Sermon for July 19, 2026, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (Eighth Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 11—Series A)

“Awaiting God’s Good Harvest”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield CT

July 19, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 13:

²⁴[Jesus] put before them another parable, saying, “The reign of heaven has become like a man who had sown good seed in his field. ²⁵But while the people were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds on top among the wheat and went away. ²⁶And when the small plants sprouted and produced fruit, then the weeds appeared also. ²⁷And the householder’s servants came and said to him, ‘Sir, you sowed good seed in your field, didn’t you? From where, then, does it have weeds?’ ²⁸And he said to them, ‘A hostile person did this.’ And the servants said to him, ‘Do you want, then, that we should go and collect them?’ ²⁹But he said, ‘No, lest while you are collecting the weeds you uproot the wheat together with them. ³⁰Allow both to grow together until the harvest, and at the harvest time I will say to the reapers, ‘Gather first the weeds and bind them into bundles in order to burn them, but gather the wheat into my storehouse.’” . . . ³⁶Then, when He had left the crowds, He went into the house. And His disciples came to Him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷And He answered and said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, ³⁸and the field is the world, and the good seed—these are the sons of the reign, and the weeds are the sons of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the consummation of the age, and the harvesters are angels. ⁴⁰Therefore, just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so it will be at the consummation of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will gather out of His reign all causes of stumbling and those who are doing lawlessness. ⁴²And they will throw them into the fiery furnace; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth there. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the reign of their Father. Let the one who has ears hear.”

          The Church seems to have it tough in our culture. The weeds are sprouting and growing all over the place. There are those who are now telling Christians that they want us not just to be quiet but to be gone, attacking the very heart of our doctrine and faith and even rejecting it as evil and damning to society. While this will inevitably distress us, it should not surprise us. Jesus and the Early Church undoubtedly believed in the existence and work of the devil and resisted it, as we also must. The devil is the one who sows weeds in our communities that grow up and seem to threaten our life as the Church.

          Besides the growing love affair people have with their possessions and wealth, there is the growing challenge of godless and evil ideologies and false beliefs that seek to unravel God’s created order for sexuality, the family, and marriage—the very fabric of our society through which God continues to provide for and take care of our world. And what is even more concerning perhaps is that these ideas are believed and embraced by more and more people. The weeds seem to be overgrowing the whole field!

          There are also weeds growing right in the middle of the Church. In Jesus’ parable, these weeds have their roots destructively intertwined with the wheat: false and misleading teaching, causing confusion, heretical spiritual movements that may look healthy and helpful at first glance, but which turn out to be wrong pathways that ultimately lead us away from Christ and His work.

          One example is the false teaching that the Gospel is merely the acceptance of all diversity, including toleration and even celebration of sexually immoral and deviant behavior and lifestyles. The Gospel is actually about repentance for all sins, including sexual immorality, and the forgiveness of Christ flowing from His cross and resurrection bestowed upon us sinners in His Name. There are also those in congregational life that are unfair and unloving to their brothers and sisters in Christ, putting at risk the witness and mission of a congregation.

          How, then, do we deal with the weeds? It can be very tempting for us as we see all this to try to become “weed-whacking” crusaders. Evil and damaging influences in the Church need to be weeded out, gotten rid of once and for all. Our spiritual lives depend on it. We need to act to eradicate these weeds, don’t we? It’s up to us, isn’t it?

          There’s no question that we must not aid and abet or passively accept the evils we experience and see in our society and the Church. We are called to speak the truth, to witness to Christ and the Gospel as they are revealed in Scripture and explained in our Lutheran Confessions. St. Paul has written in Ephesians 4, “Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. . . . Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. . . . Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:15-16, 25-32 ESV).

          In Jesus’ parable today, however, our Lord warns us against taking the forcible removal of the weeds into our own hands, tempted though we may be to do so. That is not up to us.

          In the parable, the householder tells His servants to leave the weeds and the wheat to grow together until the harvest, because the situation is not so simple as it may look. If one were to valiantly uproot the weeds, the wheat would be pulled up too—so closely entwined are their roots. When we think we can ever completely purge and cleanse the Church of its false and evil influences, it always turns out badly. This work requires wisdom, justice, and insight which we, still imperfect as we are, do not have. So, in our attempts, the wheat gets pulled up with the weeds.

          Perhaps you have heard of the Spanish Inquisition. (Many people know of it because of the song-and-dance number in Mel Brooks’s History of the World, Part 1). The fifteenth-century Tribunal of the Holy Office of Inquisition was begun with great hopes to rid the church in Spain of false and misleading teachers. But, as we know, it became a misguided and ultimately fanatical, paranoid, and even murderous force that did untold injustice and violence to the Church.

          During the Reformation era in Europe, the radical reformer Thomas Müntzer saw the great evils at work in the Church. He called on all the true Christians to join the armies of God and put all unbelievers and false Christians to death with the sword. This demonic crusade resulted in the unjust deaths of thousands of people.

          Jesus’ warning to us in our text, then, is an important one. Yet, one might ask, “What about all the damage and loss the Church is suffering as the weeds grow?” We might feel understandably anxious that if we do not try to intervene in some decisive way, the Chruch’s cause will be lost. But Jesus gives to us His gracious wisdom and comfort for us as we struggle and suffer under the weight of the weeds. The harvest is coming! Then God Himself will justly and truly judge. It is He and He alone who is able and who will do the weeding. He sees all, knows all, and will bring all into the light.

          After all, God is the one who from eternity devised the plan, the only plan, that could save any of us. Because of our own sinfulness, we deserved to be uprooted and thrown into the fire. But God the Father sent His Son Jesus to suffer the fiery torments of hell for us on the cross. In order to accomplish our salvation, the Sower, Jesus, became good seed or wheat Himself! He was planted in our world, just as the wheat of the parable was planted. Jesus, who took to Himself human flesh and blood, came to our world to become “wheat of wheat,” sharing in our soil. At the cross, the Sower-become-seed, the wheat of our wheat, was made to be a weed in our place! God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). And Jesus was treated like a weed when God turned away from His Son as Jesus suffered hell—our hell—on the cross. In a sense, Jesus was “gathered and burned in the fire,” for God spared not His own Son even this!

          From the sacrifice of Jesus, we receive the forgiveness of all our sins, our false beliefs, and our unloving and unkind words and actions. The Church exists to deliver the forgiveness won by Christ to the world by means of the Word and Sacraments of Christ. We Christians are the wheat in the world, the good seed, bearing the fruits of faith, repentance, and love in Christ through the forgiveness of sins as we share the Good News of His death and resurrection with the world. We do so as we remember that God’s Word never goes forth from His mouth in vain. It always does what He sends it to do—to forgive sins, create saving faith in Christ, and bring all to life everlasting. Since this is the case, God will not allow anyone to be uprooted until the last stalk of wheat has been brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

          The assurance and comfort for the Church as we struggle through history with the work of the devil in the world and in the Church is that the day of resolution and redemption is coming. God will not tolerate evil indefinitely, and it is up to Him, not us, to bring in His harvest and sort out the weeds from the wheat.

          While we await Christ’s return on the Last Day, you and I are called to trust and to be faithful in our lives of daily repentance and faith. Jesus teaches and, through His Spirit, empowers us to be patient in suffering and live with the evil and opposition around us, sustained by the hope of what we cannot yet see. We know that the glory which will finally be revealed by Christ’s victory will outshine all we now have to bear. God is the reigning Lord of history and all its players and events. He is the Lord who has announced in advance the things that will happen. He is the Savior and King on whose word and power to fulfill it we can completely trust. Amen.