The Upload
Posted on Jul 18, 2014 by
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I pray you had a blessed week.
There is an old joke about a man who owned a parrot. Every day at 5 p.m., the man took the parrot and walked down the street to the corner bar where he had a few drinks and talked with his friends. He had taught the parrot to order for him yelling out, “Gimme a beer! Gimme a beer!” every time he came in the room. Every Sunday the man and his wife went to church, locking the bird in its cage before they left the house. One Sunday, the door on the cage did not latch well and the bird got out. It flew out an open window and found its way to the church. It flew in and sat on its master’s shoulder, crying out at the top of its lungs, “Gimme a beer!” “Gimme a beer!” The man was embarrassed and told the bird to, “Shut up. This ain’t the bar; it’s the church.” The bird looked around and said, “Awwk! Same old crowd! Same old crowd!”
This Sunday’s gospel lesson deals with the difficulty in telling the difference between the good seed and the bad seed, the wheat and the weeds, the saints and the sinners. As that parrot noted on his one-time visit to the church, it always looks like the same old crowd. Many times in the history of the church, the “good” people have tried very hard to separate themselves from the “bad” people, but these efforts almost always turn out badly. In Jesus’ story, the master tells the workers to wait and not try to “weed out” the bad. This story is really not about farming; it is about realizing that only God can judge, and we are called upon to withhold judgment and treat one another with respect. Because, you see, there is no such thing as separating the good from the bad in this life. As Martin Luther put it, we are “simul justus et peccator;” in English, we are all “saint and sinner at the same time.” If we’re honest with ourselves, we know this is true. We know that most of us, most of the time, are decent people, but we all slip, we all fall, we all sin.
The line separating good and evil, wheat and weeds, good seed and bad seed, saints and sinners does not go between us. It goes right through us. This is why Jesus counseled patience in dealing with others. So, between “now” (which is today) and “then,” (then being the second coming and the final judgment) what is it that we, the church, are called to do? Well, it seems to me that we, the church, as the followers of Christ, are called to announce to the world that God has set up the kingdom of heaven, and that it is a kingdom of grace, not of judgment; it is a kingdom of love, not of hate; it is a kingdom of mercy, not of law.
We are called to let the world know that God has sent a remedy into this world to deal with our sinfulness, and that remedy is Jesus the Christ. God knows that we are all sinners and that we cannot fix ourselves. The bottom line is God knows we cannot “not sin.”
Every Sunday when we gather for worship, I love seeing everybody who comes, the wheat and the weeds, the good seed and the bad seed all together, all accepted and all welcome at the table. Everybody comes and we’re glad to see them.
I thank God every day that I am not called to be the judge. I much prefer welcoming everyone, knowing that, like me, all fall short of God’s glory, but that God’s grace is abundant and is for everyone. Yes, someday, when we all rise again in the presence of Christ, I think we will look around and we will all smile as we hear those words of that very insightful parrot, “Awwk! Same old crowd! Same old crowd!” Amen.
Have a blessed week!
Shalom,
Pastor Dave