Pentecost 9

Pentecost 9 GOD HAS A PLAN! 7/14 & 17/05

Walter Cronkite, long-tenured anchor man of the CBS Evening News, became known for his closing line, “And that’s the way it was…” What the news actually does is report “the way it was” in our town, county, country, and world in the past hours or day. If it hasn’t occurred in the past 24 hours, it most likely isn’t news! The news reporters cannot change “the way it was”, they can only report “the way it was.”

God, on the other hand, can do far more. Certainly one part of Holy Scripture is to report “the way it was.” We read about the history of God’s people, from creation to the Great Commission. But, God is not limited to, or by, “the way it was.” By God’s very nature He is more a God of “that’s the way it will be!” From the very beginning, we see this element of God’s nature. Each day of creation God pronounces “let there be,” revealing in advance how He envisions the world and how God intends the world to be.

Central to the message and ministry of the Old Testament prophets is not only the reporting of the current state of the world’s affairs, but also God telling what will occur in future days. All through the Old and New Testament, God announces how it’s going to be. God sends Moses to confront the Egyptian Pharoah, accompanied by the promise: “I will be with you!” (Exodus 3:12). God has Nathan tell King David, “I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom” (2 Samuel 7: 12). Jesus repeatedly tells His disciples, “The Son of man must suffer many things…and be killed…and after three days rise again” (Mark 8: 31). Remember the great promises revealed in Revelation 21: 3-4: “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with the, and they shall be his people. And God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more.”

(SEEK SOME RESPONSES) What is our Gospel parable about this week?

Our parable this week is about what nearly half of Jesus’ 40 some parables are about: The kingdom of heaven! We can become so distracted by the details, that we miss the primary point of the parable…a point clearly revealed before Jesus “unfolds” the parable itself… “The kingdom of heaven is like…”. Jesus repeatedly utilizes parables to describe what God’s kingdom will be like. If we were asked to write down how we picture the kingdom of heaven, we might understandably include gates of pearls and streets of gold. The “seeds and weeds” material of this parable offers a healthy corrective to this, otherwise, rather narrow expectation!

Before the kingdom of heaven is sparkling and “out of this world,” it is first quite earthy and “in this world!” This is the nature of the kingdom of heaven. It is not merely a destination to which we go when we leave this world…it is a divinely planted and growing reality within this world…Hence, we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” As was true with the parable in last week’s Gospel lesson, we need not decipher the symbolism in this lesson before us. Jesus offers a very clear, elementary explanation for all who will listen. In the picture of a field, Jesus explains the present and the future conditions of the world and of the kingdom. The Son of Man, Jesus, is the rightful owner of the field, but obviously not the only “influence” in the field. The image of an “enemy” personifies the evil and personalizes the attack. An us-them paradigm is implicit in this parable, yet did you notice the absence of conflict or animosity between “the children of the kingdom” and “the children of the evil one”? The children of God and the children of satan exist together, side by side for the time being…but not forever and, likely, not for long!

The parable illustrates the wisdom of God’s delay in bringing His kingdom to final fulfillment. For God to make a dramatic, immediate move to eliminate the enemy’s influence…or, for you or me to attempt to take this matter into our own hands---would be premature and destructive. Instead, the farmer will allow good and evil to grow and develop for a while longer. At harvest time, when good and evil reaches maturity, the distinction between the two will be crystal clear.

I believe we can gain three gifts from this parable: an understanding of why things are the way they are…an insight into the God who neither abandons His compromised “field”, nor rashly purges it…and a picture of the harvest that is to come. As Henry Alford wrote in hymn 407: “For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take the harvest home; from the fields shall in that day all offenses purge away, giving angels charge at last in the fires the tares to cast; but the fruitful ears to store in the garner evermore.” Whereas Walter Cronkite could only report “That’s the way it was…”, our God has a plan, and reveals “That’s the way it will be!” amen.