A seminary classmate of mine^[1] begins a sermon on this text that we=ve just read from Genesis this way:

AWhen I worry about the future of the church, one of the things I worry about is that there is not more wrestling in the pulpit.  It is not the preacher=s own struggle to proclaim the word that I miss.  There is plenty of that.  It is the apparent tameness of the word itself, as if our relationship with God were settled and all the rules were clear: be a good person and God will be good to you; flee bad company and rise above adversity; if you have wild dreams in the middle of the night, please keep them to yourself.

AThis may not be what is preached, but it is often what is heard, if only because human kind has such a high need to control the chaos of life on earth.  You do not hear much about God causing the chaos, or even having a role in it.  On the contrary, it is God=s job to make it stop.  God is supposed to restore the status quo and help everyone feel comfortable again.  Isn=t that how you know when God is present?  When the danger has been avoided?  When your heart stops pounding and you can breathe normally again?  You know that God is there when you are not afraid anymore and you can feel your strength coming back like blood rushing into a numb limb.

AIt is an appealing idea,@ Taylor writes, Abut unfortunately the Bible will not back it up.  In that richly troubling book, much of God=s best work takes place in total chaos, with people scared half out of their wits: Elijah, trembling under his broom tree, pleading with God to take his life; Mary, listening to an angel=s ambitious plans for plunging her into scandal; Paul, lying flat on his belly on the Damascus Road with all his lights put out.  Perhaps because we know how these stories turn out, we overlook the wrestling B the stark terror of being jumped on by an unknown assailant, the collapse of the known world, the reduction of everything one has been and done to this scorched moment of fighting for one=s life.@

Most, if not all, of us don=t want to think about God in this way, do we?  We want to be saved quietly, peacefully.  Yes, we want salvation.  Yes, we want the peace of Jesus Christ in our hearts and lives, but we want that peace to come tranquilly without battles and struggles.  I know that=s the way I want it in my life.  I figure I have enough problems with the world in which I live B I don=t need or want any struggles with God.

Yet that=s not the picture we have in the Bible, certainly not the picture with which we=re confronted in our text from Genesis.  AIt=s been 20 years since Jacob left home.  Or, to be more accurate, it=s been 20 years since he fled his brother Esau=s wrath, heading into the wilderness where he dreamed his famous dream with the ladder, proving once and for all that God is not a moralist.  Jacob is a liar and a cheat (he stole his brother=s birthright and lied to his father B read the story in Genesis) and still he gets the dream B his own holy vision of the traffic between heaven and earth.  We=d think this dream would=ve changed Jacob, but it didn=t.  Before he leaves Bethel, the site of his dream about the ladder to heaven, this King of Deals cuts another deal.  ASpeaking to no one in particular, but loud enough for anyone at the top of the ladder to hear, he says, >If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father=s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God=s house.=  Then, dropping his ruse, he switches his pronouns.  >And of all that you give me, I will surely give one tenth to you.= (Genesis 28:20-22).@  Jacob was into deal making because Jacob wanted to be in control.

Have you ever tried to make a deal with God?  I have.  When I was playing football in college, I said to God, AIf you get me to the pros, God, then I=ll be a great speaker for You.  I=ll go out on the lecture circuit with Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  Make me a star, and I=ll use my star power for You.@  What happened?  I didn=t become a pro football player, but I am a minister, doing my best to speak for God.  This is what usually happens when we try and make deals with God.  God wins.

God wins because God is in control, not us.  Now, Athere=s nothing wrong with letting God know what we want, as long as we don=t mistake our list for the covenant.  The covenant has no conditions.  The covenant is no deal.  It is God=s promise to be our God, which contains within it the promise that we shall be God=s people.  The covenant describes for us how it is between us and God, describes our relationship with God, and our only choice is whether to believe it or not, accept it or not.

ATruth is, we want to be in control just like Jacob.  But we aren=t in control of life, are we?  Someone says, >How are you?= and we decide to tell her the truth.  >I=m crazed,= we say, my life is a mess.  I hate losing control like this.=  Then, if she=s a good friend, she laughs at us.  >You don=t hate losing control,= she says, >you hate losing the illusion that you were ever in control.=  And she=s right, though we=ll forget, because like almost everyone else in the world, we=ve been fooled into thinking that the struggle to control is what life is all about.@  9/11 was devastating to many in the US because it reminded us we=re not in control.

AIf it=s easier, consider Jacob.  20 years ago he poached his brother=s birthright and his blessing.  He conspired with his mother against his father and succeeded in tearing the family apart.  Then he fled with his stolen goods, picked up a dream along the way, and arrived in Haran, where he met his deal-making match in his uncle Laban.  He also met the love of his life in his cousin Rachel and ended up doing 14 years= hard labor for her hand.  Domestic life was good for Jacob; there=s nothing like 2 wives, 2 mistresses, and 11 children to snuff the illusion of control.  But Jacob=s deal-making days were not over.  Laban owed him one and Jacob collected, building up flocks as spotted and speckled as his own soul.  Then it was time to go home. >Return to the land of your ancestors and to your kindred,= the Lord said to Jacob, >and I will be with you.=

AThere it was again, that promise of relationship.  So Jacob made ready to go, with no conditions this time.  God had prospered him and he knew it.  There were no more >ifs= in him about who his God was.  >Deliver me, please, from the hand of my brother.=  That was all he asked, his own life and the lives of his family.  He=d changed, but he couldn=t imagine that Esau had, and he feared the brother whom he=d robbed not once but twice.  In a late effort to repay the debt and grease his own homecoming, he sent hundreds of animals ahead of him B great flocks of sheep and goats, camels and donkeys, moving across the countryside toward Esau like the living shadows of clouds.

AThen Jacob settled into a camp for the night, or at least he tried to, but a powerful restlessness had got hold of him and wouldn=t let him go.  So he got up that same night and moved everyone across the river B everyone and everything B and he returned to the other side alone in the dark. 

ANo sooner had he caught his breath than there was someone on his back.  The text says it=s a man, although there=s some doubt about that.  The Jewish Midrash calls him an angel.  Jacob himself says it was God who attacked him there by the river in the dark of the night.

AWhoever he is, he=s strong.  Jacob has lifted a stone pillar at Bethel and hauled another solid slab of rock off a well in Haran.  He=s a big man himself, but in this being, this angel, the well-muscled God, he=s found his rival.  There=s no talking at first, just the dull slap of flesh against flesh, as one of them gains a hold and then the other.  They fight in the darkness.  They fight by feel.  They fight until the sky begins to lighten, and then fear gives the stranger new strength.  He drops his weight and Jacob=s hip cracks, but Jacob still will not turn him loose.  The stranger speaks.  Physical strength has failed to decide this contest; it is time to try words.

A>Let me go,= he says to Jacob, >for the day is breaking.=  But Jacob won=t let go.  He=s got hold of someone who smells of heaven, and he simply won=t let him go.  And so Jacob, doing what Jacob does best, makes a deal.  >I will not let you go,= he says, >unless you bless me.=

AThe stranger responds by asking him his name, but why?  Is he getting the details he needs in order to pronounce the blessing, or is he refusing to bargain by changing the subject?  >What is your name?= he asks Jacob, as they lie locked in each other=s arms.  If you listen hard, you can hear the echo of another question, another time when someone else who could barely see asked Jacob to identify himself.  >I am Esau,= he said at that time, but 20 years plus this night have changed him.  >Jacob,= he answers this time, and the name falls away from him like a second skin.  He is no longer Jacob, the supplanter.  He is Israel, the survivor, the striver with God.

AThe stranger will not return the favor.  He keeps his name to himself, but he delivers the blessing nonetheless and the nightlong embrace is over.  Jacob limps toward his reunion with Esau, in whom he sees the face of God for the second time in one day.  His exile is over.  He is home.@

What do we make of this story of Jacob=s wrestling with God?  What does it say to us today?  As I began, the story reminds us again that God is God and we don=t, can=t, understand God=s ways.  Jacob isn=t the type of individual that we=d pick as a biblical hero.  He could be the hero of one of today=s amoral movies, or the hero of some Greek tragedy where the main character carries within him the seeds of his own destruction.  Jacob would fit in well there, but not as the hero of a Bible story where God rewards good behavior and punishes bad.  Jacob shouldn=t be blessed.  Jacob should be punished.  Jacob shouldn=t be rewarded for wrestling with God, or with God=s angel.  Jacob should be totally defeated.  Yet Jacob is blessed.  Good news for we who are so much like Jacob.

But the blessing came with a severe injury.  I confess I don=t know why exactly.  Why a blessing with an injury.  Can we expect injury when we wrestle with God?  Are we even supposed to wrestle with God?  Maybe.  But maybe the story is only for Jacob, Jacob who was always making deals, Jacob who couldn=t seem to learn that God was in control. Jacob won his blessing, but received his injury in the process. 

Maybe Jacob=s injury is the key here.  Jacob was blessed B but God had already promised to bless him.  When Jacob wrestled with God he was wrestling for something God already wanted to give him.  Does that sound familiar?  Do we wrestle with God for things that God wants already to give us, like forgiveness and mercy, peace and justice?  Maybe so.

In wrestling with God for what he was already going to get, Jacob was injured; something happened to his hip.  Many of you have had hip injuries which have led to hip replacements.  The hip is replaced because movement becomes nearly impossible.  One can=t walk.  One can=t sit.  One can=t do all the things we take for granted.  A person with a hip injury becomes dependent upon others.  In other words, that person is no longer in control. 

To give up control is hard for us.  It would=ve been especially difficult for one like Jacob.  With his injured hip, no longer is he independent and in control.  Now, at the least he must use a cane.  More likely, Jacob is now dependent upon a servant to help him get around.  So Jacob the supplanter, the trickster, the wheeler-dealer, the one who always sought to be in control, becomes Israel, the survivor, the striver with God.  He has won what God wanted to give him in the first place.  He has won but no longer will he be fully in control.  Each time he takes a step, he knows that God is in control.

And what of you and me?  Do we wrestle with God?  Should we wrestle with God?  Perhaps a better question is, does God wrestle with us, because Jacob didn=t go looking for the wrestling match with God.  Does God wrestle us for control of our lives?  Maybe.  Maybe God wrestles with us more than we want to believe.  Maybe it=s time to stop wrestling with God and turn control of our lives over to God so that, unlike Jacob, we need not walk away from God with the blessing God wants to give to us, but with a hip displaced or broken.  May we freely accept that which God seeks to give us by turning control of our lives over to God.

Fleming continued his research on penicillin, but eventually came to the conclusion that it held no promise as a drug because though it sometimes was very effective, often it was not.  This was primarily due to Fleming’s use of penicillin as a surface antiseptic.  Secondly, it was too difficult to isolate the penicillin from the rest of the mold culture, and so Fleming gave up on the drug.  It wasn’t until the work of Ernst Chain, Howard Florey, and Norman Heatley that penicillin’s true value became known and was put to use – just in time for World War II .^[1]

One of the things we may learn from this parable of the wheat and weeds that Jesus told, and I believe there are many different things to be learned from each of Jesus’ parables, one of the things we can learn is that it’s not my role, and it’s not your role, it’s not the role of the church to separate the wheat from the weeds, because when we start deciding which is good and which is bad, which is grain and which is weed we’re going to do more harm than good.  Specifically, the Master says, “In gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”  I believe we don’t go too far from this point when we say that as was the case with penicillin, we can’t always tell what’s going to be good and what’s going to be bad.  It’s best just to leave the crop until harvest.

I’m guessing that the servants wouldn’t have been too happy with that response from their Boss.  One of the joys of serving the congregation in North Dakota was looking out on the beautiful wheat fields.  Whether the fields were green or had turned golden as the harvest approached, it was wonderful to look out on the fields gently swaying in the breeze.  The grain fields were simply beautiful – at least the fields that hadn’t been contaminated with the Russian thistle weed.  I’m told that the Russian thistle isn’t native to North Dakota, but was introduced into that state at least,  as a flower.   Some housewife saw the thistle somewhere, liked the flower it produces, and brought it to her farm, where it produced and produced and now is no longer called a flower but a weed, a weed that stands above the wheat, robbing the wheat of needed water and nutrients, costing the farmers millions of dollars, and just looking ugly in the middle of a golden field.  Though the farmers spray Roundup^© each Spring, the Russian thistle never seems to be totally destroyed.

I can imagine the servants in this parable looking out at the ripening field and muttering under their breath about those lousy weeds.  As the parable tells us, they wanted to go into the field and remove the weeds, but the Boss said “No.”  “No.  Wait until the harvest.  We’ll take care of the weeds then.”

Who would want to wait for the harvest to rid the field of the weeds?  Not those servants, and not us, if we’re honest.  Don’t we want to get rid of all the weeds that fill our lives?  Well, yes and no.  We want to get rid of the weeds that bother us, the weeds that we too believe our enemy has planted, but we’re less willing to get rid of those weeds that are firmly rooted in us, those bad habits that we may have.  Which is one of the problems with this parable.  If bad habits are weeds in our lives, is Jesus telling us that we shouldn’t try and rid ourselves of those bad habits?  No.  In the passage to the Romans that Ann read for us this morning, Paul says we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” and therefore, he goes on to say, we should “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is [our] spiritual worship.”  He then says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.”^[2]   That doesn’t sound like we should leave the weeds of our lives alone until the harvest, God’s harvest.  Jesus isn’t talking in this parable about our personal lives.

Rather, Jesus is talking more generally.  He’s looking at the larger picture.  Perhaps, as NT Wright comments, this is a parable that offers advice on our human question of why God doesn’t do something about all of life’s weeds.  Wright says that “this is perhaps the most frequent question that people ask Christian leaders and teachers – and those of some other faiths, too.  Tragedies happen.  Horrific accidents devastate lives and families.  Tyrants and bullies force their own plans on people and crush opposition and they seem to get away with it.  And sensitive souls ask, again and again, why is God apparently silent?  Why doesn’t [God] step in and stop it?^[3]

This parable offers something of an answer to our questions of why evil survives in the world.  It may not be the answer we want to hear, nor may it be as complete as we’d like it to be, but it is suggestive.  “In the end, the parable states what all of us know: in this world, the good thrives alongside the bad, evil does occur right next to us, and if you’re going to grow in God’s garden, you better get used to being among wheat and weeds.

“This is a different image of God than we usually have.  Most of us think that being God means that God can do anything God wants to do.  But maybe the story says that being God can mean God can not do anything God wants not to do.  God doesn’t work on our schedule.  God, for reasons known best to God, does not aggressively punish, root out, and judge people now.  God waits.  God takes God’s time.^[4]

Which may not be what we want to hear at first, but may be more acceptable to us when we stop and think about it.  I began this sermon with the story of the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming.  I suspect that eventually penicillin would’ve been discovered even if Fleming had been a better lab technician and had taken care of those culture dishes before he went on vacation.  Others had worked, and were working on penicillin besides Fleming.  But the discovery may have come along later rather than sooner, and we can’t know how many soldiers would’ve died in WWII because of infections had Fleming not discovered the penicillin when he did. 

What Fleming would’ve seen as a weed before his vacation turned out to be a wonderful, even miraculous wheat.  In the same way, that beautiful flower we call Russian thistle turned out to be one of the most noxious weeds to plague the farmers of North Dakota.  We can’t always tell wheat from weed, good from bad. 

The trouble is, we think we can tell.  Like the servants in the parable, we’re ready to march into the field and pull out what we “know” to be weeds.  We’re ready to pull them out and throw them in the weed pile, not understanding the damage we may be doing.  We may be pulling out the good and not the bad, and even if we can pull out the bad, we may do more damage to the good than had we just left it alone.

That’s an interesting thought, isn’t it, a thought that goes against our nature.  Like the servants, we want to get rid of the weeds, not understanding that to do so may well cause more harm than it will do good.  For example.  Most ministers have been asked to marry couples where the bride-to-be is either pregnant or where the couple already has a child.  Now, clearly that couple has had sexual relations before being married.  They’ve sinned.  I know of some ministers who therefore refuse to marry them. 

On the other hand, I believe that because we’re all sinners here in church, the best place for a couple in those circumstances to be is with people who will accept them, and show them God’s love.  Do I like that they’re having a baby before they’re married?  No.  But I also believe that it doesn’t help the situation for the church to be judgmental and refuse to welcome them into the church.  How are they going to find Christ’s love if we turn them away?  How will they know that God loves them if we in the church reject them?  If we turn them away, that not only alienates the couple, but usually their families as well.  The greater good is to show love and even acceptance to them despite their mistake.

Because finally, even though we like to think we’re the wheat in this parable, this may not always be the case. Margaret Guenther, in reflecting on this parable, writes, “lately I find myself thinking quite a bit about the weeds and wondering whether they have anything to do with me.  I try to persuade myself that Jesus is talking about someone else, someone unworthy of saving, all those people who surely have no place in God’s kingdom.  Surely he’s talking about those weedy people whom I would consign to the compost heap if not to the cleansing fire.  It’s much more comforting to hope that I am pure wheat and that the weeds are quite disposable.

But perhaps the concept of weeds is more complicated than I thought.  In my honest moments, I fear that I am not pure wheat, but that I have some qualities of the weeds in me, qualities that I need to be free of before I can be truly fruitful.  Or maybe I fail to grow and thrive because – fine-quality durum wheat that I am – I let myself be choked and thwarted by the weeds around me.^[5]

Sometimes, I’m sure that I’m the wheat.  After all, I’ve given my life to Jesus Christ.  I’ve walked through the waters of baptism.  I do my very best to follow Jesus.  Yet I also know that if we’d asked those Pharisees that had so many run-ins with Jesus if they were wheat or weed, they’d certainly have said that they were wheat.  So maybe we can be glad that Jesus allows wheat and weed to grow.  We can certainly be glad that God will do the harvesting.  God will determine what is wheat and what is weed.  Personally, I’m really glad of that.  I’m glad it’s not my job to separate the weed from the wheat.  I’d certainly make too many mistakes, pulling out the wheat, leaving weeds behind.  I have enough trouble just dealing with myself to be honest.  I’m glad the business of harvesting, the business of judging, is in the hands of the God who loves each of us enough to have sent Jesus Christ to live and die for us.

One final thought along this line. Well-known American Baptist, Roger Fredrikson wrote a book a number of years ago.  I don’t remember anything he wrote, except the title of the book – God Loves the Dandelions.^[6] As we think about weeds and wheat, may we remember that God loves the dandelions just as God loves us.  God loves the weeds and God loves the wheat.  Thanks be to God.

The preacher noted that if you go to the garden store and buy a packet of seeds, those seeds will have an expiration date stamped upon them.  “Are we sometimes guilty of sowing old seeds that have expired?” the preacher asked.  With that, the preacher castigated the listeners and the readers for our church’s outmoded, old-fashioned ways of being the church.^[1]

When I read of this sermon, my first reaction was that the preacher had been right on target, and had developed Jesus’ parable well.  We don’t always patiently prepare the soil, do we?  The farmers I knew in North Dakota began preparing their soil in the Spring by picking up all the rocks in the field that the winter and spring freezing and thawing had pushed to the surface.  Then they’d spray for weeds and do their cultivation, making sure that the soil was ready for planting.  They spent a lot of time just getting the soil ready to be planted.

There’s much to be said about this approach to evangelism as well.  My friend, Dr. Russ Jones, who was the evangelism professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary, once lead an evangelism workshop at the church I pastored in Kansas City.  He taught those of us who attended the workshop to specifically identify friends or family members with whom we’d like to share the Gospel.  That was step 1.  Step 2 was to begin praying for that person; both that an opportunity would present itself to share the Good News with that person, and that the Holy Spirit would open the heart of the person to be receptive to God’s message.  Step 3 was to learn more about the person, what was going on in their life at the time.  This didn’t mean discovering any deep, dark secrets, just learning about that person as we would any friend.  Much of the time, we’ll already know all that we’d need to know to share the Good News.  Step 4 was practicing what we wanted to say to the person so that when the opportunity presented itself we’d have some idea of what we wanted to say.  The better prepared we are to share the Gospel, the easier it is to do that.  The final step, step 5 was to put the first 4 steps into practice.

I trust you can see how these 5 steps fit into preparing the soil.  The preacher whom I quoted earlier chastised us for not doing the appropriate cultivation; not working the soil, rooting out the weeds, doing our preparatory “homework.”  Those are the things that Russ taught those attending the workshop to do, and they make a lot of sense.

There are also many in the church today who say that the church’s way of being the church is outmoded and old-fashioned.  They would say that like the packet of seeds that’s been sitting on the shelf too long, the church is “guilty of sowing seeds that have expired.”  Maybe we do sing songs that are too old.  Maybe my style of preaching is old-fashioned and out of date.  Maybe we should be providing cappuccinos for all who gather for worship. 

All these points are worthy of our consideration, I think.  Our Evangelism/Membership committee has been talking for the last few months about holding an evangelism training session for First Baptist.  We did this 6 or 7 years ago, and so it would probably be helpful if we held a workshop again.  Many of you have shared pluses and minuses of singing different hymns and songs.  Some want more favorites.  Some want newer and more  praise hymns.  We’ve had these hymnals since before I came to serve as pastor.  I’ve read recently of a couple of new hymnals coming out in the next year or two.  It may be time to think about a new set of hymnals for our worship service.  We will be adding new praise hymns to our blue praise books sometime this Fall.  There are things that we can do to better cultivate the soil around us.

But having said that, I also want us to realize that the preacher’s sermon doesn’t really fit this text.  This parable in Matthew 13 isn’t about we believers nearly as much as it is about God.  This is a story about how God works, because, let’s face it, we humans don’t work this way.  We don’t farm this way.

I remember as a kid having Sunday School lessons on this story, and hearing sermons on the passage for that matter.  Always, or nearly always, the interpretation was that this was how the farmers sowed the seed in Jesus’ day.  I can remember pictures of the farmer reaching into the pouch he had slung over his shoulder and tossing out the seed, not really worrying about where the seed landed.  He’d throw it out and some would land on the path, and some in the weeds, and some in the rocks.  I always assumed that either the farmer couldn’t help that, couldn’t help where he tossed it, or else he didn’t care where it landed.

As I’ve thought about this passage more and more, however, I realize a couple of things.  First, the farmers of Jesus’ day would’ve cared more about where the seed landed than the farmers of today – and today’s farmers worry a lot about where their seed is planted.  The farmers then were much more on a subsistence level than today’s farmers.  Things are tight for farmers today, but they were really tight for farmers then.  Secondly, if today’s farmers remove the rocks and remove the weeds before they plant, surely the farmers in Jesus’ day would’ve done the same thing.  And if there were rocks that couldn’t be removed, then they wouldn’t have sown their precious seeds close to those rocks.  And if the seed landed on the path, they could’ve swept the seed back onto the good soil rather than lose that seed.   No farmer, then or now, would broadcast the seed into the weeds, or onto the rocks.  They also would’ve known their field well enough so that they’d have known where the shallow soil was.  Unless this was the first year that they’d sown this field, they would’ve known where the good soil was and planted only there.

So I don’t think this is a story about humans.  It’s a story about God.  We want to be efficient.  We don’t want waste, because our resources are limited.  We’ve only got so much seed.  We’ve only got so much land.  We’ve only got so much water, so much fertilizer, so much time.

Back when I took pictures with my camera that used film, I was always conscious of how much the film cost, and even more, how much it was going to cost to develop that film.  Because of those costs, I’d usually take 1 or 2 pictures of a scene, or a person or a group, hoping those pictures would turn out.  If it was a really important picture, I’d maybe take a 3^rd shot, but rarely more than 3.  And I’d expect to have those 1 or 2 or 3 pictures turn out well.  Professional photographers, on the other hand, used to take pictures of a scene by the dozen, knowing if they got one good picture out of all they took, that was enough, well worth the film they exposed and developed.

Today, with the advent of digital cameras, I’m learning to be much more extravagant with my picture taking.  With 2 gig and even 4 gig memory chips, it’s hard to take enough pictures to use up that memory.  I can now be extravagant with my picture taking, shooting as many shots as I can, just like the pros, hoping that 1 or 2 will be very good.

I think this is the way it is with God, too.  God has always been like the professional photographer, taking dozens and dozens of shots to get 1 good picture.  God is the extravagant sower, Jesus teaches us here in Matthew, throwing out the seed all over the place, with no regard to where it’s falling, because God knows the harvest will be plentiful. 

So too, God throws God’s blessing around all over, not worrying all that much about where those blessings fall.  From our perspective, lots of those blessings are wasted on those who don’t even believe in God.  Lots of those blessings fall on the unknowing or the uncaring.  But that doesn’t seem to bother God at all.

Think about the world, God’s creation.  Why didn’t God create just one species of flower?  That’s really all creation needed.  But no.  There are all kinds of flowers: all the colors of the rainbow, all sizes, all shapes.  My guess is there are flowers blooming in some remote corners of the world that few if any humans have even seen.  Some would say their beauty is wasted because there aren’t people around to enjoy the flowers, but not God.  God created extravagantly.

More and more, I’m coming to believe in this extravagant God, especially when it comes to God’s love, and God’s mercy.  God loves all of us, sinners though we are.  God loved us before we believed in Jesus Christ, and God loves us even now – when we do things we know we shouldn’t do.  After all, before we accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we had an excuse for not obeying God – we didn’t know, we didn’t believe.  But once we accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, then that excuse is gone.  We know what God wants – at least in general.  God wants us to love God with all our hearts, and with all our souls, and with all our minds, and with all our strength, and God wants us to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.  That sums up the Law according to Jesus. 

And that summation is an extravagant account of love.  Because God loves us, sinners though we were and sinners though we continue to be, we’re to love those around us, our neighbors, sinners though they are. Jesus doesn’t say, “Don’t love them if they treat you badly.”  He doesn’t say, “Don’t love them if they’re Democrat,” or “Don’t love them if they’re Republican.”  He doesn’t say, “Don’t love them if they’re young, or if they’re old, or if they’re brown, or black or white.”  Jesus says, “Love God and love your neighbor.”  No exceptions.  No qualifications.  No alternatives, because God loves those we don’t even like.

Usually we respond, “But what about ‘those’ people?”  where each of us define “those” people according to the people we don’t care for, or those we’d like to avoid, or those who irritate us, or those who do things we don’t believe in.  And Jesus responds by sowing his seed everywhere.  Jesus responds by loving that sinner on the cross next to him,^[2] a criminal who did who knows what.  Jesus responds by forgiving the woman caught in the act of adultery^[3].  Jesus responds by teaching us to forgive not 7 times, but 70 times 7 times