Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11 (July 19, 2026)
Transcript
This transcript was generated by YouTube AI and further edited for readability.
May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Please be seated.
Smoke is over—but it lingers.
So, some of you will remember that last week I talked about my garden. I'm going to talk about my garden again this week.
Remember last week I talked about how I made a change from buying the tiny little packets of seeds on the racks at Adams, which are so attractive to me, but which I find I have to plant parsimoniously, right? Very carefully, because there's only a handful—maybe ten—in every packet. I bought a bulk bag of wildflower seeds so that I could scatter them liberally, right?
And we talked about how God is like this. God is not limited in God's grace and mercy and power and love, such that God can only share those things with those who have proved themselves worthy of them. Rather, God is like a person who has a whole lot of flower seeds and can afford to just throw them and let them land wherever they may, right? And comes through again and again to sow those seeds.
And for God, the seeds are love. The seeds are the power of the Spirit. The seeds are mercy and grace and help for all of us.
So these same seeds that I planted in my garden started to grow, right? And there was a very thick carpet of little sprouts because, as previously stated, I was very generous.
There were a lot of little green shoots. And I know that there are a lot of invasive species. We deal with stiltgrass and a few other things. And I knew that in those little sprouts there was going to be a lot of stuff that I didn't want in my garden, right?
But when the sprouts are about yay big, I can't tell the difference.
So what do I need to do?
I let them all grow together.
Okay?
And as they grew, I got to the point—I'm not the best gardener—but I got to the point where I could recognize some of the little sprouts. You know, I was like, "Oh, that one with the lacy leaves—that's a cosmos."
But the one that's right next to it growing up? I don't know if that's stiltgrass or a zinnia. So I let them grow together.
And now it's been a few months, and it's only now that the flowers are blooming.
And now I can tell which ones are the ones I planted with intention and which seeds are the ones that have found their way and sort of persistently willed themselves to grow in the garden. Now I can pluck them up.
And you know what? What Jesus says in this parable is true.
When I'm yanking out a clump of crabgrass, what happens to the zinnia right next to it? It gets yanked out too.
So I find that when I'm weeding, I have to be kind of careful. I'll sort of hold one plant in the ground while I pull the other out. So you can see that if I was trying to harvest this stuff, it would really make a lot more sense for me to wait until it's really clear what everything is—to accept that all these plants are growing together.
And that is what the master says to the slaves sent out into the harvest, who are very anxious, right? After all, they are the ones doing all the work. They have planted the seeds, and they're good seeds. They know they're good seeds.
And so they are dismayed when, halfway through the growing season, they go out there and they see that the field is not just full of wheat, but full of a whole bunch of other stuff.
And they say, "Let's go out there and weed this field."
But the master says, "Don't worry about it. Let them grow up together. If you start trying to separate them now, you're going to end up with nothing at all."
And the master seems to have a great deal of confidence in the seeds that have been planted on purpose.
That's what strikes me—the confidence in the seeds.
And I'll tell you why.
Look at the citation for the Gospel today, and you'll see we skip some verses, right? It's always fun when you see that. So today we're reading Matthew chapter 13, verses 24–30 and verses 36–43.
And I'm always like, "What'd they skip? What'd they skip, and why?"
So it's always useful to go back and get your Bible and read all the way through, because a lot of times there's some context there. Understandably, we have so much time in church, so we don't read everything, and we don't want to elaborate on every bit of context.
But here I think it is very useful.
In the four verses that are passed over, Jesus tells two mini-parables that you probably know really well.
The first: the kingdom of God is like what kind of seed?
A mustard seed.
The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed—the smallest of the seeds. You know, have you ever had whole-grain mustard? It's a little seed. It's not actually the smallest seed, but you get Jesus' point. It's small, and it looks like not very much, right?
But he says when planted in the field, it grows into the greatest of shrubs.
This is excellent New Testament irony.
The greatest of shrubs—and all the birds of the air make their home in it.
That's the first parable he tells.
If you've ever planted mustard in your garden, it's like mint. You plant it once, and now, congratulations, you have a mustard garden for all of time.
And it does nourish the creatures, right?
It seems like nothing, but it is hardy and it is persistent, and actually it won't go away.
It's resilient.
That's the first mini-parable he tells.
And the second: the kingdom of God is like a little bit of yeast that a woman kneads into her dough, and it leavens the whole batch.
Again, something humans depend upon for nourishment.
A tiny bit of it. Again, nothing at all. Nothing at all.
You know, if you buy the dry yeast, it could blow out of your hand.
But it transforms this ground flour into something that we need every day. Certainly the people of Jesus' time did.
Looks like nothing.
Changes everything.
This is what God wants us to know about the kingdom. This is what Jesus is trying to teach us about God's kingdom.
Going back to the wheat and the weeds in the field, this is what I want you to think about.
The wheat, being the kingdom of God, is resilient.
And God's kingdom is growing.
Not in the future, when all evil and suffering and wrongdoing and pain have been weeded out.
But the kingdom of God is growing up right now, in this life, in the middle of everything.
And God is not worried about its survival.
We are.
We are real worried a lot of the time.
And we have every reason to be.
Every reason to be.
Just like those servants looking out and saying, "This beautiful field that we planted, full of goodness, grace, love, and mercy, is being choked by cruelty and malice and selfishness and greed and wickedness all the time, every day.
"And we need to work harder. We need to do something about it. And we need to do something about it right now."
And what Jesus is saying is that yes, you may be called to act.
But do not act in fear and anxiety for the kingdom.
The kingdom does not require your fear or your anxiety or your protection.
It only requires your trust and your participation.
Do you see the difference?
The kingdom of God doesn't need to be rescued, because God is breathing life into it all the time.
So if our call is to participate through the carrying out of our baptismal vows—to respect the dignity of every human being, to share our bread, to pray with our siblings, to seek Christ in all persons—the power to do that is coming from the kingdom itself, which we are seeking to serve and to build and to nourish.
It's not coming from our own effort.
St. Paul says, "God did not give you a spirit of fear, but a spirit of adoption."
A spirit of belonging to God.
A spirit of being fed by God's love and God's power and God's mercy and God's grace, so that you can be a participant in God's kingdom.
And God is not worried about God's kingdom.
Because God's kingdom is resilient.
It looks like nothing, but you can't get rid of it.
And a little bit of it changes everything.
God's kingdom is resilient.
St. Julian of Norwich, the anchoress living in plague times, had a vision where Jesus held out to her, in his hand, she said, "a little thing, the size of a hazelnut."
Nothing.
And she said, "What is it?"
He said, "It is all that is made."
And she writes, "And I feared that it should fall away, for it was so little."
But Jesus says to her, "It lasts, and ever shall, for God loves it."
The world lasts, and ever shall, for God loves it.
Who is not anxious, and seeks only your loving participation.
And will give you the power and the grace to be part of the little nothing that changes everything.
Amen.