There is a fashion now for ‘natural wine’, which comes out an orangey colour, and can be acceptable or can be utterly awful. People are paying a lot of money and it’s quite the thing in the hipster eateries of Hackney and Islington. The brutal truth is that it’s just how wine used to be made before we got the hang of it. The people at the time of the Gospel today would have been very familiar with it – quickly matured, usually in stone jars, added to so that some of the old feeds the new, the Greeks call it Romeiko and in Crete it’s the house wine of every rustic taverna, although tutted at by politer places on the coast. My Romanian friends make it in plastic jars, and it’s kind of OK. Hipsters so come across a strange paradox: in trying to discover something new, we can only discover something old, and this applies to every human endeavour I think, as we gaze int the sky at night, beholding a star that may have died millions of years before. In the church too, we find in the ancient rituals of the year, the alive, ever-changing presence of God. We are so often simply finding out what God laid down at the beginning of time.Solomon knew that if he wanted wisdom, the wisdom needed to govern God’s people properly, he couldn’t invent it, make it up as he went along. He had to be given it, from the only source able to give it to him, that is, from God himself. Only the Ancient of Days possesses the kind of wisdom Solomon seeks, wisdom older than time itself. We are, I suppose, used to thinking of God as old. There is good sense to that: God has always existed. But it is equally true that God is always new. We live our lives bit by bit, one part passing away just as another comes to be. We can only get older and older, but God is the same creative force that made us babies and who will receive our souls to Him at the time given. God is so alive that he has all his life all at once and forever. God is no older now than he was in the time of Solomon or the time of Adam. God alone is old and new at the same time, and He calls His Holy Church to be old and new at the same time, as a reflection of His own divine self. That’s why the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a treasure or a pearl of great price. We can search all our lives, work diligently, but without God’s help all we make and do will be only either original or true. Only when we come across God’s truth will we find something really new and fresh and also really foundational, something which shows the wisdom of the ages. This wisdom isn’t something we can make on our own or even deserve by our hard work. We are given it, as Solomon was also given it, simply because by God’s love we have the great fortune to do so. The treasure, the pearl, comes without any merit of our own. We come upon it because God in his goodness shares his wisdom with us. We don’t even fine it by looking for it, it just comes up in our dragnet because God wills it t do so, He wants us to fine Him, almost to trip over Him, as He is everywhere, sometimes He will be specifically somewhere that we might perceive Him more fully. He draws us in, He gives us His gifts – once He has given us something, it is ours – the treasure belongs to the man who owns the field, the pearl to the one who buys it. However, there is the caution that even though it has ben given to us, it has been given by He who made it, and He has a purpose for all things, for each one of us. We have free will, but it has been given to us by our Creator. These gifts, though bestowed on us freely, are not cheap. Indeed, when you find the treasure, you have to sell everything you have to buy it. When you come across this great treasure, this ancient newness, you have to give up on all the tired dustiness and all the vain inventions in your life, we have to give up whatever came before in order to possess the fulness of what is now given to us – to live fully, we have to begin empty and to be filed with whatever is of God, and to reject that which is opposed to His rule. Then the ones sorting the contents of the dragnet will not find us dead and rotting, no use to anyone.God offers us his wisdom, the wisdom of the ages, but something genuinely startling and fresh and new. As good scribes of the Kingdom, we have to learn to take out of our treasure chests things which are both new and old, the ancient wisdom of the God who is both old and new at the same time, and become more fully His children, young and old, ancient and alive.
I had never heard of Marestail until I moved here a few years ago. Now, I know quite a lot about it as I have spent here years getting gardeners to eradicate it from the grounds and picking it out of my own garden. The roots grow seven metres deep as you probably know, so picking it looks better, but does little. This year I have poured bleach onto the front gravel and that seems to be doing the job, and hopefully in a few years it will have worked its way down. You may though favour letting things just grow, and rewilding gardens. But what should we do about the weeds? That’s a problem facing every farmer and gardener — a problem that Jesus uses in one of today’s Gospel parables. We’re told about the darnel growing in the midst of the crop sown by the farmer. This isn’t just about whether your garden looks pretty or not, it’s about whether your crop will fail or not, whether you will be able to live this Winter. Weeds in a crop are an unwanted, destructive nuisance.The parables we hear this season are agricultural, and rightly so, for agriculture has sustained the world for millennia, and still does today. It’s not difficult to apply this to the Church here on earth because it’s only too obvious that it’s a mixture of good and bad people. And rightly so, indeed I am sure that we can all be good and bad at various times in pour lives – the church is not a palace for the perfect to dwell in, but a campsite for the wounded and the hopeful, to tend to each other and grow in faith, hope and love. When the nuclear holocaust comes, those who are left may be glad that they purchased good tinned food, water cleaning tablets and cigars, but more blessed are those who will share what they have. It is said that the church is full of hypocrites. Good! I hope so, because they are in exactly the right place to change. Serious sinners, though, can be different, and the weeds today show how they can kill a field. So how should the Church should deal with these threats to the Good News taking root and growing. Some would be like the impetuous servants in the parable. They would weed out the destructive sinner. Then, they hope, the Kingdom here on earth would consist only of good, holy people, with no room for sinners. Naturally they would include themselves among this elite band of Christ’s faithful followers. It is very easy to feel better than others, but in a post-apocalyptic world, would you share your food and water, and if not, when you found out your fellow survivor was a Doctor, would you expect her to help you? Testing times reveal who we are. Christ’s approach teaches that in pulling up the weeds we could do more harm than good. The same happens when people try to suppress unsavoury and harmful ideas. Banning a book or film will only give it unwanted publicity and increase its number of viewers. We are told the Dark Web is full of things we would rather ignore and is a great secret, but a great secret that everyone seems to know about! Mein Kamph has been forgotten because it is easily available and, clearly, drivel. Unreadable, dull drivel. We need freedom of speech and thought and religion when freedom of speech is denied then dictators flourish and the very thing we want to preserve -the freedom to sow and cultivate the Word of God – is denied to us and therefore denied to the world. Why do dictators often ban the Bible? Because it gives hope, and the knowledge that the rulers of this world have no power over what really matters. So we must be patient and be about our work of sowing and growing before the second coming, the time of harvesting, judgement and sorting, which will come like a thief in the night, So be prepared. This is the place of our preparation. In this time we must be prepared for a mixture of good and bad people, saints and sinners. Like the farmer, we can be mistaken in distinguishing the one from the other. So Jesus urges a patience which Peter’s 2nd Letter develops. He sees God’s delay in passing judgement and sorting out the good from the bad as a sign of his loving mercy. ‘The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.’ He wants to give the sinner the grace and time to repent and become a saint, the noxious weed to become a fruitful plant. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen in agriculture, but it does here, in this place of grace. In the meantime Paul urges us to wait till the second and final era of harvest time. Then the Lord of the Harvest will pass the final judgement. He alone is qualified to distinguish with certainty the good from the bad: ‘Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness’. So it is that we are tasked with the work of the Kingdom, and of nurturing each other in the faith, in season and out of season.
Earlier this year (May 8th), many of us paused to mark the 100thbirthday of Sir David Attenborough. For generations now, his voice has accompanied our viewing of the natural world, revealing its beauty, complexity, fragility, and wonder. Through astonishing cinematography, programmes such as Planet Earth have allowed us to see the world afresh, the hidden intricacy of forests, the movement of oceans, the delicate balance of ecosystems, the miracle of life unfolding often unnoticed around us. I suspect many of us, watching such things, have felt something deeper stirring, not only admiration for nature itself, but wonder at the mystery behind it all and as Christians, we see creation speaking of its Creator. Today’s readings invite us into precisely that kind of reflection. Isaiah speaks of rain and snow falling upon the earth, watering it, “making it bring forth and sprout.” Jesus sits beside the sea and tells stories of seed and soil, growth and fruitfulness and Saint Paul, in the passage from Romans, describes creation itself as longing, groaning, waiting for fulfilment and renewal. The whole of creation, scripture suggests, is alive with possibility. Perhaps that is why, inspired partly by those nature documentaries, I decided earlier this year to grow some flowers from seed in my own garden. It seemed straightforward enough when I opened the seed packets, but I quickly rediscovered something I had forgotten, growing things takes care, attention, patience. Not every seed I planted germinated, some seemed promising, only to droop unexpectedly. Once or twice, I nearly lost them altogether before hastily watering them back from the brink. Gradually I realised how much hidden labour lies behind the beauty we often simply admire. In July we delight in gardens full of colour and fragrance, we walk past borders alive with roses and lavender, bees moving lazily through the afternoon warmth, and we receive it almost effortlessly as beauty. Yet none of it appears by accident, somewhere, someone has planted, watered, pruned, tended, and deeper still, beneath all human care, lies the prior gift of God, He who gives growth, life, seasons, sunlight, rain in the first place.I think Jesus understands this deeply, which is why so much of his teaching emerges from the ordinary patterns of everyday life and creation. The crowds gathered around him would have known immediately the uncertainty of sowing seed. Some ground was shallow, some thorn-filled, some hardened by the sun or countless footsteps, I should think that farming in Galilee was difficult and precarious work. Seed was precious, to lose it mattered and yet the sower in today’s parable seems extravagantly generous, scattering seed widely, almost recklessly. Some falls on the path, some among rocks, some among thorns and some on good soil. At one level, the parable asks us about receptivity, what kind of soil are we becoming? What do we allow to take root within us? But perhaps there is something else here to, something about the patience of God, because as I learnt growth is rarely instant or easy. We live in a culture shaped by speed and immediacy. We expect quick results, visible outcomes, measurable success. But both nature and faith tend to work more slowly than that, seeds disappear into darkness long before they break into life, roots form invisibly before flowers appear. Much of God’s work within us happens quietly. Let me explain, as a little boy, I remember being fascinated by my grandmother kneeling beside her bed to say her prayers at night. I can still picture it now, there was nothing dramatic about it, no performance, no great explanation, just faithfulness, her faith expressed by reverence and daily habit, shaped by love of God and care for her family. At the time, I doubt she imagined that simple act would remain with me all these years later, but it has, a seed was being sown. Perhaps many of us could say the same, a parent bringing us to church, a teacher who encouraged us, a hymn sung at the right moment, an act of kindness shown during grief, a candle lit in prayer. Tiny seeds, easily overlooked, yet somehow taking root deep within us. All of this is important, because often we underestimate the significance of the small things. The Kingdom of God frequently grows in hidden ways, a conversation, an example we set, a prayer whispered almost absent-mindedly, a life lived gently and faithfully. We may never fully know what takes root because of them. Saint Paul takes this further in the reading from Romans, creation itself, he says, “groans in labour pains.” It is a striking image, not meaningless suffering, but the pains of something struggling toward birth, toward renewal, toward becoming what God intends it to be. I find Paul’s vision hopeful, ours is an incarnational faith, God enters creation, blesses it, dwells within it. Bread and wine themselves begin as seed, scattered, buried, dependent upon rain, sunlight, patience, and careful tending. Wheat once growing in fields, grapes hanging upon the vine, now gathered into the Eucharist. The work of earth and human hands, as the offertory prayers remind us, taken up into the mystery of God. Even here, in these things, growth and transformation are at the heart of faith Perhaps that is why Jesus teaches through parables of sowing and growing, because the spiritual life is not separate from the rhythms of creation but reflected within them. Often, we know this instinctively, there are seasons in life, times of flowering, times of watering and waiting, times that feel barren and times when growth is happening beneath the surface, though we cannot yet see it. Some of us this morning may feel fruitful and hopeful, others may feel weary or dry, uncertain whether anything much is growing at all. Yet today’s readings remind us that God is patient with growth, the seed is sown and earth slowly yields its fruit. So, this week, in these hot summer days, you might take a moment simply to notice... a garden, a tree moving in the wind, birds at dawn, the scent of flowers after rain and through them, hear again the deeper invitation of Christ, for as we read in scripture, the creation waits with eager longing. The poet and priest Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Maybe faith begins there, learning again to notice, to nurture, and to trust that even the smallest seed, lovingly tended, may one day, bear more fruit than we could ever imagine.
I used to love watching ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, especially the eternal playoff between Sir Humphrey and the Prime Minister. It usually ended with Sir Humphrey getting exactly what he wanted and making the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, think he had got what he wanted. It was a complex interplay, with many people on the side of Jim or the side of Sir Humphrey pulling them in different directions. I found myself in the Mayors Parlour last Sunday before walking out to lead the Armed Forces Day service and the Mayor was having a picture taken of himself next to someone and he asked, with his tongue in his cheek, ‘did I look taller than him’ which he plainly did not, so I just sad ‘yes, Mister Mayor’ with my tongue firmly in my cheek as well. It is certainly the case that most of us prefer to surround ourselves with people who agree with us and who tell us that what we’re doing is right and good. We know really that it would be better for us to have around us someone who would tell the truth about us, challenge us, help us to face our faults and mistakes, but most of us are not brave enough for that, which is why so many people do not read the Bible, or believe it to be some kind of buffet. And it was ever thus. The rulers of the Jewish people preferred the false prophets, who told them what they wanted to hear, to the true prophets who told them what was uncomfortable and disturbing and, unfortunately for them, true. They preferred flattery to the ruth, and, again, it was and is ever thus. We have little idea what the false prophets ever said, nobody appears to have recorded it, while the true prophets were often persecuted, at least until people realised they were telling the truth. I assume the reason the true prophets’ writings ended up being preserved was because events proved them true. Today’s first reading from the prophecy of Zechariah, though, is not so much bad news as strange news. It might, indeed, look like good news to us with the gift of hindsight, but not at all the sort of good news that would make any ruler feel comfortable. Earthly rulers, with a few notable exceptions, believe in symbols of power. Ballrooms, cloaks, palaces, torture chambers, armies and secret services. They might expect a king who is victorious, triumphant, to enter on a war horse, with a great retinue. The king in the prophecy of Zechariah today comes riding on a donkey, which is not the same as a Lear Jet at all. Most earthly rulers trust for their security in strength of arms, armies, nuclear weapons, misinformation and so on. The king in the prophecy banishes chariots from Ephraim, horses from Jerusalem, banishes the bow of war and speaks the truth to power so insistently that, as we know, He is killed for it. Why did people preserve such a prophecy? Certainly not because they could understand how such a world could come about, it seems as impossible as he thought of love conquering death, of a God who takes the form of a servant, of us still hearing this thousands of years later. Truth has an uncanny ability to be heard and to remain, and amid the mire of disinformation around us, we would do well to hold on to the uncomfortable truth that the King did indeed arrive on a donkey, and that He will indeed come to judge the living and the dead at the end of time. And for us it is not possible humanly to see how this prophecy could begin to come true and more than the people could hear Zechariah and believe that. They would have been silenced, ridiculed, and sidelined, but they know that their God would come and we know He will come again. The experience of the people of those times came with a belief that safety came from swords, walls, defined borders, wealth and armies, but Zechariah came to tell Israel that real strength came not from this, but from the plan and will of God and the keeping of His commandments. So it was then, so it is now. The King on the Donkey came, and people began to believe again, and the King will come again and it will be too late, which is why the Church of God preaches repentance, hope and salvation in season and out of season, and we need more people to do just that, to join with us, to grow the Kingdom with us. Our strength though is not in numbers, but in faith. Today’s Gospel is no different. Jesus brings freedom. We might expect that will involve that he will ‘break every yoke’, as God tells us through Isaiah to do. Human wisdom tells us that freedom is a solitary thing, me against the world, refusing to submit to those who would control me. As in so many things, it takes the foolishness of God to teach us that true freedom is to be had through being yoked to Christ, of being part of His Holy Church, His Holy Family here on earth and those who wait for us in the Kingdom yet to come.
