I am Linda Sitterley, the lead pastor here for Grace Communion River Road. The title of the sermon, as you can see, Sowing Harvest, it had me thinking about what a customer told me a few weeks back at work. We were talking about the death of her sister, and it got a little just a little philosophical kind of like it always does at work. We tend to become like a bar where people come in with their things and then they become our things and their problems become our problems and then we're sitting and we're trying to help them all kind of get through their problems and so it's like yeah I am a bartender at times you know and there are times I do need a drink I refrain most of the time but what she said had me really thinking and I think I might have heard this a long time ago, but it really brought it back to my mind.
This thing about living between the dash. And I don't know if you've all heard that before, but I looked it up again just to kind of make sure that I understood what it really meant. But living between the dash refers to the time a person spends alive on Earth, and it comes from the famous poem the dash by Linda Ellis. And the metaphor suggests that the birth and the death years on a tombstone are just bookends.
And while the little dash, that line in between represents your entire life, that little dash is all of your experiences and it will be your legacy, that tiny little dash. The phrase is a powerful reminder that material possessions and wealth do not matter. Instead, it challenges people to reflect on how they spend their dash by focusing on how you live and how you love. And that song that we just did, Reckless Love, I think it kind of really speaks to this passage that we're going to look at today. The parable of the wheat and the weeds. It reminds us that our dash is also a season of growth, as we will see from today's scripture reading. But here when we before we get to that, here we find Jesus in the middle of sharing a series of parables about the kingdom of God and what it's going to look like.
Matthew13:24-30
The Parable of the Weeds
24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ 28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ 29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
Matthew 13:36-43
The Parable of the Weeds Explained
36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. 40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.
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