Jesus lived in an agrarian society, so it shouldn’t surprise any of us – many of his parables related to farming.
When he told these stories originally, his audience would have resonated with talk about “fields,” “seeds” and “crops.” They understood what he was talking about! They could picture it. Been there, done that!
One of the things we know is that – this was a definite turning point in the ministry of Jesus.
At the beginning of his ministry we find Jesus teaching regularly in the synagogues…making the rounds…
But now, he teaches on the seashore. The change is “very significant.”
It was not that the door to the synagogues “was” shut to him, because it wasn’t, but it was “closing…”
In the synagogues he found a welcoming from the “common people,” but the “official leaders” of Jewish Orthodoxy were now in “direct and open opposition” to him.
When he entered a synagogue now, he found a bleak eyed company of Scribes and Pharisees and Elders weighing and sifting his every word – to find a charge that would hold against him. They also watched his “every action” – that they might be able to turn it into an “accusation against him.”
When the doors of the synagogue started closing on him, he took the “temple of the great outdoors.” He taught men and women on the village streets. He taught by the road way, by the lake-side and even in private homes…and from boats…
When one door closes…another one usually opens up!
There is a dichotomy in all of us. None of us are 100% good, nor are we 100% bad. We are a mixture of both…and sometimes there are days…suffice it to say, sometimes, “There are days!”
Therefore we can no longer say that bad people live over there…and only good people live here…
I am sure the Oak Creek Police Department has a lot of stories that could be told…
And yet for whatever reason, it is so easy to see yourself as being “wheat” and other people as being “weeds.”
It is so easy to point the finger at others and to paint “others” in the worst of lights; it is so easy to “label and judge others.” Just like it is so easy to see the other person as being “wrong” and us in the “right!”
It is so easy to see the world in stark terms – us and them, the good and the bad, the sane and the perverse, the kindly and the cruel, the wheat or the weeds.
Have you noticed how often people try to divide the world into well, two kinds of people? It doesn’t usually work!
Mark Twain said, “There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things and people who claim to have accomplished things…”
Joy Mills said there are two kinds of people in the world, givers and takers.
James Thorpe said, “The world is divided into two types of people: those who love to talk and those who HAVE to listen.”
And of course, good old Dear Abby had to weigh in on this: She wrote, there are two kinds of people in the world – those who walk into a room and say, “There you are!” – and those who say, “Here I am.”
And finally Robert Benchley who wrote, “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world, and those who don’t!
Rich and poor, good and bad, righteous and evil, tall and short, wheat and weeds…sinner and saint! We are all a mixture!
Far too often the people of the church are seen by the world as a closed group of judgmental people.
As I read it, the church was never called to the task of separation and judgment. That belongs completely to God…
Our only calling is to spread the seeds of love in both word and deed, trusting God with the ultimate outcome.
The church is and always has been meant to be a community of grace – where grace overflows. We are to open our arms without judgment or reserve. We are to be constantly ready to welcome and to receive any whom God brings to us.
Judgment is never ours to give or to make…
Remember the log that is in your own eye, before you look for the speck in the eyes of another…
Amen.