The Parable of the Weeds, a sermon based on Mark 4: 26-29, preached on June 23, 2024

Last Thursday, I attended the funeral for Tim Moran. Tim lived in our neighborhood, and he worshiped with us here at First Presbyterian Church whenever he didn’t feel like driving down to his church in Midtown. We met Tim and his wife, Mary, not long after moving into our house in July of 2017. We were thinking about how to decorate and renovate our new home when we learned that Tim made his living by selling reclaimed wood. He salvaged old long-leaf pine timbers from log cabins and smokehouses built generations ago and sold them out of his warehouse, so we asked him to help us find some beams to build a bookcase for my wife, Sara’s, new office. He invited us to his warehouse where all these pieces of ancient wood were stored. We fell in love with four thick beams, each maybe 10 feet long. He gave us the price, which I’m sure was discounted, but the thoughts of new home expenses gave us cold feet. We started thinking about the moving costs we’d just paid, how we needed to build a fence, paint walls, possibly replace appliances in our new home, and quickly felt like those beautiful beams were too great a luxury. We told Tim we’d have to think about it and reluctantly walked away. Later that same day, we pulled into the driveway, and there the four beams were, stacked next to our back door. It was a gift, and it was a gift that neither of us were expecting, which is the way it goes with so many blessings. They surprise us. We don’t expect them, and yet, if they’ve happened in the past, why wouldn’t they come again? Might the Kingdom of God be something like such an unexpected blessing? This morning, we continue our summer sermon series on the parables of Jesus with what I’m calling “the parable of the weeds.” In this parable is a man who has little to nothing to do with a weed that springs up in his field. He doesn’t water it. He didn’t plow the ground in which it was planted. There is no mention of fertilizer or pruning. This weed seems to have sprung up despite of him rather than because of him, and yet when it bears fruit, he grabs the sickle for the harvest for it’s not a weed at all but a plant that bears grain. This is what the Kingdom of God is like, Jesus says. “The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” Consider this weed, which he’s done nothing to produce, and consider your blessings, which you’ve done nothing to earn. We humans sometimes we forget about the blessings and start to think that it’s all up to us, or at least I do. How many sleepless nights have I spent tossing and turning, trying to work out some crisis in my head? How many nights have I spent asking myself, again and again, “What am I going to do? What am I going to say?” as though it were all up to me. It’s not all up to me. I remember that when I can’t find something that I’m missing. When I can’t find my car keys or my pocketknife, at first, I’m certain that what I must do is look harder for it. However, it turns up once I finally stop looking. Likewise, so often has it been the case that I spend a restless night worrying about a problem, thinking through what I was going to say, when it resolved itself on its own, like a gift I wasn’t expecting, like a weed that turned into grain. The author Mark Twain was famous for saying, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” So it has been with me. That’s how it always is with these sermons. Every week, I start writing these sermons with the same thought in my mind. I look at that blank sheet of paper and think: “How am I going to fill up the page? Do I really have anything else to say?” I often worry about what I’m going to say all week long, when the reality is, all I need to do is wait for God to tell me what to say. I need to get better at watching for God’s hand at work and listening for God’s voice. God’s always speaking, but the thoughts in my head are racing so quickly, I listen more to my own worries than His assurance that I need not be afraid. This week, I went to Tim’s funeral. As I said before, he came to our church when he didn’t feel like driving down to All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Midtown. That’s where the funeral was, and during the service we sang one of my favorite hymns, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” The third verse goes like this: Finish then thy new creation. Pure and spotless let us be. Let us see thy great salvation Perfectly restored in thee. Changed from glory into glory, Till in heaven we take our place, Till we cast our crowns before thee, Lost in wonder, love, and praise. Do you ever get lost in wonder? Do you ever step back from the work on your desk to consider the work of God’s hand? Do you ever take a break from whatever it is that you must do to give thanks to God for what God has done? Do you ever consider how weeds grow without us? Or how many blessings fall right into our laps? And when you consider the future, will you remember all the good that God has done in the past to assure you that even if you can’t do it all, God is in control? My friends, we are coming closer and closer to election season. I’ve been dreading it for months already, for I’m tired of hearing about how everything hangs in the balance. I’m sick and tired of listening to the news coverage of this next presidential election because it seems like everyone is telling me that the future is uncertain and that no election has ever been so important as this one, as though my vote will determine our destiny, even though never in my life has that ever been the case. I can’t tell you how many of my bad decisions led to my greatest blessings. I can’t tell you how many blessings from God have sprung up like weeds in the yard. I can’t tell you how often it has been the case that finally, in my surrender, once I stopped trying to find the right answer, did the solution appear like my keys under the couch. Don’t listen to the anxiety preached by the 24-hour news cycle, for the Kingdom of God is not like a hard-fought election campaign. The Kingdom of God is not like a marathon that you must train for relentlessly. The Kingdom of God is not like a promotion you earned or a luxury car that you saved for. The Kingdom of God is like a weed that grew without you having to do anything but harvest the wheat from it that you did nothing to earn, and my friends, the Kingdom of God is coming. Jesus said it is coming like a thief in the night, so I’m not going to listen when the world tells me to work harder. Instead, I’m going to remember the voice of God who says, “Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” I’m not going to listen when the world tells me to be afraid, for Scripture declares, “The Lord is my Shepherd, of whom shall I fear?” I’m not going to listen when they tell me that everything hangs in the balance, for Scripture declares, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” When the world makes me feel like I’ve just got to do something, I’m going to remember the psalm that says, “Be still and know that I am God.” Last Sunday was Father’s Day. My wife, Sara, and our two daughters asked me what I wanted for Father’s Day. Well, I wanted their help. Since we moved into our house, one thing that has bugged me is that half of our front yard is covered in English ivy. That English ivy just takes up so much space. I like that I don’t have to cut it, but I don’t like that I can’t plant azaleas or hydrangeas or something there. It’s just big, green ivy, covering up snake holes and rat dens, as far as I’m concerned, so when Sara and our girls asked me what I wanted for Father’s Day, I told them I wanted their help pulling up ivy, and since last Sunday, we’ve pulled up all of it. I mean all of it. It’s in these huge piles by the street. You can drive by and see it if you want to. Get your picture taken in front of it. It’s a huge pile of ivy that my family helped me pull up while neighbors walked by to watch, and without fail, every neighbor who walked by us working on that ivy said the same thing. “That ivy is coming back.” They said, “You can pull it up. You can spray it with Roundup. You can mow it down, but that ivy is coming back.” That’s what every neighbor said. That might be what you’re thinking right now. If it is, let me ask you this, “If we had faith in God the way we have faith in weeds, can you imagine how it would change us?” If we had as much faith in God that God would never leave us nor forsake us; that the Kingdom of God is coming, no matter how bleak things seem; that the Light of Christ is not going out, no matter how deep the shadow; that God is good, all the time, no matter how bad the news is; that we will overcome, no matter the obstacle, for the Kingdom of God is like a weed that will grow despite of us, and we will eat of its harvest because God is just that good. can you imagine how we would live if we had faith like that? Jesus said, “One with the faith of a mustard seed will move mountains,” and I say, “One who has faith like he does in the weeds in his front yard will never be moved.” Do not be afraid, for He is with us. Do not fear, for He knows our name and will never forsake us. Do not worry about tomorrow, for the Kingdom of God is like a weed that grows no matter how much we spray it. No matter how poor the soil. No matter how little we water. For the Kingdom of God is coming. Halleluia. Amen.