Sunday, July 19, 2026 – Ordinary Time, Proper 11, Year A/II

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (NRSV)

And there was wailing and gnashing of teeth when I read the scripture gospel for this morning. So very, very, much here, right?

Yes.

And there is always good news in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is the Sower, or Householder; the field is the world, and the good seed is the children of the kingdom of heaven. The weeds, he says, are the children of the evil one, the devil, who is the enemy who sowed them. The harvest is the end times, and the reapers are angels.

“The Son Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”  Matt. 13:41-43 (NRSV).

This parable would be readily understood in the First Century of the common era, when society was agrarian.

But what about ours? Can this parable make sense to post-modern children of the Kingdom?

Again, who are the good seeds?

Children of the Kingdom of God.

The people who seek every day to make a difference in other people’s lives and make our communities places where everyone is an equal and everyone is welcome. They are people who reach out to those on the edges of society; they are people who speak for the voiceless and those lacking power and often question authority despite the risk to themselves. They are people who have ears to listen to the word of God through Jesus and model their lives after it.

And the weeds? 

Well, I don’t want to go there.

Okay. I will.

This is an allegory of people influenced by the dark side of life. We know who they are most of the time; sometimes it comes as a surprise.

Jesus says the weeds were planted by the Evil One, and today, the weeds, in certain iterations, are choking the American people.

I don’t remember reading in the Gospel that Jesus said it was fine and good to take necessary programs away from millions of people. How long will it be before meal programs for our hungry children are taken away from schools due to lack of funding? Will it become illegal to run food banks or meal programs out of church halls, or shelter the homeless during the night? How many more killings of innocent civilians by ICE agents? When will they be stripped of their power and prosecuted? Or will Social Security be gutted so that people who depend on that income to survive have nothing? Social Security, by the way, is not the ubiquitous gold watch received at retirement. It’s not a gift. American workers pay into the program out of their own wages. For many, it is the only income we have. 

It’s our money. Our savings.

How ironic that upon the heels of our 250^th anniversary, our government has ceased to be by and for the people.

The weeds planted in our society are still growing; but weeds are still plants, and weeds are part of the landscape that is God’s creation.   They’re trying to stay alive and survive, just as we are, but they were sold a false bill of goods and were made promises constantly broken.

So it seems we’re all suffering together.

What do we do?

Our response is laid out in the Sermon on the Mount – the principle of nonretaliation. No matter what we’re thinking of doing, no matter what we want to do, which is probably not what Jesus wants us to do, it is for us to love and model our lives as best as we are able to reflect the gospel. To bring the good news out into the world.

It is for us to have faith that God will sort this out. 

We must have faith. Jesus urges us to trust that God will be best able to judge between weeds and wheat. That will come at the harvest. Jesus will decide when the time comes which is the good seed and what is the weed.

In the meantime, we can sow seeds of love and equality and justice in those patches where there are plenty of weeds and pray that they take root.

Copyright 2026, Rev. Dn. Ellen L. Ekstrom