Greetings from Medford with the fires from last week still burning on the eighth Sunday after Pentecost.
We gathered with a remembrance that God truly knows our need and has compassion to give us what is needed. Our first lesson from Genesis was the story of Jacob at Bethel and his experience of the stairway to heaven and God’s promise to lead him home. The Psalmist praises God for knowing us intimately and continues to search for us through time. The reading from the letter to the Romans proclaims that we are bound by Christ to our relationship with God and that whatever happens today is not the end, rather just this present moment. Matthew’s gospel is the parable of the wheat and the tares (weeds) and the interpretation of the principals of the story.
Our lessons today offer imagery which is often foreign to the sensibilities of modern society. Jacob uses a rock as a pillow and Jesus tells people to let the weeds grow with the wheat. Those images remind us that our sensibilities probably aren’t God’s sensibilities and follow God’s specific plan. In the end, an overarching message of the stories of today is that God knows what God’s part of creation is, and that our part is not God’s part. God calls us to work and profess our faith that God is in control, and to do our job to further the kingdom. Just like a thistle (a weed) produces an artichoke (a delicacy) God knows what each person will become.
How will we let God do God’s job and focus on doing our own job for God? Who needs to recognize God’s grace in their life in ways like no other person? I invite your comments,
Les+
Lessons: Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Sermon link: https://audiomack.com/fatherles-2/song/pentecost-8-sermon-2
