Ninth Pentecost, Proper 11, 2005

A young man from down home applied for admission to the School of Agriculture at Virginia Tech.  The chairman of the Admissions Committee asked him, “Why have you chosen this career?”

“I dream of making a million dollars in farming, just like my father,” the young man said.

“Your father made a million dollars in farming?” asked the chairman, much impressed.

“No,” said the young applicant.  “But he always dreamed of it.”

I really don’t know why anyone would want to go into farming, anymore than why anyone would want to go into the ministry.  I do believe a sense of calling is involved.  Otherwise, misery is not far behind.  We should always pray, both for ourselves as well as others, that our vocation matches God’s call.

I think I have shared with you before about the time the seed bins at the Farm Bureau had been mislabeled and what we thought was sweet corn, grown to feed a hungry family, ended up being field corn that was fit only for horses or ground up to feed the chickens, sheep and cattle.  I had spent a good part of the summer staying ahead of the weeds and running the garden tiller between the rows.  We grew a lot of sweet corn; some for consumption right from the garden and some to be canned for winter.  It was a long summer without succulent sweet corn and an even longer winter without sweet corn from the jar.  The Farm Bureau issued an apology for the mislabeling mistake and promised free properly labeled seeds the following spring.  I felt a lot a sweat had been wasted that summer.  It may have been right after that summer that I felt a call to the ministry.  Johnson grass and summer sun were sometimes used by God to call country boys into the ministry.

I have always felt that I had a bit of an advantage, being a farm boy, when parables about the natural world came up in the Gospel rotation.  Proper soil preparation, the balance of rain and sun, seed and harvest, weeding and feeding, and foil pie pans blowing in the gentle breeze to scare away crows are realities that can be applied to the parables told by the Master Storyteller.  My personal experiences and the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, appointed for this Sunday in our calendar, would lead me to certain truths about life.  Now I hope you understand that I do not always apply these truths in the living of my Christian faith, but at least I know about them.  I claim spiritual progress and not spiritual perfection.  I grant the same to each one of you.

The first truth is watch making absolute judgments.  Way back in the middle 1950’s, had I known before the harvest, I would have pulled up all that field corn and thrown it away.  But, judgment must always wait until the harvest time.  In the end, all of us will be judged, not by a single act or stage in our lives, but by the whole of our living and our acceptance of the grace and forgiveness of God.  All of that is based on faith, of course, and not on any merit or native goodness.  Measuring a life cannot come until the end.  A person may make a great mistake, confess the wrong, ask for forgiveness, make amends whenever possible, and live a redemptive life by the grace and guidance of God.  Atoning for errors of commission and recognizing glaring omissions has often turned notorious sinners into lovely saints.  That is especially true if those around him or her have refrained from premature judgments and allowed God to work on the heart.

It is one of the profound givens of life that we can see only part of any life.  We never see enough to judge rightly.  Obviously, certain actions can be so out of the mainstream and so illegal that society must step in and exact and carry out punishment.  Jail ministries always assume the redemptive and transforming power of God.

The second truth is that labels are for boxes and cans and not for people.  We live in dangerous times.  In our effort to understand ourselves in a culture where our technology has outstripped our ability to make choices based on agreed upon norm of right and wrong, we have the tendency to label and categorize people who may hold a differing view from ours or may be operating from a different cultural norm.  A simple thing like conversational distance has led to wrong assumptions between American and Latin American business people.  Americans generally like others to be three feet away when carrying on a polite conversation.  Latin Americans generally require only one foot of distance.  The study that put these two groups together reported that Americans thought the Latinos where pushy and the Latinos thought the Americans were aloof and distant.

Labels, prejudices, and stereotypes have only one thing in common; they cut off any further learning and stop communication.  By the very nature of the case greater divisions occur and better mousetraps must be invented.

It is one thing to say, “Based on what we know at this moment in time, this seems to be true at this point in history.”  It is quite another thing to say, “What I now believe about this will never change and it is true for me and for all others.”  Just remember that at one time people thought and the church taught as infallible doctrine that the earth of flat and that the sun revolved around us.  Remember that at one time people thought and the church taught as infallible doctrine that being left-handed was a sign of demon possession.  My left-handed brother is a great fellow and surely not possessed by anything other than “hunting fever” when black bear season opens.

Be especially careful in the living of your life to apply labels only to cans and boxes and not to people.  You and I do not know now nor will we ever know enough to get away with it.

The third truth is that only God knows enough and has the right to judge.  It is God alone who can and does see the totality of each life.  And while God is definitely merciful, loving, and forgiving, God is not so indefinitely.  Judgment will come, if the scriptures and the teachings of Jesus are to be believed.

In most cases that judgment will be just the polar opposite of the one we would make.  That the Good News folks!  It means we can let go and let God.  We can leave that job to the only one qualified to do it.  I don’t know about you, but that is a burden I’m glad to have off my mind and heart.

From your own life experiences and from the Parable of the Wheat and Tares the lessons have been taught.  Watch making judgments, remember that labels are for cans and boxes, not for people, and remember that God alone has the right to judge; life will be much more pleasant for you and those around you.  That great loving, merciful, and forgiving God comes again this day in the broken body and shed blood of the Son to show us how much we are loved.  The good seed has been shown.  Let it grow!  Amen.