Seed or Weed? Sermon

Seed or Weed?
Pentecost 10A Calumet 7/20/08
Matt 13:24-30

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

[Music starts, announcer talks over it]

ANNOUNCER: Live, direct from Camp Calumet on the shores of Ossipee Lake, New Hampshire—it’s time to play everyone’s favorite horticultural game show…Seed, or Weed. I’m your announcer, John Junkins, and now here’s the host of Seed or Weed—the one, the only, the devilishly handsome—Pastor Tom Teichmann!!! [holds up applause sign]

TT: Thank you John! And thank you, ladies and gentlemen! [music concludes] Enough…that’s enough. [signals with his hands for more applause!] John, we need seven contestants down here.

ANNOUNCER: Right! [ad lib (come on down!) as he picks seven contestants, six volunteers and one “ringer,” Ryan B., picked last]

TT: Okay! Welcome to Seed or Weed. Now, before we continue we need a buzzer and a bell. [picks someone to mimic a bell when answer is correct, another to “buzz” when answer is wrong] Now, here’s how we play the game. I will give you the scientific Latin name of a plant and you have 15 seconds to tell me if the plant is a “seed,” a cultivated plant—or an unwanted weed. Any questions? Good! Then what time is it Johnny?

ANNOUNCER: It’s time to play Seed…or Weed!!

[ad lib the game with the first six – following dialog used as needed]

TT: What has he/she won, Johnny?
A: She’s/he’s won a new car (toy car),
A bottle of bubbly (soap bubbles),
A “Skip Church” coupon (expires July 19th),
A NO-expense paid trip to the camp store!,
This lovely souvenir of Camp Calumet (a rock),
A brand new set of dinner plates (paper).


OR….

TT: Oh, we’re sorry. You’ll get a wonderful consolation prize—the home version of Seed or Weed.

CONTINUES… [finish with Ryan]

TT: Are you ready to play Seed…or Weed? Good! Then here’s the name, and then you’ll have 15 seconds to tell me seed, or weed. [reads card] Ryan B.

Ryan: [pauses to think about it] Hey, that’s me!

TT: Seed or weed? 10 seconds.

Ryan: I don’t get it—how could I be a seed or a weed?

TT: 7 seconds.

Ryan: I need time to think!

TT: 5 seconds, Ryan.

Ryan: [stands there exasperated as the buzzer sounds!] AHHHHHH!

ANNOUNCER: That’s all the time we have. See you next time on Seed, or Weed?

[music up and out]

Taraxacum officinale – Dandelion
Ambrosia artemisifolia – Ragweed
Muhlenbergia schreberi – Nimblewill

Lycopersicon esculentum – tomato
Vaccinium corymbosum L. – blueberry
Zea saccharata – sweet corn


So, I think we can agree—it’s hard to tell if a plant is a seed or a weed, just by hearing even its common name, let alone its Latin name! But I know what you’re really wondering about right now. Is Ryan Bonfiglio a seed or a weed? Is he a little of each? Are we all, a little of each? Kinda left you hanging there. Well, I’m going to leave you dangling a little while longer while I talk about parables in general and the parable of the wheat and the weeds in specific.

And the thing I wanted you to learn about parables today is this: parables can have many meanings. Say that with me…parables can have many meanings. You can get a lot out of a parable. Jesus says his story is about how good and evil exist together in the world, but come judgment day, God will destroy evil once and for always. But just because Jesus explained his story to the disciples in a certain way, doesn’t mean that his explanation exhausts its meaning. I believe there’s still more to discover and learn about, there, between the lines. So, let’s lay Jesus’ interpretation aside for today, shall we? It’s not heresy to do that. And besides--it will save you from having to wrap your heads around big theological words like eschatological, soteriology, and forensic justice.
What I want us to focus on instead is seed…or weed? And I want to explore these two words both as nouns, and as verbs. First as nouns. What is a noun? It’s a person, place or thing. In this case, things. “Seed” being the wheat—the intentionally planted, good, grain producing plant. And “weed” being the invasive, prolific, bad, valueless—well, weed.
Now we know how difficult it is to discriminate between seed and weed using just their scientific names as a point of reference. But I doubt, if we played the game again using pictures of good plants / bad plants, the majority of the contestants would still go home with the home version of “Seed, or Weed?” Because some weeds are very beautiful or have lovely-looking fruit. They appear to be “seeds.” For example, kudzu was introduced into America because some genius thought it would make good ground cover. Yah, it did. But conversely, some seed plants—like the artichoke—you just have to wonder about. Seed, or weed? It’s hard to tell.

When I had my first full time camp job down in Rincon, Georgia, I was put in charge of the extensive grounds. Which was a challenge for me, since back on Long Island, NY where I come from—we’d cut our postage stamp-sized lawns with one of those whirly-gig push mowers, and now here I was using lawn tractors and rotary mowers and weed whackers. One day I set out to whack all the weeds I could find, and at the end of the day, I was proud I’d done so well, having never used such a device before. I was especially happy with the job I’d done whacking the weeds around the tennis court fence. That is until one of the other workers came in and commented on how poorly the English Ivy was doing . The English Ivy that was growing on the tennis court fence. That I had just whacked. Seed, or weed? It’s hard to tell which is which!

And let me tell you—it’s just as difficult to tell the difference between the weeds and the seeds when you’re talking people. Oh, some times it’s not too difficult—the weediest of people are easy to spot—much like the dandelions that pop up on your lawn. Picture in your mind just for a moment a very definite weed you know personally. That was easy wasn’t it? And yet, for the most part, it’s hard to see clearly into another’s heart and determine what lies therein—seed or weed. Indeed, Luther said that we are simultaneously seed and weed, saint and sinner at the same time. So, who are we to lambaste someone for the crabgrass growing in his heart, when we’ve got some serious poison ivy wrapped around ours? Somehow it seems wrong.
Probably because we know the storyteller here. We know Jesus said that he came to cure the sin-sick, not to pat the backs of those who thought they had no sin. We know he associated with sinners, ate with sinners, healed sinners, saved sinners. Jesus sowed the grace of God on a world totally unprepared for the radical nature of its inclusiveness. Jesus didn’t exclude anyone from God’s love. So, what would Jesus have us, as seeds, do with the “weeds” in our lives, our towns, our churches? Which brings us to “seed or weed”—the verbs.

A verb is…an action word. So, seed or weed—which are you? Do you participate in the coming kingdom of God by seeding the world with the love of Christ Jesus? Or are you a weeder, blundering into the field with a righteous zeal, aiming to uproot anything that even smells like a weed, with no consideration for the collateral damage you cause, with no certainty that what you’re destroying is really a weed in the long run? It’s a conscious choice, I believe. Which will you be?
In the parable, the master tells his servants not to gather the weeds before the harvest—to let them live, even though their intertwining roots would compete with the wheat for water and nutrients. That means the seeds and the weeds coexist in the world, a reflection perhaps of our own seediness and weediness. In the end, at the harvest, all will be made right. Until then, we are to hold our impulse to weed in check, and even more so to sprout and grow and participate in the propagation of the kingdom of God! To build us up—not tear down indiscriminately.

Finally, (you know what “finally” means? It’s a preaching term that means ten minutes left to go…) finally, there’s Ryan B. Seed or weed? He’s definitely a “seed” because, as his pastor, I know he’s baptized. And he has grown into a fine young man—an asset to this camp and to Captive Free which he’ll be a member of this coming year. Ryan is a seed and a sower of seeds. What about weed? Well, he does text in church sometimes. And if he’s anything at all like the rest of humanity, there is a certain amount of weediness in him, yearning to take over. Like the rest of us he’ll need to return to the grace of his baptism almost daily to remember who he is, and whose he is. He is a child of God.
To close I invite you to bless the person next to you by making the sign of the cross on their forehead and saying, “You are a child of God!”
Let the people say, amen!