Sunday, July 17, 2005

Sermon: Pentecost 9 - Year A

After all the recent rain, the tiny weeds in our yard have grown into super-sized pests. The other day I went out with our weed puller and did my best to annihilate those wretches from the backyard. After a half hour I hardly put a dent in the weeds. There were too many of them. But I left dozens of small holes in the grass, so my backyard looks like pockmarked face with a bad beard-trim.

When I was a kid I pulled a lot of weeds. Weeds in the garden. Weeds in the driveway. Weeds in the flower bed. Sometimes my mom would come out of the house yelling, “Not those! Those are radishes!”

Weeds. No one likes them. The first impulse is to yank them out by their roots. To get rid of them before they cause more to grow. But while that may be good gardening advice, Jesus tells us to let them grow. To let them flourish. Because if we are too hasty in getting rid of the weeds we might take out some of the good plants as well.

But, if that’s true, the question is how to live with the weeds. Maybe what’s harder to take in this parable is that Jesus says we’re...
(the rest here)

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