The Lord be with you!

Give ear, O LORD, to my prayer; listen to my plea for grace.

This is the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, and the Introit that begins with those words continues with this mysterious phrase:
  [Lord,] you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
What’s that Hebrew word, Sheol? It speaks of the region far below the surface of the earth, which in the worldview of the Hebrew Scriptures, was characterized as the farthest place away from God’s shining face and merciful presence of His blessing. Yet Psalm 139 (verse 8) counters that with this comfort: Even if I make my bed in Sheol, you [O God,] are there. This hellish depth may threaten God’s judgment, but we have nothing to fear because our soul has been delivered from that punishment forever. Let us pray Sunday’s Collect of the Day:
O God, so rule and govern our hearts and minds by Your Holy Spirit that, ever mindful of Your final judgment, we may be stirred up to holiness of living here and dwell with You in perfect joy hereafter; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Isaiah 44:6–8
The King takes His throne and asserts His sole authority, sovereignty and absolute power. He defiantly asks for anyone who dares to equate themselves to Him, please step forward and show yourself! Yet His purpose in making His bold stand is not to command mere obeisance and destroy all His enemies. He specifically states that His purpose is to remove all fear from those who put their ultimate trust in Him. There is none who is for us but the Rock who is like no other!

Romans 8:18–27
It is a profound mystery indeed that Christ’s death on the Cross and His subsequent resurrection not only saved us from our sins, but that all-important event has also freed the entire creation of God from its bondage. We love the creation that our Father has given us, from beautiful scenery to daily bread to the animals who are most dear to us. We want something better for them than the pain and suffering of this fallen world. They themselves yearn with us for the Creation to be renewed and restored. Animals may not be classified identically with us as inheritors of the Spirit’s firstfruits, but they do, along with us, look forward earnestly, with groaning, to the new creation that awaits us following the resurrection of the dead and the beginning of that life which is to come.

Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43
Once again, Jesus tells a parable to the crowds, then later takes the disciples aside to explain to them its meaning. Both wheat and weeds grow in the same field, the field of the world. The Church and the unbelieving world are often intertwined, to the effect that uprooting that which is harmful before the appointed time would do too much damage to the souls for whom Christ died. God is longsuffering and patient in abiding the weeds that are in His precious field. He always has the wheat in mind. He will never do anything that will uproot what He planted in your heart through your Baptism into His name.

This is how our gracious God rules and governs our hearts and minds by His Holy Spirit. He has no equal and He demands retribution for all sin, yet that retribution was willingly taken for us by our Savior Jesus Christ. This atonement achieved not only our salvation but that of all creation that had been subjected to sin’s curse. And although we who believe are mixed in together in this sinful world with those who reject this magnificent grace, we are promised from our Good Shepherd’s own lips that we will not be swept away to Sheol in judgment, but rather will be stirred up to holiness and joyful expectation of the reward He has earned for our sakes.

Here’s Hymn 584, stanza 2:
May the Spirit’s pow’r unceasing / Bring to life the hidden grain,
Daily in our hearts increasing, / Bearing fruit that shall remain.
So in Scripture, song, and story / Savior, may Your voice be heard.
Till our eyes behold Your glory / Give us ears to hear Your Word.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Pr. Stirdivant

Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: July 19, 2020 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝

It is not a particularly comforting thing to be a member of the Christian church. Martin Luther would often plead with his hearers to pray for any baby that was just baptized. Why? Simply because that new child of God, even though it was just rescued from eternal death and damnation through the saving flood, nevertheless one born of water and the Spirit has just become the bitter enemy of the Prince of Darkness. And since the devil puts out his fiercest energy against those who are most resistant to him, the church can be properly identified as the Evil One’s battlefield of choice.

It would have been frightening enough only to have to look out for the full-frontal assault of Satan. But today, Jesus doesn’t speak of that. There’s a different tactic that’s much more sinister—even for the devil. A terrorist plot, if you will, to destroy the church from the inside. And although the image of a battlefield would indeed seem appropriate to describe the devil’s outward attacks, Jesus chooses the image of a sower and his field to reveal to you what Satan does gradually and undercover in this world that we live in.
For as Jesus explains on His own, He is the sower of good seed. Not necessarily morally good, but good in that it will yield wheat instead of weeds. The wheat does not grow by itself. In the first sower parable, the seed was the Word. Here Jesus says it means the sons of the kingdom, that is, those who will receive eternal life because of God’s grace and forgiveness. You do not plant yourself in the Christian Church, nor did any of your decisions bring you eternal life; God has lovingly brought you to this time and place, using other faithful Christian people among your family and friends. The Word is sown when you hear it and are baptized, then God waters it and makes it grow through more preaching of the Word and receiving Holy Communion. The Church, especially the worship service, is the place and time in which God does all of this work on your heart.

And then the enemy does his sowing. And he’s nothing but an evil, nasty copy-cat. He can’t go to his own field; there’s no such thing. All that the devil can do is destroy what God has already made, and that is exactly what he does. Notice, however, the shrewdness of Satan. He bides his time, waiting for the right moment. He doesn’t march right out in broad daylight and plant the weeds of his evil sons among the wheat. No, he waits for everyone to be sleeping. He does his dirty deed at night. When God’s people are not watchful, when they are stuck in the good-ol’ days when times were better, when everyone could gather indoors with nothing to worry about, then that’s the time when the devil perceives the guard to be down. That’s the opportunity he takes to sow the weeds.

And they aren’t necessarily ugly weeds. At least not at first. At the very beginning, these darnel weeds, or tares, look just like wheat when they spring up. Only the experienced eye can tell the difference at a glance. The difference becomes much greater toward the end at harvest time. The wheat becomes useful, healthy food, while the darnel heads prove to be toxic and dangerous. So, likewise, the sons of the Evil One that are among you in this world are not necessarily the obvious ones: you know, the rebellious kind of crowd that makes the news in the latest riots. Actually, the weeds that look like wheat are different: they’re pretty good, decent people. They are often loving, considerate, all the stuff that you’d expect to come from a Christian. They might even go to church, but the whole time instead of listening to the Word of God, they’re nodding along with what the pastor preaches against all those “other sinners out there, not me.” They’re the ones who like to take a comforting Gospel doctrine like Sanctification, and twist it into a chance to demonstrate their moral superiority in following the Law. On the other end of it, evil weeds disguised as wheat would just as likely take the blessed truth of salvation by God’s grace without works and then use it to justify their own evil, self-indulgent lifestyle, saying, “Christ died for my sins, so I’m going to have some fun,” of course when no one else in the church is watching. Such are the weeds that Satan has planted among you in this world, and even a church with purely orthodox teaching and worship can still have a mixed field of weeds and wheat. In fact, that almost guarantees it.

And so if you aren’t offended by the hypocrites that you see around you (including that hypocrite who looks back at you in the mirror, I might add), then you hear this parable of Jesus and plead for balance. Since God wants wheat and weeds to grow together until harvest, why should we insist on all those doctrinal details and instead do more of the stuff that brings more people in and makes the church some more money? People don’t come back if you tell them that the good stuff they do doesn’t count anything toward their salvation. Why try to point out errors that good Christian denominations teach, when under God’s will as this parable says, we are allowed to co-exist in this world? The pastors and laymen who push that the Bible is the only truth, and the ones who maintain that certain practices in the church either teach the truth well or distract from it, they’re the ones causing all this trouble and unrest today. Why can’t we have peace and prosperity like we used to have?

I guess you could say that all of these things are ultimately God’s fault: He’s the one who says like the sower, let both grow together until the harvest. The weeds, as harmful as they are even right now, should not be uprooted. No violent cleansing or mass excommunications of false believers will be tolerated in the sight of your heavenly Father. The church must never get into the business of purging itself. If it does, then it is playing right into the hands of the Enemy. Why can’t we get rid of those who oppose the truth? Why doesn’t God tell His servants to rip out the darnel weeds in the field?

Why? Because He is concerned for the wheat. He could bring His awesome judgment to bear anytime He pleases, but He doesn’t. He wants your salvation to remain intact. The Lord Jesus who paid for your forgiveness—indeed who set the whole world free from sin by His suffering, the shedding of His Blood, and His death on the cross—He knows that you are weak. He is fully aware that, although you are His precious wheat, you still do many weed-like deeds. He wants to spare you from being uprooted when the terror of judgment is unleashed. The darnel weeds have an unfair advantage. Their roots are stronger and they’re more spread-out. If you pull them up, those roots will latch on to the wheat and rip it out too. Your heavenly Father does not want that to happen even to one wheat plant—even one true Christian scooped away as collateral damage, or friendly fire, is too much. The prophet once asked: “But who may abide the day of His coming?” and if Judgment Day were to come any sooner than it’s supposed to, the answer would have been a deafening silence. So until then, weeds and wheat wait together until the harvest, and then they are separated.

I must hasten to add at this point, that when God advises you to let the wheat and weeds grow together, that He does not say to His servants, “Go sow more weeds in the field to make it fair and balanced.” The Lord of the Church does not want false teaching to be promoted, any more than He would want you to let your guard down. God wants the wheat to prevail by casting more of His pure, good seed into the field—by the survival of solid, truthful preaching, along with worship practices that support it—but not by getting rid of the bad that’s already there. If you must excommunicate, do it not to get rid of somebody, do it to give a firm but loving reminder that to refuse to repent is to put their soul in danger. It’s always done carefully, as a last resort, and always with the hope that the excommunicated person will be reinstated.

So with the devil mounting both a head-on attack and an undercover subterfuge, what’s the Christian to do? How can you know for certain whether you’re a weed or wheat? Even though Jesus doesn’t use this particular parable to answer that question out right, consider how calm the farmer is in the story. God does not like that there are false Christians mixed in and among His true children, but He’s not overly excited about it. His wrath against the devil and his sort is holding off until the end, but the sons of the kingdom are going to make it. The seal of God’s promise was made sure for you when Jesus rose victoriously from the dead. That meant that His blood price for your soul was all that was needed to save you from death. Rather than worry about the weeds that may be around you, stick with that which made you wheat in the first place: pay attention to the Word of God that is planted within you as you hear it. Pray, using that same Word of God to speak back to Him, recalling His promises toward you. This way, you are prepared against both tactics of the devil. Though for now, it may not be all that comforting to be a member of the Christian church, to be wheat among the weeds, remember that the harvest is coming. Because of Jesus, your one and only Savior, you will look forward not only to escaping the gnashing of teeth, but you will also enjoy the gift of heaven that you have the opportunity to taste right here at this altar.

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Is. 44:6–8 I am the first and I am the Last
Psalm 119:57–64 I am a companion of all who fear You
Rom. 8:18–27 we know that the whole creation groans and labors
Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43 good seed…tares