Good
Shepherd Episcopal Church
July 20, 2014
The Rev. Este Gardner Cantor
Jesus is once again, patiently,
creatively, doggedly trying to give the disciples an idea of the Kingdom of
Heaven.
After the parable of the Weeds, Jesus
gives the disciples an explanation, two parables later. I am a little suspicious
of this, given that Jesus very rarely explained anything, and, like a Zen
master tended to leave his puzzling words to work the minds and hearts of the
listener. Modern scholars have been just as puzzled, and there have been many
interpretations of what the parable of the weeds might actually mean. But one
struck me as particularly likely, given what we know about Jesus.
This interpretation said that Jesus
was indeed using the weed-clogged field as a metaphor for the Kingdom of Heaven,
but this was a Kingdom of Heaven in which there were neither enemies, children
of the evil one, a devil or weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus was making a declaration against
the efforts to purify a community of human “weeds” –an all to common tendency
in those days. He is decrying the practice of making brutal distinctions
between tribes, and exterminating or banishing those who did not fit in. Jesus suggests
that these differences, if indeed they are significant, will be addressed by
God on judgment day, and are beyond the scope of humankind to meddle in. Even
the weeds, he says, must be left to grow, even to flourish along side the grain.
The news this past week has been
devastating. The brutal “weeding out” of the other has reached such tragic
proportions that the pain is sent like shockwaves all over the world. Four
Palestinian children, a nine year old, two ten year olds and an eleven year old
were killed last week as they played on the beach, by rockets from an Israeli
plane. They were all from the same family, a family so devastated that the
pictures of their faces are unbearable to behold. As their parents would say of
these lost children, “To God they belong and to God they will return”
This was only the last incident in
the killing of many Palestinian civilians, collateral damage in the surge of
violence following the killing of three Israeli teenagers.
Two of the slain Israeli boys were
sixteen, the other nineteen. The first clues the police found in searching for
their bodies were their teffillin-
leather-bound holy texts discovered in a burned out car. The teffillin are part of the life of every observant
Jewish boy and are bound on their arms during prayer in obedience to the
instructions in Leviticus: “You shall teach the commandments to your children and
shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and
when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them
as a sign on your arm.” As the parents of the young men would say, “May
their names be for a blessing”.
In our own country another example of
weeding out of the impure has come home to us.
Seventy thousand children have been
sent by their parents out of the most terrifying conditions to throw themselves
on the barely existent mercy of our great nation. I heard a newscast describing
the life of a child in Honduras, whose school has come under the control of a
drug cartel. The drug lords send recruiters into the schools and if the
teachers try to get in the way of the abduction of children, a gun is held to
their heads. If they still don’t comply, they are shot. Then the abducted
children are forced to go back into the school to recruit more innocents. Many
people, including children, have been killed by these drug lords. But we don’t
want the children here. We think they should be sent back.
The town of Murrieta, Arizona
exploded in protest when buses of young immigrants, some as young as six years
old, drove into town to process the overflowing numbers of children. A crowd
held up signs that said, “Non-Yankees Go Home” and “Return to Sender.” The
buses were forced to turn around and seek another location for the processing.
Patrice Lynes, a Murietta resident was quoted as saying, “I’m so happy,” she
said. “I feel Murrieta inspired America. I think it’s awesome… We’re standing
up as patriotic Americans to enforce our laws at the borders.” I saw a picture
of a detention center which I first thought was a picture of a morgue.
There were dozens of small bodies
wrapped in what appeared to be tinfoil, laid out like sardines. I then realized
they were sleeping children wrapped in emergency blankets. Walls of chain-link
fencing surrounded the sleeping children. As their parents would say, Que sueñes con los angelitos “May they
dream of angels.”
In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we
are given us some welcome perspective- some desperately needed hope for the
pain we are all feeling now, in this time of violence and brutality. Now, as
Paul tells us, all creation is groaning with the labor pains, and not only the
creation, but we ourselves, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the
redemption of our bodies.
We await the birth of the time when we will know without hesitation that we are all children of the same God, all children of the same sower, all heirs as Paul tells us, free from the slavery of violence, of hatred.
We await the birth of the time when we will know without hesitation that we are all children of the same God, all children of the same sower, all heirs as Paul tells us, free from the slavery of violence, of hatred.
I hope and pray that the sufferings
of the present time will be worth the glory that will be revealed to us.
I have no doubt that Jesus would not
rip out the tender shoots from where they are, knowing it would damage not only
the introduced plants, but the wheat as well. I have no doubt that Jesus sees
no difference between Israeli teenagers, Palestinian children, Latino refugees,
and first world children.
I know that for all our pristine
vestments, cathedrals and sacred vessels, God is not a God of purity. And in
spite of the artistic interpretations of Jacob’s ladder, it must be remembered
that the angels traveled up AND down that ladder, perhaps traveling down to
lend a hand to those small sleeping angels. God is not a God of “up.” God is
always down. Down to the level of the poor, the refugee, the wounded, the
hungry, the weeds. God knows that you can’t build a bridge from up in the air.
You have to start down low. At the level of a child.
The children killed on the beach were
all from the same family, and we must somehow remember that we are all
from the same family, all children of a God who knows our inmost parts, who has
searched us out and knows us, and loves us even in all our brutal betrayal.
There is nowhere we can flee where
God is not, as Godless as the world may seem. If we say, “Surely the darkness
will cover us, and the light around us becomes night” God will be with us.
Search us out, God, know us, and bring us into your new creation.
Amen.