Eight Sunday after Pentecost,

July 23, 2023.

Rev. Jennifer Hope-Tringalli

 

Once upon a time, there was a woman tormented by demons.  She wandered the outskirts of her village, cast out by her community as she was deemed unclean, damaged, as one who had evil within her.  And she was feared as if contagious, as if the humanity in her was hidden, as if she were a monster.  She did not know how long she had been suffering, just that she was no longer loved, no longer cared for, no longer considered a part of her community, but rather more like a scavenging animal.  

And then, she had an encounter with Jesus, who cast out her demons, but who did so much more.  He brought her into his inner circle of disciples.  He didn’t shy away from the trauma she had experienced, but included her in his community of friends and students.  She remained loyal to Jesus, following him as he traveled and healed and taught, and was present with him even at the cross where he was abandoned and rejected by most of the other disciples.  And she went to him even after his death, when He was the one who would have been considered unclean and broken by society.

Who was she?  Yes, Mary Magdalene, the one the resurrected Jesus appeared to, the first evangelist, the one who brought good news to the disciples who were hidden in fear in that upper room proclaiming, “I have seen the Lord.”  Yesterday was the feast day of Mary Magdalene, often referred to as the first apostle or the apostle to the apostles.  And today, we celebrate her story.

Once upon a time…..this is a phrase I find myself saying a lot as a mother of a three year old, as she begs, “Mommy or Daddy, tell me a story.”  Usually what she is asking for is a made-up story involving her and her stuffed animals.  My husband David has been reading a book entitled Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Humans by Michaeleen Doucleff.  This book is a mixture of travelogue, science, and culture as the author packs up her three-year-old daughter and travels to remote villages to learn parenting wisdom from Mayan, Inuit, and Hadzabe families.  In the Arctic village of Kugarruk, she learns that a big chunk of Inuit parenting happens well after a child misbehaves through the usage of story to teach children important cultural values and to keep them safe.  Parents create stories for a purpose, to teach, to warn, to instill cultural values. 

In this way, story is used as a teaching tool for children to learn something that they can take and apply to their daily interactions with others.

 

We heard one of these types of stories today in our gospel reading where Jesus is using an intentional story, or parable, to talk about the kingdom of heaven.  This parable of the wheat and weeds is one of at least eleven in the gospel of Matthew about what the kingdom of heaven is like or what the kingdom of heaven can be compared to.  And the intention of this particular parable seems to be that of warning…..”Let anyone with ears listen!”

Once upon a time, a farmer sowed good seed in their field, but then, when everyone was fast asleep, an enemy creeped into the field, scattered weeds among the wheat, and tip-toed out.  The mother in me visualizes this enemy as Swiper the Fox, from Dora the Explorer.  The weeds in this story are specific and would have been known in Jesus’ time by the farming community.  This particular weed plant looks like wheat when it is growing and can only be distinguished from wheat when it is ripe.  But if flour was made with both the wheat and this particular weed being milled together, the flour would be spoiled.  

In this story, the servants realize there are weeds, because some plants are beginning to ripen, but by this time, not only are the wheat and weed plants interspersed, growing together, but their roots are also entangled with each other.  The householder, realizing what must have happened, commands the servants to allow the wheat and weeds to continue to grow, ripen, and co-exist until harvest time.  The job of the servants is done at this point, as the separation of the wheat and weeds is delegated to the reapers who will separate and process them at the harvest.

The big picture message of this parable often pointed toward by commentaries is a twofold warning: one warning being that judgment will take place in God’s time and God is doing the judging.  The householder did not ask the servants to be involved with determining what was wheat and what was weed, nor did the good seed have any job to do except to keep growing among the weeds.  A second warning is associated with us desiring to be in the category of children of the kingdom and not children of the evil one.  This warning is a call for self-reflection to evaluate ourselves and our own righteousness.  

These two warnings are certainly worth paying attention to for you and for me.  But I also think there is more depth to this parable that surfaces when we pause and sit for a while in that field of wheat and weeds.  Maybe we even lay down in that field and engage all of our senses, feeling the wind that is pollinating, and the sun that is allowing photosynthesis to occur, tasting the rain as it falls to hydrate, smelling the warm soil bringing minerals to nourish, and seeing the golden stalks at sunset glowing, listening to them sway back and forth as one wave in the diminishing sunlight.  And as that field mixed with wheat and weeds is growing, touching, roots intertwined, sharing water, sunlight, and nutrients, a good question to ask might be: “What is God doing and valuing in that field?”

It seems to me that in this parable we hear that each and every single individual shaft of wheat was so important and precious to that householder that they didn’t dare pull out the weeds, lest the wheat might be uprooted.  The householder acts to preserve the wheat, which the second part of our reading identifies as the children of the kingdom of God.  God’s children interspersed with evil.  

 

And don’t we see evidence of evil surrounding God’s children in our world today.  Systems of injustice that at times seem to dominate, that are so entrenched in our society that we hesitate to address them, to change them, to eradicate them.

But this parable brings us back to what God values…..each stalk of wheat:

Every single child, no matter where they may have been born

Every single elderly person

Every person with special needs

Every single mother trying to make ends meet, while caring for her children

Every widowed father struggling to raise daughters

Every person left behind by their family or by society, the Mary Magdalene’s of our time

These are the ones God is acting to preserve in this parable, to value as precious and not to be uprooted by their evil counterparts.  

Liberation is not found in uprooting.  If we listen closely to stories of those experiencing uprooting through migration, we can surely hear this in their stories.  

Liberation is found in justice.  Liberation is found in solidarity.  Liberation is found in healing.  Liberation is found in resilience.

This parable says to you and me that we cannot use excuses like, the problems are so big, what can I as one person really do to change anything?  Freeing us to disengage with apathy…..

 

This parable calls you and I out and says to us that those spaces of injustice, those places where evil exists; they are designated as our fields to be planted into.

There is a Puerto Rican Spanish saying, “Son mugre uñas” that would literally translate as, “They are nail grime.”  But culturally, this idiom is used to say that “they are inseparable,” or “they are joined at the hip.”

 

This parable is calling us to be mugre uñas together, to get our hands and whole bodies dirty in ways that are uncomfortable, getting dirt under our fingernails that annoys and inconveniences us while we struggle alongside other stalks of wheat, all while being surrounded by the weeds of injustice.

This parable says to you and me that we are to value and not forget even one shaft of wheat, precious to God, therefore precious to us, as when this wheat thrives, our whole global society gains.

You and I are called to value and not forget about the least of these.

For all of you who traveled here this week, I know some of the preparation for this trip was inconvenient, stressful, maybe even at times exasperating, but I urge you now here to notice, to see, to seek, to listen, and to find those shafts of wheat that you didn’t know existed, because they were shrouded with injustice and merely an object before.  No longer objects, but now subjects:  these children, these elderly, these families, can share their own stories, their own struggles, their own strengths, and their resilience with you.  See and listen.

For all of you in this St. Alban’s community, many of you work and struggle weekly here in Guatemala and in the US with non-profit work, with communities you have relationships with who live in constant poverty, hunger, and injustice and it’s hard work. I urge you to endure and be filled with God’s message that each individual you walk alongside here is precious to God and you are working alongside God participating in bringing God’s kingdom into reality in small ways each and every day.

For all of you native to Guatemala, we see you, we are learning from you, you are precious to God and to us and now that we have seen and heard your call for liberation, we cannot unsee or unhear.  Vamos a luchar juntos!

God’s love is great toward each and every one of us.

God claims us as heirs and children of the kingdom of God.  

Instead of “once upon a time,” may we at all times live by the Spirit, who equips and empowers us, who makes us holy, who calls us to be mugre uñas with our siblings experiencing injustice, until liberation is reality for all.  Amen!