Grace Alone Online

As a child, I was asked to do chores around the house.  I was asked, and then didn’t do them.  But, as a child I enjoyed watching my dad plant the garden, pick fruit from the tree, and mow the lawn with the cylinder blade push lawn mower we had.  I studied how he mowed and collected the grass on the hottest of summer days.  Although I neglected to do chores most of the time, one summer day, when I was around 10 or 11, I decided to work in the yard and be like my father.  My dad was at work, and my mom was not home.  I decided to help mow the lawn.  I got the lawn mower out of the garage and started cutting back and forth across the front lawn, just like my dad.  In part, this illustration may serve to help understand our parable for today.

Do you remember an AT&T commercial, where a female AT&T vendor is handing out lollypops to a boy and a girl?  She wants to show that AT&T is giving away the best deals to ALL customers; those who have been faithful customers as well as the new ones who sign up.  She illustrates how other companies mistreat their customers by giving the girl a small lollypop, but to the little boy she gives a BIG lollypop.  The little girl is astonished and immediately cries out, “It’s not fair.”  Really, that’s pretty much all of us, isn’t it?  You’re all about fairness when it comes to getting what you want.

It’d be nice if things still came with ‘strings attached’ so that we might know if it’s as perfect as it sounds or if there aren’t some hidden flaws. It’d be nice to know if that ‘great deal’ that sounds too good to be true, really is, or if it has ‘strings attached.’ Like if at the bottom of contracts or clauses, a proof-reading lawyer might attach saying.  “Spoiler alert!  There are strings attached!”  Sometimes you might wonder if the grace of God FOR YOU and His forgiveness for all my sins might not also have ‘strings attached.’  You mean to say that after having received all this grace upon grace that now I’m expected to BE GRACIOUS to others and FORGIVE others who sin against me?

When parables judge and condemn, it appears they don’t square with what WE WANT the kingdom of God to be like.  Take Peter, for instance. One time, Peter thought He knew what the Kingdom of Heaven was.  But when Jesus said, “the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised,” Peter took Him aside and said, “This shall never happen to you.” (Mat. 16:21-22) That’s NOT what the Kingdom of Heaven is like. How embarrassing for Peter.

With today’s parable, we reach the end of Matthew 13.  In the Sower and the Seed we saw how the kingdom is sown through God’s word.  In the parable of the wheat and the weeds we saw how we live in the kingdom of God, producing fruit for harvest.  And we saw how this kingdom starts so small like a mustard seed and harbor in its branches all those who hunger and thirst.  Today’s parable describes the joy of living in God’s Kingdom. 

In today’s parable, Jesus chooses a seed other than wheat.  He describes God’s kingdom using a mustard seed. When we hear mustard seed, we all most likely go to the Matthew 17 passage where Jesus says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain over there…”. Remember that teaching?  At some point in your life you probably fixated on something and tried to move it to see if you had even that little bit of faith….and proved to yourself that you don’t.  Disappointed….you don’t even have faith the size of a mustard seed.  But Jesus tells this parable between the parable of the wheat and weeds, and its explanation as promise and hope – to call people to Him; not as something the people had to do. 

Autumn is just around the corner and although wheat has been harvested long ago in June, the idea of harvest still comes to mind.  October fest is coming, or, as they say in German, “Oktoberfest is coming.”  The time to celebrate the good plants and destroy the weeds that grew with it!  Jesus follows his parable from last week, the Sower and the Seed, with end-times harvest talk.  Today’s parable is the Weeds and the Wheat.

How many of you are farmers?  I Didn’t think so.  How many of you have planted a garden?  I thought so?  Even if you are not a farmer or a gardener, you probably have a general knowledge of plants and how they grow. Israel was an agricultural society.  It was natural for Jesus to use gricultural imagery like seed, soil, growth, harvest, fruit, even weeds in his parables and teachings.  The whole of chapter 13 has agricultural parables, and these are the most in-depth revelation of what the kingdom of God is like, and how one lives in the kingdom.  Our parable today is the well-known Parable of the Sower; a parable that many misunderstand. 

Your kids are playing.  Suddenly you hear, “Hey you cheated.”  A theater director in rehearsal suddenly shouts to an actor, “Wait, that’s not what you are supposed to say.  Stick to the script.”  In the army, everyone is marching on their right foot; you are on your left.  Drill Sergeant Conlin shouts out, “Soldier, get back in line!”  A quick corrective and everyone is on their way: playing nice, acting with Oscar-quality, and the soldier no longer trips everyone up.  Rule-makers are in authority, and they always want you to play by the rules.

Like in a play, our scene in Matthew is about to play out and things look out of line. The script seems to be changing.  Someone is cheating and not playing by the rules. The question is, “Who has the authority to make those changes?

Way back in 1977, the Commodores had a hit single, “She’s a Brick House.”  Go ahead, get it out of your head.  Sing it.  Then stop.  Owning a home has been part of the American probably since the 1950s, when the economy was booming and it was possible.  At that time, of course, houses were brick. 

And that’s only one way today’s parable about homes in the Middle East is