The Rev. Dr. Anne-Marie Jeffery: God Is Tending Us

In the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My name is Anne-Marie Jeffery and I serve as the Canon for Congregational Vitality in the Diocese of Washington in which the Washington National Cathedral is located. I work to help congregations grow and thrive, become more vital. And as you might imagine, I use a lot of agricultural metaphors. We even have a congregational initiative called Tending our Soil. So, you might imagine that when I saw this gospel, I got excited.  Planting, sowing, growing, and then I got to the weeping and gnashing of teeth. But let’s take a look at what we have in this parable. A sower sows good seed, and in the night, enemy comes and sows bad seed, and the weed and the wheat grow up together. And the servants come and see this, and they’re confused, because they know the householder has planted good seed. And so they ask him, “Master, what’s going on? Where did these weeds come from and should we pull them up?”  Well the master says, “Well, the evil one came and planted them. And no, don’t pull them up. Let the weeds and the wheat grow together.”

Any gardeners out there? How do you feel about that? Let the weeds and the wheat grow together? Just a few weeks ago, I went up to my house in New Jersey where I go every several weeks, and I’d missed a weeding session in my wildflower garden. It was raining when I was there. And so when I got back, the wildflowers were tall, but so were the weeds. Green, fleshy, stemmed things with prickly leaves. And I had already been spending time with this gospel, and I thought for a moment, can I, can I let the weeds and the wildflowers grow together? The answer: no. And I pulled up those weeds and I pulled up a bunch of wildflowers and yes, I had to reseed.

So for those of you out there who are struggling with the weeds and the wheat growing together, we must remember that this is not our garden. This is God’s garden.  And God’s ways are different from our ways. And I am glad that Jesus provides some explanation of what’s going on. The son of man is a sower planting good seed, the children of the kingdom. The enemy is the evil one, planting the bad seeds, the children of the evil one. The harvest is the end of the age, not now. And the angels, not us, are the ones to separate the wheat from the weeds. What is Jesus wanting us to hear in this parable? What do we need to understand? I believe Jesus is calling on our trust that God is at work in the garden, in God’s way, and our patience for us to grow alongside with all the weeds that seem rampant in this world. And I am grateful that the servants were told to wait, because if I am honest, at times I can be more like a weed. It is a spiritual journey closer to God, away from God. And so if it had been one of those days when I was looking and acting weedy, I might get pulled up too soon.

Debbie Thomas, in the online magazine called Journey With Jesus addresses this, this tending of ourselves, this tending that needs time. And she writes, “The fact is the seeds of God’s life in us are still young and growing. Our roots are delicate and tender. They need time, they need lifetimes. And indeed we do. We are grateful for that patience because God is working on each and every one of us, every day as we grow in the field. But what about the weeds? What are we to do about evil? What are we to do about evil? Debbie Thomas continues and she writes, “This is not to say we should ignore evil, but it is to say we should move gently with great care. Recognizing our task is to grow the good, not burn the bad. Our job is to bless the field, not curse it. Remember, the field is not ours. It is God, and only God knows it intimately enough to tend it. Only God loves it enough to bring it safely to harvest.”

This is hard work. And do you hear the tension? God is tending the harvest. God is doing the work of bringing the kingdom of God about in this broken world. And yet we have a role. We have a choice to nurture God’s tending of ourselves or push it away, and we have a choice to nurture those around us or destroy them. Not only are we to follow Jesus and grow strong in the goodness of God’s love, we are to help others grow as well. Three weeks ago I was there at the Episcopal Youth Event at the University of Maryland with 1000 teenagers who gathered from around the world to worship, laugh, and learn.  And the opening gathering, Bishop Deon Johnson, of the Diocese of Missouri, said the following, “The only gospel some people may encounter today is you. The only good news some people may hear is you. You are the ones God is sending out into God’s world. You are the ones who show people that there is a different way.”  

As we stand growing, growing among the weeds and the wheat, we have an effect on others. Our spiritual journey can help others. How can we be part of the nurturing? How do we do this work? I believe we do it by sharing our stories, sharing our stories of faith and how God is working with us in this field. Our stories are powerful, and so often we don’t think they’re worth sharing. In the Episcopal denomination, we have not been known to be big faith sharers.  In many of our congregations, you’ll see a lot of action. We feed people, we march, we go to prisons, we fight for justice. But when it comes to sharing our stories, we need to work on that because the actions are important, and the stories are important. We are working on it. Two weeks ago, I was in Baltimore where a thousand adult, there weren’t too many teenagers there, adult Episcopalians gathered for It’s All About Love festival. And we shared stories of how we care for creation, how we work on racial justice, and how we are being evangelists, sharing the message that Jesus came to teach us, that we are loved, that love is powerful, and that in the end, it is all about love. It comes back to each and every one of us. And you may say, well, I don’t really have a story. It’s not strong enough. Or my faith is deep, but I don’t know how to share it or I don’t want to share it.  

As part of my work. I offer retreats for vestries, which are the governing boards of Episcopal churches. And when I’ve been gathering them these past few months, I’ve been asking them a question. And the question is, how did you come to know Jesus? And I was wondering how it would go because it’s not, we don’t talk about Jesus in that way often.  Jesus surrounds everything in our worship, but we don’t often share our Jesus story. So I wondered, there’s gonna be one or two people who won’t do it? They all did it with every group I was with.  And their stories were deep and powerful. And often it was the first time they’d heard one another’s stories, even though they’d been worshiping together for years.

It comes down to each one of us, and I want you to take a moment right now to think about your story, what you would share. How did you come to know Jesus? Or perhaps how have you experienced God in your life? Maybe where you have encountered the sacred, will work better for you. But those moments, those stories, those are part of what helps tend the wheat. Not just you, but those around you. Think about one person you could share that story with. Who needs to hear your story.  And pray about it, pray about when to tell the story and pray that the Spirit will work. Because we are all growing. God is tending us, and all we have to do is share, because God does the rest of the work. God does the changing of hearts and minds, because God is working on God’s garden. So God, imagine it, God is growing this kingdom where the wheat is growing tall and strong despite the weeds, despite all that’s going on in this world. Look around you. Take a moment. We’re all growing together. We are all part of this garden. Trust that God is at work and that God is bringing about a harvest of love. Amen.