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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As a conversation over dinner the other night made clear, even people who like weeding their flowerbeds or garden can dislike weeding in Texas’s July heat! (And that is not even to mention the danger of over-exertion in the heat!) In order to avoid the heat, one might weed earlier in the morning or put off weeding until later in the evening. In what Jesus’s disciples call “the parable of the weeds of the field” in today’s Gospel Reading, the master of the house, our Almighty God, puts off weeding His field, the world, until the harvest, the end of the age, but He does so for a different reason, namely, in order to avoid uprooting the wheat along with the weeds. That delay gives us the opportunity to ask ourselves—not only this morning but each and every day—whether we are the good seed, sons (or “children”) of the Kingdom, or whether we are weeds, sons (or “children”) of the Evil One. In short, “Whose child are you?”
Perhaps in part due to the opposition Jesus had been experiencing (so Davies and Allison, ad loc Mt 13:24-43, 431, with reference to Matthew 11:1-12:50), Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading put another parable before the crowds—a parable that in some ways was both similar to and different from the immediately preceding “parable of the sower”, which we heard last week. And, as with last week’s Gospel Reading, so for today’s Gospel Reading, our series of Readings has again skipped over some arguably relevant verses in between the public parable and its later private interpretation (Matthew 13:31-35), verses in which Jesus tells two other parables and in which St. Matthew says Jesus’s speaking in parables fulfills prophecy.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus says the Enemy sowed weeds among the wheat and went away—and not just any old weeds (or “tares”, as some Bible versions and hymns call them [for example, KJV, ASV, NASB]), but weeds that are thought to be a variety called “bearded darnel”, which weeds look similar to wheat and barley in their early stages of growth and have strong, deep roots. Today’s parable in some sense surely speaks about the Devil’s responsibility for unbelief and opposition to Jesus (so Davies and Allison, ad loc Mt 13:24-30, 408 with n.5). Yet, the responsibility for unbelief and opposition is neither the parable’s main point of comparison nor the parable’s central truth, and, even if it were, the Devil’s having some responsibility does not relieve us of our own responsibility for the unbelief and opposition that we have on account of the original sin we inherit and our resulting actual sin.
Despite the unusually‑numerous seven lesser points of comparison that Jesus explicitly gives when explaining the parable to His disciples—such as the good seed’s being the children of the Kingdom and the weeds’ being the children of the evil one—the parable’s one main point of comparison is that, just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age: the Son of Man will send His angels to gather out of His Kingdom all causes of sin and all law‑breakers and to throw them into the fiery furnace, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Like John the Baptizer before Him (Matthew 3:12), and accepting his prophecy (Stephenson, CLD XIII:107), Jesus also warns us against the judgment of the eternal, unquenchable fires of the hell that we deserve on account of our sinful nature and all our actual sin—judgment we deserve unless, enabled by God, we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to do better than to keep sinning. As we sang in the Introit (Psalm 86:11-15; antiphon: Psalm 86:5), the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. The Lord is patient toward us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Peter 3:9).
When we, enabled by God, so repent, then God forgives our sin—our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever it might be. God forgives our sin for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ, Who died on the cross for your sin and mine. So that we could be delivered from the judgment we deserve, God sent His Son into our human flesh to suffer that judgment for us (confer Lenksi, ad loc Mt 13:42, 539, citing Trench). As we sang in the Introit, the Lord God’s steadfast love toward us is great: He delivers our souls from the depth of Sheol (that is, from hell). As St. Paul wrote by Divine‑inspiration to the Colossians (Colossians 1:13-14), the Lord God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. As we are in Him, we have both the Son’s righteousness of His keeping the law where we failed to do so and His righteousness of His dying for our failure to keep the law. As the Son Himself once shown like the sun at His Transfiguration (Matthew 17:2), so we who are righteous in Him will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of our Father.
By nature we are children of the Evil One, but God makes us children of the Kingdom, working through His Word in all of its forms. As St. John’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account makes clear, to all who believe in and so receive Jesus, the Word, He gives the right to become children of God, born, not of blood nor the will of flesh nor the will of man, but born of God (John 1:12). We who are children of the Kingdom are born from above, of water and the Spirit, in Holy Baptism (John 3:3-5). As we will sing in the Second Distribution Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 773), the Spirit’s Word conveys to us as Baptized heirs all that we through Christ inherit. Included in those blessings are individual Holy Absolution and its access to the family meal, the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar that are Christ’s Body and Blood, given and shed for you and for me, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. As we will sing in the First Distribution Hymn (LSB 652), paraphrasing one of the oldest Christian writings after the New Testament (Brauer, #898, HS’98:Handbook, 161-162), as scattered grain was in the bread made one, so from all lands God gathers the Church into the Kingdom of His Son.
We might think that things will go on forever the way that they are, but they will not: the end of the age will come in God’s time. Until then, we pray, as we did in the Collect, that the Holy Spirit so rules and governs our hearts and minds so that we, ever mindful of the final judgment, may be stirred to holiness of living. In that regard, as God’s Seed, the Son of Man, abides in us, we do not make a practice of sinning (1 John 3:9). As children of the Kingdom, we even in our weakness pray, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 8:18-27) and sang in the Hymn of the Day (LSB 772), with the help of the Holy Spirit. We and creation groan as we wait for the end of the age, the full and final fulfillment of all that God has said and declared from of old, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 44:6-8). Then, when He shall come with trumpet sound, as we will sing in the Third Distribution Hymn (LSB 575), the angels will gather out of the Son of Man’s Kingdom all causes of sin and all unbelieving law-breakers, the children of the Evil One. But, the children of the Kingdom, the believing righteous ones, then will have the glory that had previously been hidden under the cross. Those with God-given ears to hear will have heeded Jesus’s heavy warning, and so then they will have His eternal and perfect joy.
This morning we have considered “whose child” we each are. By nature children of the Evil One, God makes us His children of the Kingdom, unless we reject Him. Yes, in this life mixed with the unbelievers we still sin, but we who repent and believe live in God’s forgiveness by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, until our own deaths or the end of the age, whichever comes first. For that end we pray now, as we will in the Closing Hymn (LSB 892):
Even so, Lord, quickly come / To Thy final harvest home;
Gather Thou Thy people in, / Free from sorrow, free from sin.
There forever purified, / In Thy garner to abide:
Come with all Thine angels, come, / Raise the glorious harvest home.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +