Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 21, 2024

Wisdom Required

Tom Are Jr.
Interim Pastor

Proverbs 26:4–5
Matthew 13:24–30

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In seminary I did an internship as a hospital chaplain. One night I was called to the sixth floor. Pediatrics. I met a young woman, not much older than I was at the time. Her child had just died. He couldn’t have been more than three years old, and now she sat beside him, tears running down her face.

I introduced myself and offered a prayer. Then we talked. Well, that’s not really the case; the truth is I talked. I was uncomfortable with the situation and even more uncomfortable with the silence, so I talked. I talked and talked until this brokenhearted mother looked up at me and very gently asked, “Would you mind if we didn’t talk?”

I desperately wanted to help. And I was so confident that if I said enough words, eventually I would bump into the right words to make things better. I’m glad I’m not still that stupid. I’ve learned that some things can’t be made better by words, even the right ones.

The Gospel writer was a preacher, preaching to a congregation like this one. Matthew’s congregation had their own struggles. They were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah; the long-awaited one had come, the one who would establish God’s ways in the world. And yet rather than redemption and abundant life being the norm, the world was still a mess. They professed that Jesus was Lord, but from all objective measures Caesar seemed to be calling all the shots. They practiced a new social order where men and women, people enslaved and free could live defined not by these cultural categories but by their identity as children of God. As a result, the rest of the world viewed Matthew’s congregation with suspicion, even hostility. More than that, most of the members of Matthew’s congregation were Jewish. And their faith in Jesus caused division with members of their own families. The folks in Matthew’s congregation had either walked out or been kicked out of the synagogue. Friends and family that they loved were now divided. It was painful. They were left to wonder, is this the way life is supposed to be? If Jesus really is the promised one of God, why isn’t life better?

So, Matthew, being a preacher, reminds them of a story. It’s about farming again. Jesus wasn’t a farmer, nor was his father. You would think Jesus would have a story or two about carpentry, but no, he tells lots of stories of seeds and soils and weeds. Jesus says there was a wheat field, but weeds were found in the wheat. Perhaps another time we will deal with how the weeds ended up in the good garden, but that’s another sermon. Today I want us to focus not on how the weeds got there but what we do when they are discovered. A good farmer never wants weeds in the wheat.

My mother loved to garden, and she wanted all her children to help. I didn’t have a green thumb. My mother knew this, so my job was to pull weeds. I hated it. I promised myself when I was old enough to have my own garden, first of all, I wouldn’t have a garden. But if I did, I would not treat weeds as second-class flora. In my garden, weeds would live a life of liberation. My garden would be inclusive. And if I had children, I would not compel them to labor in my garden like indentured servants sentenced to pull weeds. I would teach them to delight in all of God’s plant life.

That’s what I was going to do. And that’s what I did, until I had a garden, and then I learned my mother was right. Weeds have no place in the garden. I pulled them.

In this parable, Jesus sounds a bit like me when I was a teenager. And for the record, no one has ever said that sentence before. All of Jesus’ stories are surprising. The first surprise is that the laborers don’t just pull the weeds but first ask, “Do you want us to pull the weeds?” If they had spent just one afternoon with my mother, they would know weeds don’t belong in the garden. Of course you pull them. But the surprise continues as Jesus says, “No. Leave them there. If you pull those weeds now, you will do more harm than good.”

Now, this is not a story about farming. It’s a story about how life is lived in a broken world. It’s not a story about wheat and weeds. It’s about good and evil, about faithfulness and sinfulness. And if I understand the text, Jesus teaches us that some weeds have to be pulled. But some weeds, you just have to leave alone and let God redeem what we cannot repair.

Two stories:

I saw a birthday card on the already opened stack of mail, and I asked, “Who is this for?” Between the first of the year and the second week of March, all the Aries have birthdays. They just come one right after the other. I saw a card in the midst of the birthday season and asked, “Who is this for?” Carol looked at me and said, “Probably for me.” It was March 10 and March 10 just happens to be Carol’s birthday. Even with my best “I knew that” expression, I fooled no one. It was clear that I had completely forgotten the birthday of my beloved. I think about that every time we eat at our dining room table. If you aren’t seeing the connection. That little lapse in memory back in 1992 cost me a dining room table. That’s what she got for a belated birthday present. If I had just remembered on March the ninth, I would have gotten by with a sweater, but no. A sweater wasn’t going to cut it anymore. It’s a nice table.

Here's the point. Sometimes when we mess things up — and we all do — we need to do whatever we can to make things right. Sometimes when things are going wrong in the world, we need to do everything we can to make them right. I see that happening here every day. The Gratz Center is electric these days with Chicago Lights Summer Day children. Children learning and laughing and maybe feeling like they belong in the world when so many are told otherwise. It doesn’t repair everything, but it is the good we can do, and you do.

Sometimes when things go wrong, we need to do what we can to make it right.

Here’s another story. In 1880 there were three men running for the Republican nomination for President: Ulysses S. Grant, James Blaine, and John Sherman. The Republican convention picked none of them. After days of voting, on the thirty-sixth ballot they elected a man who had not run and said he did not want the job: James A. Garfield. Garfield went on to be elected the twentieth president of the United States. Four months into his presidency he was shot.

It was not a fatal wound, but it still killed him. Dr. Willard Bliss treated the injured president. Dr. Bliss was never able to extract the bullet, because he couldn’t find it. But almost daily with unsterilized instruments and his own unwashed hands Dr. Bliss probed the wounded president in search of the bullet.

Several months later, Garfield died. He did not die from the gunshot but from a raging infection that was the result of Dr. Bliss’s treatment.

Dr. Bliss was no doubt attempting to help, but rather than help, he made things worse.

Sometimes even doing the best we can only makes things worse. Sometimes we have to just trust that in that promised day, God will redeem that which we cannot repair.

We live in a world that is a collection of beauty and brokenness. It’s true of ourselves as well. We are all a mixed bag of blessing and burden.

And sometimes it is incumbent upon us as people of faith to do everything we can to make right what has gone wrong. But sometimes that lies beyond our power, and we simply must wait for God to redeem that which we cannot repair.

Of course, knowing when to help and when to let it go requires wisdom.

Proverbs is a book of wisdom, and I love these two verses we read earlier.

“Do not answer fools according to their folly, lest you be a fool yourself.”

The wisdom of this teaching is self-evident. When someone is talking crazy, arguing with them seldom leads to enlightenment. They are not going to listen to reason. Just let it go, the preacher of proverbs advises.

But the very next verse urges the opposite response:

“Answer fools according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own eyes.”

So, which is it? Do we answer them or not?

The good book says both. But not at the same time.

Sometimes you need to respond. Sometimes you need to stay silent. And here’s the point: it requires wisdom to know which proverb applies in any given circumstance.

Sometimes you pull the weeds. Sometimes pulling them makes things worse.

It takes wisdom to know the difference.

The gardens of our lives are filled with weeds. The laborers were wise. They knew to ask the farmer, “Is this something you want us to fix? Or is this something we must leave in your hands?”

We, too, should ask God, “What is the good that is ours to do? And what must we leave for you? What do you want?”

I should have done that shortly after Carol and I were married. We were still learning each other’s families. I was the eldest of four, and Carol was the youngest of four. I noticed that at times they didn’t fully respect her. They treated her like the baby, even though she was an adult. That bothered me.

So, I decided I would fix that. I waded into thirty years of family system, I spoke truth to power and defended my bride.

You are never going to believe how that worked out. Carol — who I assumed would be filled with gratitude, but no — she said,

“I don’t need you to fix my relationship with my family. Stop treating me like a baby.”

I didn’t see that coming.

I was right; they did treat her like the baby on occasion. But that wasn’t something I could fix.

When something is wrong and we can fix it, faith calls us to do so. But wisdom requires discerning what we can repair and what must be left to God.

There may be something you are carrying right now that you wish were different. That you wish were healed and made right. And maybe you have tried time and again and things just seem to get worse.

Maybe it’s something you should just let go of, let it rest with God. Trust that God will be faithful, and in time, God will redeem that which we have no power to repair.

Sometimes that is the better part of wisdom.

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Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church