church today, this desire to correct others who have gone the wrong way. (laughter)  Is the church ever entirely pure?

 You know where I think all of the denomination within the Christian Church come from?  I think it is from our desire to correct each other, to try to get it right this time.  I looked it up again this week in my book on American Christianity.  There are over 250 major denominations in the US!  At least 19 of them have Methodist or Wesleyan in their name!  We are not the United Methodist Church.  At best, we are the uniting Methodist Church.  Our desire for purity that leads us to root out the bad people, maybe that's the meaning of this story.  Is that what you think?

Maybe it's not just about the church.  In the story, the field is identified as the world.  Maybe God's judgment is upon the whole world.  Is that what you think?

Are you getting irritated with me?  I know I was with Dave.  "Come on.  What's the point?  Just spit it out."

The point of this story is very simple, just one word......Wait.  Say it to yourself.  Say it out loud.  Wait.

In this parable, I think we are the slaves, the workers in the fields.  We are anxious.  We are impatient.  "Where did these weeds come from?  Do you want us to go out right now and pull up all the weeds?

The master, says, Wait.  Verse 30, "let them both grow together until the harvest...at harvest time..the reapers will gather up the weeds and burn them....but gather up the wheat into my barn."

In my research this past week, I came across a great quote, from ...you are going to love this book The Pastor's Survival Manual.  "Workaholics harm themselves and others by caving in to the persistent urge to do something, take action, or control events when the opposite is needed.  Workaholics are reluctant to let matters unfold naturally, so they rush in to fill the perceived void of inactivity with anything that will keep themselves busy and events churning.  As a result, problems often grow larger because workaholics cannot leave them alone.  Situations get worse because of irritation from their constant tinkering, from forcing premature activity, or from spending too much time with small matters, thereby granting them greater importance."  Do any of you identify with this quote?  The master's response is Wait.

I am part of an oppressed minority.  I am an Aggie American.  Yes, I have a degree from Texas A & M.  I grew up on  farm.  I get Jesus' simple message in the wheat and the weeds.  When the wheat and weeds were both immature, they both looked nearly identical. So how could you pull  up only the weeds?  When they both grew to maturity, then their roots were intertwined.  So how could you pull up the weeds without destroying the wheat too?  The message is clear.  Wait, wait for the harvest.

We can apply this teaching to a very personal level.  There was  a magazine that had been sitting on my desk for weeks.  I picked it up this past week, and the right article was waiting for me.  A pastor in our UMC was writing about his daughter JoJo.  She was in college and irritated at a male classmate.  She was about to go "full force" on him.  This pastor, Kirk Byron Jones, said, you don't want JoJo to go full force on you.  She was so sure she was right. More importantly , she was sure that he was wrong.  Just before she went full force, she paused, and began to listen.  As she listened, her viewpoint changed. She wasn't so right.  He wasn't so wrong.  Wait.

We can apply this teaching even on the international stage.  We have a crisis on the Texas border.  A lot of undocumented people from Central America are showing up.  Many of them are women and children.  Many of them are young children.  One response has been a series of protests:  signs, barbed wire, "we don't want you here."  I am not sure that is the most helpful response, but I understand where it is coming from.  On the other side, we have a rescue mentality.  "Let's send a bunch of food and clothing and water and supplies to help."  Yes, we need to take care of some immediate needs for these vulnerable ones.  But Wait.  Something deeper is going on here.

We have been doing this mission study on Helping Without Hurting.  So many times, we rich, white, powerful American Christians rush in and cause more harm than good in our attempts to help.  Wait.  What is causing all of these people to come to our border?  Can you imagine sending your children more than a thousand miles to some strange land?  How bad must it be in Central America?

National Public Radio had an insightful report on this situation last week.  Many people are escaping gang violence in Honduras.  These gangs have their origins in Los Angeles!   Members of gangs in LA were deported back to Central America.  They had no family, no connections, so in order to cope they banded together and became powerful.  Now they intimidate children to sell drugs like in today's Austin American-Statesman article.  If you don't they beat you up, or kill your father.

There is a crisis at our border, but to solve it, it will take a long term approach, a long term relationship with people in Central America.  Wait.

We need to wait, because we are not the final judge.  Only God is.  Aren't you glad that Jesus waited on his 12 disciples?  One betrayed him, one denied him, all deserted him, yet he didn't weed them out.

I did my work in spiritual direction  at Boston College.  One of the nuns there had a great definition for sin.  She said, Sin is the failure to pause.  Wait.  BC is a Jesuit university.  The Jesuits have a wonderful way of making decisions.  In hard situations, they make a tentative decision.  Then they wait.  They live with that tentative decision for a while to see if they have consolation, peace, assurance, before making the final decision.

The good news I have for you today is....Wait.