23 July 2023 - Proper 11, Year A

 

Theme

This week’s readings speak about the hope and assurance God’s people can experience as they await the new creation. In Genesis, Jacob encounters God in a dream and is promised land and descendents in the future. This encounter makes Jacob more aware of and grateful for God’s presence in the current moment. Romans declares that God’s people are assured that they are adopted as God’s children and they will experience the rights and priveleges of such an adoption. In Matthew, Jesus explains how God will sort through the wheat and the weeds and they may be required to grow together until then. In Isaiah, God declares that He is the one true God who will prove His faithfulness and generosity.

Scripture Readings

  • Genesis 28:10-19a - Jacob dreams about a stairway from earth to heaven where angels of God ascended and descended. God stood at the top of the stairway and announced that the land that Jacob slept on would be given to him and he would be blessed with many descendents. When Jacob woke up, he declared that the Lord was in that place and he wasn’t even aware of it. He laid a stone altar in commemoration of the event.
  • Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24 - God has examined the Psalmist’s heart and knows everything about him. There is nowhere to go where one can escape God.
  • Romans 8:12-25 - If we live by our sinful urges, we will die. If we put to death the deeds of our sinful nature, we will live. God’s Spirit affirms that we have been adopted as God’s children. If we are to share in Christ’s glory, we must be willing to share in his suffering. What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory we will one day receive. All creation eagerly awaits its renewal. God’s children also eagerly awaits the new creation where we will be given new bodies, free of all sin and suffering.
  • Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 - The parable of the wheat and weeds. A farmer (representing the Kingdom of God) plants good seed, but the enemy sneaks in and plants weeds among the wheat. The farmer refuses to pull out the weeds because it would also pull out the wheat. Rather, he would wait until harvest time to separate the weeds from the wheat. The weeds would be burnt and the wheat taken to the barn.
  • Psalm 86:11-17 - The Psalmist asks God for wisdom and protection from his enemies.
  • Isaiah 44:6-8 - God declares that He is the first and the last. There is no other God. God will prove His faithfulness like He did for their ancestors for many generations.

Personal Application

All of humanity longs for the New Creation that God has promised - a world completely free of sin, suffering and evil of all kinds. We all suffer with our own heartbreaks, frailties and sinful tendencies. A world completely free of these is certainly something to look forward to.

However, sometimes we long so badly for this future paradise that we forget to live in the present, where there are hurts that can be healed and needs that can be met right now, not only at some moment in the distant future.

This is a tough balance to find. We should rightly look forward to a world and humanity completely remade and perfected, but if that is all we care about, we neglect to notice God’s presence in the world and people right now.

God has invited us to bring glimpses of this heavenly Kingdom to the world we live in now. Jacob experienced a place where heaven and earth met in a unique way. Jesus claimed that the wheat must grow among the weeds before they will be separated. Although we eagerly await our new bodies in the new creation, God calls us to care for our current bodies to the best of our ability, even though we will most definitely face suffering in various kinds. But as Paul said, if we want to share in Christ’s glory, we must also be willing to share in Christ’s suffering.

How can we best care for our bodies and the world now, while still eagerly anticipating the coming creation where all will be made new?

Communal Application

Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds has a lot to say to us today. So many Christians seem to believe that it is their duty to rid their churches of “the weeds,” whatever or whoever they might deem that to be. We would do well to be reminded that God is the one who will do any necessary sifting of the wheat and the weeds when the time is right; the workers are merely asked to water and nurture all that has been planted.

Rather than judging who deserves to be cared for, taught and loved in our churches, how great would it be if we could treat everyone equally and let God deal with each person in God’s own way. I believe that Jesus’ parable about the wheat and the weeds is an important reminder for us to let God be God. God is the Alpha and the Omega, the one true God. We do not need to take that mantle upon ourselves.

Have you ever been guilty of thinking that some people deserve love, care and protection in your communities while others do not? How can we best treat everyone equally to allow space for God to deal with the wheat and the weeds in God’s own way and time? How can we get out of God’s way so that God may work most powerfully in our churches and the lives of individuals?

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