Today's Sermon

Today’s sermon was about one of my favorite parables….it is what my NIV Bible calls the parable of the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30). In essence, Jesus said that there was a guy who planted a lot of good wheat in a field. Then, during the night, his enemy came and planted a bunch of weeds in the wheat. Frustrated, the workers wanted to immediately go out and cut out the weeds. But, the owner of the field told the workers to relax. Leave the weeds alone. Don’t worry about it. It will all be sorted out at the harvest.

As I write, I sit at my kitchen window. It is dark, but I can perfectly recall the spot over by the waterfall where last summer a weed grew.

“Get rid of that!” I told Ross as he worked in the yard in the early spring. “It’s ugly.”

He ignored me. “It’s not a weed.” The weed continued to grow and the argument continued.

“It is too a weed. Look, it’s got those thick weeds like the milk weed that would grow in the soybean fields,” I said. “It’s a weed.”

“No,” he said, “it isn’t.”

Ross is in charge of the yard, I reminded myself. And so I gave up. I stopped worrying about it.

Uninterrupted, the ugly looking little weed quickly grew into 5 foot tall plant with red stems, large shade producing leaves and beautiful red berries. After a little research and neighbor consultation, we discovered that it was a pokeberry plant.

The leaves of the pokeberry, we discovered, were considered a food source for Indians. Our neighbor crushed one of the berries staining his hands with a beautiful, burgundy colored juice. He told us that the Indians rather than eat the berry, which is poisonous to humans and some animals, would use juice for dye. The berry does, however, attract bluebirds, cardinals and mockingbirds. Consequently, for the remainder of the summer, we had beautiful birds and a beautiful plant to enjoy and appreciate.

I thank my God that he is a field owner with patience. I thank God that he sees and values the wheat that is inside me despite the weeds. I also thank God that he can take the weeds inside me and mold them to his will – refining them and perfecting them so that they serve a useful purpose.