Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion

Branded: Doing Our Part in Communion
January 29, 2012
Franktown United Methodist Church

Jesus was sitting down at a table at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. Now there's something you don't see every day. Does it surprise you to hear that about Jesus? Jesus was sitting at a table to eat a meal with some Pharisees. That's a little disturbing, isn't it? I mean Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about Pharisees. You remember that he's the one who said, "Woe unto you Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut up the kingdom of heaven against people. Woe unto you, Pharisees, you devour the houses of widows! Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. (Matthew 23:27 KJV) You serpents, you generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell? (Matthew 23:33 KJV)" Other than that, I don't see any reason why this scene seems strange.

But there he is. Jesus and the Pharisees. Sitting around the table sharing a meal. And somebody gets a little too exuberant in the crowd. Somebody is overcome by the sight of these two parties together. This person thinks its a sign that bipartisanship is going to break out. Maybe he's had a little too much wine. At any rate, this guy yells out, "How happy are those who will sit down to feast at the kingdom of God!"

Jesus hears the man. Who couldn't? He yelled it out. But he doesn't say, "Yeah, it's going to be great." And he doesn't call him out by saying, "Hey, don't get your hopes up just because I'm breaking bread with these whited sepulchres." No, he responds with a parable, the point of which seems to be that the table is open, but you've got to want to come.

A man had a feast, a great feast. And he invited people to come. But everyone had an excuse for why they couldn't come. "Oh, you know I just bought some property and I've got to go look after it." Oh, you know, I just got married." "Oh, you know, I just bought some cows." They wouldn't come. So the man sends his servants out in the streets of the town to invite the poor, the lame, the outcasts. And they come, but there is still more room. So he sends them out into the countryside to gather whomever they can. But he is most disturbed with those who wouldn't come. Those who were invited initially will not taste the meal.

Today we're continuing our Branded series. We've been looking at things that mark us as Christians and we spent two weeks looking at baptism. Next week we'll begin to talk about ministry and the various forms of ministry God's people get involved in. But last week and this week we are talking about communion, the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist.

Last week I spent a lot of time interacting with John Wesley's sermon, "The Duty of Constant Communion." Wesley laid out the case for why we ought to come to the table. Why we ought not to neglect Jesus' command to 'do this to remember me." But today I want to talk about what our part in communion is. The meal is God's gift. But what we do with it is something else. And Jesus' story about the feast makes it clear that we can accept the invitation or not.

I mentioned last week that I had put out a question on Facebook asking for people to give me their reflections on communion and I shared one last week. Other people wrote about the great appreciation they have for the meal. Margaret Holland wrote to say that "It reminds me that God is the host of the party and all are invited to eat, reflect, and pray." It remind me of that guy at the feast. It's a party. Everyone is invited.

Skeeter Armstrong said, "For me it is a means of grace that allows us to put aside our differences and gather around the tables as the family of God knowing that, no matter how sinful we are or feel, that all is forgiven and we can begin again to become more Christ-like." It's a time to begin again. To confess our sins. To reconcile with one another. To become more Christ-like.

Debbie Bridges said something similar. She said, God's "grace and calming is transmitted to my body and soul telling me yet again - try to be, to do, to work harder and you will be a better Christian." Grace that leads to action.

There is an ethical side to communion. It is a party and it frees us and then it moves us be something for the world. Last week we talked about coming to the table, but today I want to talk about what it means to leave the table.

The other scripture that we have for today is from Paul's first letter to the Corinthian Christians. Some people will talk about this passage as the place where Paul lays out a 'theology' of communion. But really Paul is not doing that. Paul assumes that the Corinthians know what communion is. He's just trying to straighten out their practice of it. Because...as we mentioned last week...the Corinthians were taking communion unworthily.

Last week we talked about how some people will use this passage as an excuse not to receive communion because they are afraid they are not worthy to receive it. Wesley responded in his sermon that the problem for the Corinthians is not that they were unworthy. Wesley takes that as a given. We're all unworthy. The problem was the manner in which they received communion. The Corinthians, he said, were "taking the holy Sacrament in such a rude and disorderly way that one was 'hungry, and another drunken.'"*

But it was more than just a rowdy party. The community was neglecting its form, what it was supposed to look like. One New Testament scholar, Peter Lampe, says that the early Christian practice of communion was probably something akin to a potluck dinner. People would bring food and share what they had. But the problem was that the richer Corinthians, who had more food to bring, were not waiting for others before breaking into the food. So people were going hungry while others were getting out of hand.** What kind of community was this?

So Paul reminds them what the dinner is all about. He reminds them that the origin of the meal was in Christ's last meal with the disciples. Jesus was thinking about his death on the cross when he told them, "This is my body." He was thinking about his death when he said, "This is my blood." So now, Paul says, "This means that every time you eat this bread and drink from this cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." (1 Corinthians 11:26 GNT)

You proclaim the Lord's death. Now there is an undeniable joy when we come to this table. We are tasting heaven. We are experiencing communion with the saints. We are entering the kingdom of heaven. We should be shouting, with that guy in the Pharisee's house, "Happy are those who feast in the kingdom of God!" But we are proclaiming Jesus' death. Our connection is not only with the risen Christ who will bring all things to final victory, but also with the Christ who knew the suffering of this world and who stood by the weak. As Paul says at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, "I proclaim Christ, and him crucified."

So the way that we eat this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. And how we live as people who share this meal says something about what Christ is doing in the world. As Lampe says:
"In the Eucharist, the death of Jesus Christ is not made present and 'proclaimed' (11:26) only by the sacramental acts of breaking bread and of drinking wine from one cup.  In the Eucharist, Christ's death is not proclaimed only by the liturgical words that accompany the sacramental acts.  No, in the Eucharist, Christ's death is also proclaimed and made present by means of our giving ourselves up to others.  Our love for others represents Christ's death to other human beings. Only by actively loving and caring for others does the participant in the Eucharist 'proclaim' Christ's death as something that happened for others."***

That's why I say that perhaps the most important part of communion is what happens when you leave this table. If we only come to this table to be reminded of what God has done for us...if I only come to be reminded of what God has done for me...then I have not gone far enough. This is where the Branded series takes a very important turn. While we receive God's claim on our lives...while we respond and accept God's claim on our lives...our journey does not end there. Unless we then turn out to the world and express with our own lives the other-directed love of God, then we have turned the gospel into a pat on the back, a massage at the spa, and a cozy spot by the fire. The gospel took Jesus to fishing boats and sick people. The gospel led him to sit at the table and to eat meals with Pharisees.

It's not wrong that its our neediness that leads us to church or to God. We all have deep needs. We may come to find that they're not needs worth having, as Will Willimon said, but we do have them and they open us up to God. But if the only reason we keep coming to church is to have our own needs cradled and cuddled, then we have not truly been broken open by God. We are not proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. We are simply proclaiming our continuing need to be at the center.

The first step in gospel healing is to know that we are loved. That is absolutely true. For many of us, this is the greatest breakthrough we have to make. But that healing is only effective if we learn how to love ourselves. To have the opportunity to love another person and to love God is to become truly human. Communion opens us up so that we can go on to love.

Yesterday we celebrated the life of a remarkable woman in this sanctuary. Laura Dennis was a huge part of the life of this congregation. She was a giant, even though she only stood so high. She was a leader because she knew how to love. She loved her family. She loved her church. And she loved the world. As I mentioned in the service yesterday, she was pushing UNICEF boxes just a few years ago. She was making a list of needs for residents at Heritage Hall even when she was one of those residents.

Laura Dennis is at this table. She is able to shout today, "How happy are those who feast at the table in the kingdom of God!" But she can do that because she ate at this table in the not-quite kingdom of God and was nourished on the food that Jesus provides.

So come to the table. Let it remind you who you are. Let it form you into a servant of Christ. So that you can proclaim Christ's death and Christ's power and Christ's love. Thanks be to God.

*John Wesley, "The Duty of Constant Communion," in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion by Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2006], pp. 67-68.
**Peter Lampe, "The Eucharist: Identifying with Christ on the Cross," Interpretation magazine, Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, Jan. 1994, p. 41. I am grateful to Brooke Willson for putting me onto this investigation with his observations on 1 Corinthians 11.
***ibid., p. 45

Branded: The Duty of Constant Communion

So here we are in week 3 of our new worship series - entitled "Branded." In this series we are talking about the things that brand Christians as a distinctive people. Things that Christians do that nobody else does and that Christians all do - whether we are United Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, or Catholics.

We spent the last two weeks talking about baptism - what it means that God claims us from before we are born. What it means that we claim the God who claims us. What it means that "You will die" to sin when you go through the waters of baptism. And what it means to walk with Christ as a baptized sinner.

Today, though, I want to turn for two weeks to something we spent a lot of time on last year as we came out of Lent. I want to talk about communion. Now I realize that we are walking on some sensitive ground here because last year we moved from a practice of having communion on first Sundays and special Sundays to having communion just about every Sunday. And it may have been one of the biggest changes to worship that has happened here in a long, long time.

Last May, after we had been having communion for about 6 months, I asked for some responses. Many of those responses were very appreciative. “It has changed my experience of worship,” one person said. I guess that could go either way!

“I realized that it didn’t become less special but more special when we had communion every week,” said another.

Somebody else said, “For all the doctrines, dogmas, liturgies and allegories associated with Christianity, only communion is a true connection to the presence of Jesus.”

And then there's this one - “Surprisingly it has made communion more precious and helps me to remember every day we should be thankful for God’s grace – noticing the ordinary and not taking anything or anyone for granted.  I love it!”

But it wasn't all this way. Some folks said that they didn't like having it every Sunday. For some it just didn't feel right. It felt less special. They worried that other parts of the service, like the sermon, might get less attention because of time concerns. They liked the rhythm of communion once a month and felt like the words of the ritual might become too familiar, too rote, too mechanical. For some it dredged up old questions about what the clergy are here for. What exactly is Alex doing up there at the table? Why are he and Peter the only ones who break the bread? And what kind of innovation was this? Were we becoming Episcopalian? Or Catholic? How many other United Methodist churches are doing this?

I'll be honest - not a whole lot, even though our denomination as a whole has encouraged the practice of weekly communion. In 2004 we adopted an official study as United Methodists entitled This Holy Mystery which, for the first time, set down our understanding of communion. It encourages churches to move in this direction.

But we are not doing this because the United Methodist Church says to. We are not doing this because I say we have to. I want to revisit this because our feelings and questions about communion are very important. And I don't want to discount any negative feelings about the way we are doing communion because they say that something significant is going on. Something we value is being touched on. And I don't want to use fancy theology to convince you that you shouldn't feel the way that you do - or that you should. I do want you, however, to pay attention to those feelings and questions and give them serious examination.

And who better to do serious examination of our souls than John Wesley?

Now John Wesley is an important figure for Methodists because he was really the first one of us. He was a preacher, a writer, a campus minister, and a world-class organizer. When people threw the slur at him that he had a method for everything, he took it as a compliment, and when they went on to call him a Methodist, he took that as the name for his new movement.

It was a movement, not a church. Wesley was an Anglican priest in 18th century England. His father was an Anglican priest. He saw what he was doing as a renewal movement for his church, which was spiritually dead and morally bankrupt. But he gave his blessing to the American Methodists forming their own church after the American Revolution. And after he died, the British Methodists formed their own denomination, too.

O.K., O.K. - but what did John Wesley believe about communion? Well, he believed that we have a duty of constant communion. Not frequent communion. Not once a month communion. Not high holy days communion. He was a stickler for constant communion. And why did he believe that? Because Jesus said, in the gospel reading which we had from Luke for today, as he celebrated the Last Supper with his disciples, that his followers should "do this in remembrance of me." Do we have some hand motions for this?

Now remember this, because what I'm going to do now is to give you some pieces from John Wesley's sermon entitled, "The Duty of Constant Communion," and let you see how he thought about this question, because you will see that the issues have not really changed. But the theme that runs through the whole sermon is "Do this in remembrance of me."

The sermon starts with this paragraph and it's a bad opening paragraph because it's the best paragraph in the whole sermon. You really shouldn't show off your best stuff in the first paragraph. But that's what he does and what he says is:
"'Do this in remembrance of me.' It is no wonder that men who have no fear of God should never think of doing this.  But it is strange that it should be neglected by any that do fear God and desire to save their souls; yet nothing is more common.  One reason why many neglect it is, they are so much afraid of 'eating and drinking unworthily,' that they never think how much greater the danger is when they do not eat or drink it at all.'*

There are two scripture references here. One is Jesus' command from the gospel. The other is a quote from 1 Corinthians in which Paul warned the Corinthians about their conduct at the communion table. That command about "eating and drinking unworthily" gets used sometimes as a reason for not taking communion. But we'll get to that.

Harry Kennon, who is a retired pastor in our conference, quoted this on Facebook this week when I asked for some responses about communion and he said, "Ironically, some seem afraid of grace and forgiveness more than sin." Wow.

So John Wesley goes on to look at what this command to "Do this in remembrance of me" looks like. First he looks at why we should do this. And his first reason is a good one - because Jesus commands it. And secondly, he says, the mercy we experience in communion is good for us. That mercy is forgiveness of our sins and nourishment and strengthening of our souls. Why would we not want that?

Thirdly, it lets us leave our sins behind so that we are free to move on to perfection. Fourthly, the ancient Christians did it and the whole Church did it for many centuries - four times a week at least plus holy days. In fact the early church had a rule against coming to prayers and not taking communion. Fifthly, the Gospels and Paul's letters show that the practice was not just a show, but an outward sign of an invisible grace. Something really happens in communion. Something inside us.

So there are all sorts of good reasons to receive communion, not least of which is the command to "do this in remembrance of me."


Then Wesley gets into the objections to constant communion. In the first objection he imagines a person saying, "Yeah, but where does it say that I should do this constantly?" Wesley thinks this is a slippery slope. If we get into the business of determining when to selectively apply the commands of God we will have all sorts of excuses. We can say, for instance, "Well, yes, God commands me to take care of my parents but I did that once." If we have the opportunity to obey God's commands we should do that whenever we have the opportunity.

So there is the duty aspect of this thing. But there is also the mercy aspect of this thing. If God is handing out grace and mercy, why would you take advantage of it? God wants us to be happy, God knows that we can't be truly happy using our own means, so God gives us these means. Why would you refuse that offer of grace? And then Wesley goes back to his main theme - But even if you didn't get anything from it, it's still a command from God.

"O.K., O.K., but let's go back to that passage in 1 Corinthians where it says, 'whoever eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation upon themselves.' I'm not worthy so I won't go forward."

Wesley, in effect, says to this objection, "You are always going to be unworthy, so if you are never going to reach out and receive God's mercy because you are unworthy, how will you ever be saved? Unworthiness goes with the territory when you are human beings. And on top of that - the command is to "Do this in remembrance of me" and so what you are saying is that you are going to disobey God's command because of your unworthiness which only makes you more unworthy. And on top of all this, Paul is not saying that unworthy people shouldn't go to communion. He is saying that when people go to communion they should not eat and drink unworthily. The problem was that the early Christians were getting rowdy and drunk at the communion meal. That is not an issue in most churches today.

"O.K., O.K., well, what if I have fallen into some sin lately or committed some crime?"" Well, you should repent, but don't add to your sin by failing to come to receive grace.

"O.K., O.K., well, what if I'm too busy to properly prepare to come to communion. What if my business prevents me from doing the self-examination and soul-searching I ought to do?" Wesley says, if you're too busy to do the work of your soul you are "unpreparing" yourself for heaven. Don't act like it takes an act of congress to get ready for communion. This is the way he puts it: "No business can hinder you from this, unless it be such as hinders you from being in a state of salvation.  If you resolve and design to follow Christ, you are fit to approach the Lord's table.  If you do not design this, you are only fit for the table and company of devils."

Now we get to the big objection - "Well, I don't want to take communication too often because it may 'abate my reverence' for it." 'Abate my reverence' for it is 18th century language for 'it will get to be rote and I may not get that feeling I like to get.

Wesley goes back to his theme - The command says, "Do this is in remembrance of me," not "Do this in remembrance of me unless it abates your reverence."

"But I've been going to communion constantly and I'm not experiencing the benefits I expected." I bet you can guess Wesley's response. Even if you don't experience any benefits, God commands it. And even if you don't feel it, on some unfelt level you are receiving the benefits of grace even if your don't yet see the effects. God may yet give you eyes to see what all this constant communion will bring.

Now, I admit that Wesley can be a little rigid. You can come out of a sermon like this and think that the one line summary of it is something like, "What part of 'Do this in remembrance of me' don't you understand?"

But here's why I think Wesley and Jesus ought to be heard: Because like every good mystery they have to be lived to be understood. You can't explain what parenthood is all about until you've gone through childbirth or colic or nightmares or potty training or adolescence or graduation. You can't explain what love is after the first kiss or the wedding vows or the many years of companionship and trials. You can't explain what a calling is like or a profession. You can throw words at it, but you just have to give yourself to it.

I get the nervousness about communion. I really do. I feel it myself. When I stand here I want to feel the immense mystery of it all. I don't want to let it just pass by. And does my mind sometimes wander as come back to the old familiar words that I can say in my sleep? It does. Do I sometimes feel unworthy to stand here in this place and say these words? Often. But one of the most powerful things I have even done as a pastor is to take a loaf of bread and to break it and to see your faces through the broken halves of bread. To share that bread with you. To receive that bread from you. To know that the life of Christ which was poured out for you and for me is present in some way that goes far beyond me and what's going on with me that day.

In my sermons on communion last year I said this, but I'll close with these words again today. I preside at this table so that you can preside at every other table in this whole, blessed, God-hungry world. I preside here to remind you that you dare not neglect God's presence out there. You come here because Jesus' commands you, but you go there because Jesus' commands you, too.

Your behavior out there is a testimony to what this bread here means. Don't forget that people are hungry for bread, hungry for grace, hungry for love, hungry for justice, hungry for a new day and they don't know where to find it, but you have been to the table. You know where the bread is. And you know how to give it. Don't you forget that this bread is a promise of what God is doing in this world.

You don't need an advanced degree or the bishop's hands on your head to break a loaf of bread. But unless you're feeding regularly at a table where you are reminded that the bread you hold is heaven on earth, then you will start to lose the ability to see that every other morsel of food you take in your hands is a sign of grace. My calling tells me to feed people in the name of Jesus, so that you can feed people in the name of Jesus until the kingdom comes. And the duty we respond in eating here is constant. Just like the love that brought us here. Constant. Thanks be to God.

*All quotations from Wesley's sermon are from the reprint in This Holy Mystery: A United Methodist Understanding of Holy Communion, Gayle Carlton Felton, [Discipleship Resources: Nashville, 2005], pp. 65-70.

Who's Going to Pull the Weeds?

So last week we heard the story of the sower who went out to sow and who spread seed on every sort of soil – hard-packed soil, rocky soil, thorny soil and good soil. The sower, we decided, was a confident farmer, sure of a harvest. So confident that it didn’t matter where he threw those seeds, some of it was going to fall on good soil and produce a hundredfold.


What was that seed last week? The word of the kingdom. And what did we want to be? The fertile earth. Last week we were the soil. This week we are the seed.


It’s a little bit later in chapter 13 of Matthew now. Jesus is still telling parables – those confounding stories about everyday things that were clearly not about everyday things. And this time he is telling the story of the wheat and the tares.


Now, I call it that, the story of the wheat and the tares, but that’s because I grew up in a King James church where when you got to verse 25 it talked about tares. Does anyone have a King James Version? Verse 24 says: “Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field.” So Jesus is making a comparison here between the reign of God, which is unseen, and a man sowing good seed in his field, which you can see.

Then we read verse 25: “But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.” While men slept…(presumably women slept, too, but this is the King James Version and we’ll switch back in a minute)…while men slept, an enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. Tares! Oh, my goodness, what are tares? They’re what you use when you want to go up to the second floor of a building, right? You go up the tares. Or maybe you call them teps. I don’t know.

No, of course, I’m kidding. Tares are weeds. In fact, (I learned this yesterday), they are a specific kind of weed. They are probably darnel or vetches. And do you know what vetches are? They are people who don’t say ‘Thank you.’ Like when you hear someone called an ungrateful vetch. No, actually tares…vetches…are nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants that often appear in grain fields.*

So that’s how this parable got the name of the wheat and the tares. Some people these days want to call it the parable of the wheat and the weeds. But really, if we want to be scientific and politically correct about this, we should call it the parable of the wheat and the nitrogen-fixing leguminous plants.

Now this is a strange little story here. How many people remember hearing this parable before? Matthew is the only gospel that tells us this story. And, again, like in the other parable, the sower is a kind of strange farmer. He plants the field but he doesn’t want to de-vetch it. So what happens to your garden if you never go out and get rid of the tares? It gets overgrown in a hurry, right? So we weed our gardens, right?

Not this farmer. And worse yet, this farmer’s got enemies. And this is an enemy who keeps a bunch of vetch seeds in his shed so that he can sneak over to the neighbor’s garden in the middle of the night to sow the vetch in with the good seeds. Today, this would be the guy who sneaks over and TP’s your house. But back in the day, they sowed weeds.

So the servants see that there’s a problem in the fields. The farmer himself doesn’t seem to be too bothered about what’s going on out there. Hasn’t seen that there’s a vetch problem. But the slaves know and they go to the farmer and let’s see what they say. Look at verse 27. “Master, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? So where did the weeds come from?” Do you ever ask this question? I do. I go out and look at the tomatoes and I say, “Where did these weeds come from?” And right after that I ask, “Where did these mosquitoes come from?”

What’s the answer? Where did these weeds come from? “An enemy did this.” The farmer knows. He may not be watching the fields too closely, but he knows an enemy is out there. The enemy planted the weeds. The enemy sent the mosquitoes, too, I’m sure.

So what do the slaves want to do? They want to go pull them up. That’s a sensible thing. Get rid of the weeds that might be choking out the wheat. But what does the farmer say? In verse 30 he says, “No, let both grow together until the harvest and at the harvest time I will have the reapers collect the weeds first and burn them up while I gather the wheat into my storehouse.”

Now a couple of things here. First, the farmer. Why would he want to try this method? The text says that he’s concerned that pulling up the weeds would also uproot the wheat. So there’s an agricultural reason. But I think he’s also got the same attitude as the sower in the first parable. He’s confident. He knows there’s going to be enough grain at the harvest to take to the storehouse. There’s a plan for the weeds. They’re going to be taken care of. But meanwhile the enemy is not going to take up a minute of his time. The farmer knows what the end of the story is.

Secondly, the servants. What are they worried about? They want to know why the weeds are there and they want to know who’s going to get rid of it. So they are philosophers and then they’re pragmatists. Why is it here and who’s going to do something about it? But the farmer does not share their concern. He’s focused on the harvest which is, Jesus tells us, the kingdom of heaven.

Now let me tell you another story. It’s a true story. It happened 50 years ago. 1961. If you went around the South 50 years ago you would have seen a lot of signs that it was still a segregated society. Water fountains for whites and coloreds. Bathrooms for whites and coloreds. And bus stations with separate waiting rooms for whites and coloreds. That was the language and the practice of the day. But in 1960 the Supreme Court ruled that this was unconstitutional, at least for interstate transportation. You couldn’t have separate waiting rooms based on race. But the ruling was not being enforced.

So a group of 13 people – African-American and European-American – black and white – trained in non-violence -- decided to test the ruling by taking a bus ride from Washington D.C. to New Orleans. Together. They called them Freedom Riders.

So they left on May 4 and they went to Richmond and Petersburg and Farmville and Lynchburg. No problems. Then they went through North Carolina to Charlotte. Into South Carolina and at Rock Hill they ran into the first resistance. A group of people met the bus at the station and beat up the riders as they got off the bus.

They kept going. They went to Atlanta, Georgia and they got threats. They went to Anniston, Alabama and on the outskirts of town a mob attacked the bus. They slashed the tires. They threw a firebomb into the bus. They blocked the doors to keep them from getting out when the flames took hold. A gas tank exploded and the crowd moved back from the bus just long enough for the people to get out. The crowd moved back in to beat them up. An undercover police officer fired a gun into the air and the crowd dispersed.

A second bus of Freedom Riders kept going. They came into Birmingham and another mob was waiting. They beat the riders again, paralyzing one of the riders for life. The police finally came and they arrested the riders, putting them in jail for what they said was their own safety. Then they took them over the border into Tennessee and dumped them off.

Another group of Freedom Riders came. They took the bus to Montgomery and again they were met by a mob that beat them up. It looked like the rides were going have to end.

On the night of May 21, a large crowd gathered at the Black First Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr. came to speak. Over a thousand people were in the church. Outside a few federal marshals had come in to surround the church, but there weren’t enough. As Dr. King preached the mob overturned cars and through rocks through the windows of the church. Tear gas started to seep into the church from outside where the police were trying to disperse the crowd. Dr. King told them that it wasn’t safe to leave the church, so they stayed in the church.

At 1 AM, Dr. King called Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States, from the basement of the church. Kennedy was upset with him for causing trouble. Kennedy thought the Freedom Riders were giving the country a bad image. King told Kennedy that the world was changing. That African-Americans were changing. “I am different from my father,” he said. “I feel the need of being free now.”**

Now here’s why I’m telling this story. If the Freedom Riders had not been fired by their faith. If they had not been trained in nonviolence. If they had not been continually hearing the message that what they were about was the civil rights of black people. If they had not had a sense of justice. If they had not had their eyes on the prize. If they hadn’t known that God’s kingdom was coming. If they hadn’t believed that goodness was stronger than evil. If they hadn’t believed all these things, they might have gotten sidetracked.

They might have started to become obsessed with the crowds outside. They might have returned violence for violence. They might have given up in despair. They might have gone back home. But no, they were going to New Orleans. The original group was gone, but new riders came to take their place.

So two days later, another group of 27 riders – white and black – left Montgomery and they were singing as they rode out of town:
I’m taking a ride on the Greyhound bus line.
I’m riding the front seat to Jackson this time.
Hallelujah, I’m travelling:
Hallelujah, ain’t it fine?
Hallelujah, I’m traveling down Freedom’s main line.


When they reached the Greyhound bus terminal in Jackson, Mississippi, there were no mobs. They were not beaten. They were ushered into the white waiting room of the bus terminal. And then they were ushered into paddy wagons that took them to jail. At their trial the next day the judge turned around in his chair and faced the wall when their lawyer spoke in their defense. They were sentenced to sixty days in Parchman, the state penitentiary. Some of them were housed in death row.


It seems like another world now. It seems like far more than 50 years have passed. But the Freedom Riders saw the goal. And they rode the Greyhound bus into something a little more like the kingdom of heaven.


So what did Jesus say about this parable? When the crowds had left and they went back into the house, he explains the parable to the disciples. What do they call the parable? Look in verse 36. They call it the parable of the weeds in the field. They are just like the servants. They go straight to the weeds.


But Jesus goes through the whole parable and he says the sower is who? The Son of Humanity. Jesus himself. The field is what? The world. And the good seed are who? The children of the Kingdom. And the vetch – who are they? The children of the evil one.


Now immediately we get the message and what’s the first thing we want to ask? Am I a good seed or a weed? We want to know where we stand with God because we see where this is headed. The weeds end up on the fire. And later Jesus will say that those who don’t measure up will be thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. There is a judgment on the way. And we want to know are we vetch who gnash or are we the wheat in the storehouse -- those who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God?


Scholars will tell you that the community of early Christians that Matthew was writing for was under a great deal of persecution from Jewish groups. In the midst of the conflict they would have heard this story as a word of hope. It might be bad now, Matthew seems to be saying, but in the end God will bring you home. In the meantime we must bear up in the struggles.


In our therapeutic culture we might say that there is wheat and tares in all of us. That’s even biblical. We are created with the all the potential of the good seed. But sin has entered the world and our lives, distorting us from what God intends us to be. So within each of us the struggle is ongoing and God has come to deal with the evil of the world and in us and to redeem our tarnished promise.


But let’s not make this too easy. There is much that God says an emphatic ‘no’ to in the world. It’s not always as overt as the mobs around the First Baptist Church in Montgomery. Sometimes the evil in the world slips in under cover of darkness. We need a purging fire to put to death all that keeps us from God. We need to come face to face with some things. We need to look in the mirror and see the callous heart that won’t let us love our neighbors. We need to see the fear that keeps us from doing what we know is right. We need to see the apathy that tells us the lie that we can’t make a difference. There’s a lot of things God says ‘no’ to.


John Wesley told his Methodist preachers that they should commit themselves to a disciplined lifestyle. That they should work diligently, teach the word, and never spend time triflingly. They should attend to their spiritual lives. They should read the scriptures. And they should do all these things, not for wrath, but for conscience’s sake. Not for fear of the fire, but for the integrity of their souls.


In the end, God knows the harvest will come. And God is not consumed with worry over where the evil in this world comes from or how it meets its end. What God is concerned about is the kingdom and what God wants is children who will not live their lives in fear of the fires of hell, but shining in the light of the kingdom that is to come. Not for wrath, but for conscience’s sake.


Keep your eyes on the prize, brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes on the prize. Thanks be to God.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tare_(leguminous_plant)
**Quoted in Harvard Sitkoff, King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop, [Hill & Wang: New York, 2008], p. 77.