(All our songs this morning are from Singing the Faith (StF) and Mission Praise MP numbers will be given where available)
Welcome to our Sunday Service, today shared on paper across our circuit and with the congregation at Bolton Methodist Church and led by Rev Lynn Britten, one of our Circuit Preachers from our partner denominations.
Click on the blue links to follow them for bible readings and associated links
Call to Worship
Generous God, as we meet with you,
teach us your ways that we may walk in your truth.
Open our minds that we may discern your truth.
Inspire our words that we may proclaim your truth.
Transform our lives that we may live your truth.
Song – STF 477 – Teach me to dance to the beat of your heart
Opening prayer & Lord’s Prayer
Eternal Spirit, from whose creative generosity we have all received, we give thanks for the gifts that help to define us as the people we are. Gifts that are too many to enumerate, for each of us are so well blessed. Gifts of home and security, of education and employment, of sportsmanship and leisure.
Gifts of learning and teaching, of healing and compassion, of listening and caring,
of doing and being. Gifts of wisdom and understanding, of knowledge and experience, of prayer and discernment, of the power of love and the love of God.
There are other gifts for which we offer thanks, when life has turned on us and we have dreaded the hours of each day, and the longer hours of the night.
For the ability to survive, finding pleasure in simple things, accepting the lessons of life: patience in the healing process; joy in being listened to; fulfilment in being.
As we continue in worship, open our whole beings to a sense of the wonder of your creation, the creation that is our self, the creation that is other people. Attune our senses to the presence of the divine in each and in all. Awaken our responses to the Gospel of your Son and to the needs of those who share life with us. As Christ recognised the inherent good in men and women, so to may we, in his name. Amen.
Song – StF 504 – May the mind of Christ
Readings
Sermon
I wonder what you would consider to be a weed? For most gardeners it is just a plant in the wrong place. They spring up everywhere, through cracks in the pavements, in the lawn, and in the flower beds often crowding out more delicate plants. Some can be uprooted easily while others need digging out, so patience is needed until the plants around have finished flowering. Today farmers are being encouraged to grow wild plants down the side of their fields to encourage wildlife, and nettles are grown deliberately to encourage butterflies. Ralph Waldo Emerson says of weeds they are ‘a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.’
Today’s parable about weeds is only found in Matthew’s gospel and has the farmer sowing his seed in the normal way but then there is an intentional act of mischief or subversion. The weed that is sown is no ordinary nuisance. It was probably Darnel which can carry a poisonous fungus that could contaminate the whole crop. It was as dangerous as Japanese Knotweed is for us. Even more so for the farmer because it looked so much like wheat until the grain began to appear. This kind of activity was prohibited in Roman law.
The parable acknowledges the presence of evil and that its presence is not just an unavoidable fact of life but there is intention behind it too. However, there is also divine intention in the sowing of good seed. The source of the evil is labelled as down to an enemy.
In many societies the sense of an enemy almost needs to be there, we define ourselves over against it. If we cast our minds back over history we remember the McCarthy trials in America. Communism was the great enemy and the government of the day decided to root it out of American society. Today we see it playing out in a very different way. In our own history Catholics and Protestants have each been the enemy at different times and more recently it has been terrorism, immigration, the European Union and now Russia. Within the church it has been Conservative or Liberal, those for or against women in ministry and now it is the divides over same sex marriage. There is a ‘them’ and ‘us’ about all of this which fuels prejudice.
The parable can be read and understood from more than one angle. The first is that this is a parable about waiting and that is something we all find difficult. Jesus was teaching that the kingdom of God will come through the process of slow, steady growth but he was conscious that his followers didn’t want to wait. If the kingdom was present where Jesus was and was coming to birth in what he was doing, then they wanted the whole thing to happen at once. They were longing for God to act and were prepared to help him by acting themselves.
Within Jewish society at the time of Jesus there was plenty of zeal to fight the pagans on one hand and sort out compromised Jews on the other. The Pharisees saw themselves as the true Israel and the Essenes at Qumran sought to define who were the true people of God by a criteria of strict rules and rejection. These attitudes are reflected in the request of the servants wanting to root out the weeds straight away. But they were told not to do that because of the collateral damage. With all our human actions there are unintended consequences. We have little power to control the ripple effect of actions and sometimes good intentions can be as hurtful as the actions of an enemy.
Jesus was stating that life is not as straightforward as we would like it to be. It isn’t easy to distinguish the wheat from the weeds. The interpretation of the parable tells us that the field is the world. All the people we live among and work alongside are included in that field so the parable is a call to inclusivity and patience. We are not in a position to make a judgement as to who is good seed and who are weeds. Looks can be deceptive and none of us know the whole story behind a situation or a person’s life. The parable is a warning against a zeal for perfection and exclusivity because that is not faithful to the mercy, patience and love of God. God’s great compassion and mercy will not allow a premature harvest.
It is also possible to read the parable in a different way entirely and that is as a critique of the system. The owner, crop and the servants represent the economic, political and military status quo while the church and individual Christians are sown as subversive weeds in that field. Jesus was labelled subversive because he challenged the long-held traditions and the exclusivity of the religious establishment of the day. The prophets had done so before him and Jesus was on course to receive the same treatment. He was a weed and would be rooted out. Cast your mind back through our country’s history to people who would have been considered subversive because they challenged long held practices and vested interests. The Clapham Sect were a group who were instrumental in the campaign against slavery. The Suffragettes campaigned for the vote for women, and then there was the Women’s Liberation Movement and the Greenham Common protesters, today there is the #Me Too and the Black Lives Matter campaigns.
To the authorities these people are often understood to be the enemy in one way or another, they are the subversive ones, the weeds in the field of wheat. The parable is making the point that there is a huge possibility of error if we consider, with the limited knowledge that we have, that we can go in before the harvest and root out weeds. The people we consider to be weeds might actually be wheat and vice versa.
It is also possible both as individuals and collectively to be weeds at any given time. On the positive side we can be the activists for change, on the negative side, through our actions and attitudes we can effectively stunt growth, drain resources and blight an otherwise good crop.
For Paul the children of God are those whose lives are moved and activated by the Spirit. Being a child of God is not guaranteed by an occasion of ours from the past but by an ongoing relationship which continues in the present.
Love is the fruit of the Spirit and all that flows from it, such as generosity, kindness and so much more. It is not hard to recognise and its characteristics grow wherever there is good soil. It is just as likely to be found among ordinary people going about their daily activities as it is among those who know all about it.
Despite the difficulties and challenges of our lives today we are called to faithfully share the good news of God’s goodness and his compassion that knows no limits, and then wait with patience to see that take root and ripen in people’s lives. We may not be able to see the field of God’s kingdom ripening but God can. He cannot and will not bring the time of harvest forward. He will not risk losing anyone.
Song – Songs of Fellowship book 2 685 Christ’s is the world
Christ’s is the world in which we move, Christ’s are the folk we’re summoned to love
Christ’s is the voice which calls us to care, And Christ’s is the one who meets us here.
To the lost Christ shows his face; To the unloved he gives his embrace;
To those who cry in pain or disgrace; Christ makes, for himself, a touching place.
Feel for the people we most avoid, strange or bereaved or never employed;
feel for the women and feel for the men who fear that their living is all in vain.
Feel for the parents who’ve lost their child. Feel for the women whom men have defiled,
Feel for the baby for whom there’s no breast, And feel for the weary who find no rest.
Feel for the lives by life confused, Riddled with doubt, in loving abused;
Feel for the lonely heart, conscious of sin, Which longs to be pure but fears to begin.
©1989 Iona Community
Intercessions
Lord God, we pray for our world and its people. So many different cultures, colours, languages – but we are all your children, all special in our own right. Whatever our gender, race, colour or creed, we all belong to you. We all need your love.
We pray that we might learn to live in harmony with each other, to recognise that even someone halfway around the world is still our neighbour in your sight. Far or near, we all belong to you. We all need your love.
We pray for those who try to find their own identity, who use different thoughts and language, for those who embrace other faiths and those who would bring them all together. We all belong to you. We all need your love.
We pray for families under pressure, for marriages under strain, for children with divided loyalties. We pray for those who are sick, those who are dying and all who watch and share. We all need your love.
We pray for those near and dear to us: protect them, wrap them in your loving arms, and in sorrow and in joy, be with them. Near or far, we all belong to you. We all need your love. Amen.
Song – MP 626 – Teach me thy way
Teach me Thy way, O Lord, teach me Thy way!
Thy gracious aid afford, teach me Thy way!
Help me to walk aright, more by faith, less by sight;
lead me with heavenly light: teach me Thy way!
When doubts and fears arise, teach me Thy way.
When storms o’ er spread the skies, teach me Thy way.
Shine through the cloud and rain, through sorrow, toil and pain,
make thou my pathway plain, teach me Thy way.
Long as my life shall last, teach me Thy way.
Where’ er my lot be cast, teach me Thy way.
Until the race is run, until the journey’s done,
until the crown is won, teach me Thy way.
Benediction
May all that you do and say this week tell out the story of God’s love for his world.
And may you and all those among whom you live,
work and pray, be blessed moment by moment and day by day. Amen.
