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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. In this time, O God, grant that we might have ears open to your still speaking voice, hearts softened and weathered enough to welcome your Spirit into our presence,…

In Matthew 13 Jesus shares several agricultural parables that explain the nature of the Gospel and the Kingdom of Heaven in surprising ways. One of the most surprising is the parable of the wheat and the weeds, which reveals that wheat and weeds are allowed to grow up together, and only separated at the harvest. Why can't the wheat and weeds be separated earlier? Stephen unpacks the agriculture behind the parable's image, and the theology behind its meaning. [NOTE: a digital glitch during recording damaged the last five minutes of the audio, but it is still intelligible, so please perservere if you can.]

This past week, as I was working at weeding our garden, something happened that reminded me of our text for this morning (which, by the way, is ). I was trying to weed the section of our garden where we are growing peas, beans, corn, and tomatoes. This portion of the garden we have fenced in since the…

The proper interpretation of this parable is found when one recognizes what the field is.