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Pentecost 8
Propers 11A
Gospel Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Vicar Matthew Kinne

Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Focus Text: V41-43 “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom
all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of
their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”

I absolutely despise dandelions. They are a nuisance to a lawn, and hard to prevent from growing
just about anywhere, including on concrete. They are stubborn and annoying. I’ve even trained my
two-year-old daughter to pull these pesky-yellow-fiends as a game so that they can be eradicated faster.
But no matter how hard I try to use chemical sprays, gasoline, or even letting the sun bake the flowers in
the middle of a tan crispy field, somehow they have just become the most resilient weed out there. In
fact, if you just type into Google “the Resiliency of Dandelions” many searches come up of different and
various organizations that use the dandelion as their mascot or symbol, because they want their group to
sound everlasting and unstoppable.

Needless to say, dandelions, among many other pesky weeds, are able to be trampled on. Weeds
really only get their power of annoyance because of the large number they grow in within a short period
of time. Other than that, they don’t have deep roots. They don’t have strong stems. They are rather weak
and frail alone. But so many people have just given up on trying to treat their lawns, to the point that
their neighbor’s lawn gets infested too. It is pointlessly annoying.

It may seem, from our Gospel reading today, that the Master of the field also gave up on treating
His field for weeds as He told His servants not to separate the weeds from the wheat. But as the parable
continues on, we are taught that in fact the Master of the field has a long term plan for His harvest. That
plan, of course, is for His servants to bind up all of the weeds and throw them into the fire. On the other
hand, the wheat is gathered to Himself, into His barns. Of course, Jesus through this parable is not
talking about dandelions or actual weeds, specifically. But His explanation allows us rather
simple-minded people to understand what God intends to do with both His church, and those who deny
salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In some ways, discussing this subject in a parable form, makes this conversation easier to talk
about. We are talking about the subject of living eternally with God in paradise, or being bound up into a
fiery torment of death. That is not a fun subject to have with people who uprightly deny Christ,
especially with people whom you love and care about. It’s uncomfortable.

You and I both live in a world where the wiles and tears of sinfulness and evil overgrows and
sometimes even chokes out people within the Church. Maybe you have been snagged on occasion into
the snares of weeds, planted by the devil, which caused you to ignore God’s promise of salvation or
simply the Holy life of the Christian living. Or maybe you know someone close who has been dragged
down and drowned out by the evil dandelions of this world.

But within the Church, the comfort of Christ’s Gospel, given to you in your baptismal life, where
He places His perfect righteous life on you, gives you peace and faith. That is very important to
understand. No matter how badly Satan’s weeds grow over you, God gives you absolution when you
confess your sins to Him. We give Him nothing but our weeds– our sinful, unlovable, disrespectful
selves, in exchange for Him to turn us into the wheat of His field- His church, His sheep, His people
made holy and righteous in the sight of our heavenly Father. He doesn’t just “claim” you to be clean and
saved figuratively either. He assures you that you are cleaned and saved by putting His perfect body to
death and spilling His righteous blood into your unholy, weed infested soul. He gives you everything
you need to be wheat.

So, when we confess the Nicene Creed here in a moment that “He will come again with glory to
judge the both living and the dead” or “the weeds and the wheat”, do not leave it in your conscience of
which life you had, but more so which life you have been made into through the atonement of Jesus
Christ. We are all sinners. We were all once weeds, and still carry out the side effects of being such. We
still have the temptation to carry out our pet sins. But, as our Epistle reading from last week showed us,
in Romans 8: 1-2, we are no longer bound to carry out what our sinful flesh wants us to do. Instead, as
we heard today’s Epistle, the Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26). When the Lord shows us
our sin, He turns us away from the shadow of weeds and turns our petals towards the Son. Pun intended.
When the Lord causes us to face Him, we are to repent and be reminded that because of the
blood poured out, because of the perfect body given, because of the washing in Baptism, Christ makes
you His wheat. And if you are still in the paradox of doubting, the notion that you are concerned about
which one you are, a “Weed” or “Wheat”, shows that God’s law is evident in you. You are a wheat if
you hear the voice of our Shepherd calling and asking you to follow Him into understanding of where
salvation comes from. Just like the disciples who followed Jesus into the house to hear Him teach about
the heavenly promises He supplies, believing that Jesus will do these things and listening to His teaching
is reassurance that you are in fact His and He is yours.

From here, I have one lingering question: Why does Christ wait to harvest His field, instead of
just taking us right now? Well, there are a couple of things to consider here. First- no one knows the time
or place Christ is making His return except for the Father (Matthew 24:36). So, the day of harvest, or
judgment day, is not even known to the Son who is the Judge Himself. In the New Testament there are
three references that He will come back like a “Thief in the Night” ( Revelation 16:15, Matthew 24:43,
1 Thessalonians 5:2). And Jesus gives many other parables to show us that He will come back,
unexpectedly, to judge the living and the dead. But even then, He expects His wheat to wait in
anticipation for His second coming. It’s not as if He made us a promise, left, and then allowed us to
become weeds again. No, He continues to give us strength through His Holy Spirit to lead faithful and
 

Godly lives among weeds until He returns. And He promises to be with us always, even until the end of
the age (Matthew 28:20).

Secondly, we just talked about our loved ones, and neighbors who uprightly deny Christ. If
Christ came right now, would they not be bound up and thrown into the fire for unbelieve? After all, we
know that Jesus says in Mark 16:16, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever
does not believe will be condemned.“ God waits as a form of grace for the unrepentant. We see this
“grace period” throughout the Old Testament including in the example of Cain- God put a mark on Cain
after he murdered his brother. This sign kept anyone from then murdering him. God waited to harvest
Cain for 730 years so that there could be a place in time for him to repent and be absolved. We are
unsure about whether Cain did or did not repent. But we know that all of his descendants were not
preserved in the flood as Noah’s was family (Genesis 4-5). It is a sad and unfortunate example for us to
listen to as we also are given the time in this life to ask for God’s mercy on us.

Yes, God wants us to repent of all our sin. We even say in our Small Catechism regarding our
baptismal life that baptizing with water indicates “that the Old Adam in us should by daily contrition
and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily
emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever (Luther’s Small Catechism
2017 pg.24)”. Therefore, every day we should heed the Word of God and ask for forgiveness, and be
reminded that we are saved through Christ.

So, when you are out in the world (the field), and the deceiving flowers of Satan’s weeds take
advantage of you, remember, the Lord’s salvation given to you cannot be trampled upon. Unlike the frail
stems of Satan’s followers, God’s truth and the faith He has given to you is held up not by a frail stem,
but by a thick trunk. A trunk so strong that it held up all the sins of the world. A trunk that bore the body
of our Lord, Jesus Christ, which from His side spilled water and blood onto the church and continues to
pour it out on to us here in the service. Just as a plant needs water to grow, the body and blood given to
you for the forgiveness of sins continues to nourish you, assuring you of your salvation and spiritual
growth. This is why having the Lord’s Supper regularly is so important. The water poured on us in
baptism is the strongest weed killer ever. And this water, not only is the strongest, but is everlasting.
Jesus is the everlasting water that cleans us and gathers us to our Father in heaven. And it is there where
we will be stored forever and ever into our Father’s barns. Amen.