Wheat and Weeds Together

Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 20, 2008, Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-42

When Beth and I lived in Charlottesville, we had a yard about the size of a postage stamp.  We had a push mower, and every other week or so, I’d go out to the yard and mow that sucker in about eight minutes flat.  Then we moved to Farmville and bought a house with a pretty big yard.  We thought it would be great to have a place for church parties and picnics and play dates with the kids.  All that’s true, but it takes me a lot longer than eight minutes to mow the lawn!  So we got a riding mower, and I experienced my first sense of manly pride in mowing.  A few swipes of a push mower just doesn’t do the trick – but riding my Cub Cadet, feeling the power of the engine – now that’s pure masculinity!  I remember finishing the job that first time, pleased with my accomplishment, wiping the sweat from my (manly) brow – when Thea came out of the house and said, “Daddy, what happened to my flowers?”  “Flowers?  What flowers?” I said.  Beth came out and joined the conversation.  “You know, the seeds she planted last month.  The ones she’s been patiently waiting to blossom.”  “You mean those gangly weed looking things were flowers?” I asked.  Ooops.  As a side note, you should probably know that Beth is now the one who mows our lawn.  Talk about a blow to my masculinity!

Thea took it well – and if I remember correctly, the plants themselves somehow survived and sprouted forth a few days later.  But the experience made me do some thinking.  You see, Thea planted those seeds, and when she looked out in that corner of the yard, she saw young plants rapidly growing and on the verge of blossoming.  I looked at that same corner of the lawn and mistakenly saw some leggy weeds – and I mowed those bad boys down.  Frankly, my own vision probably wasn’t entirely wrong; I’m sure there were plenty of weeds mixed in with Thea’s flowers, but I didn’t have the vision or understanding to know the difference.

Our story today encourages us to have vision and understanding, as well.  Jesus continues his series of parables using the commonplace example of farming to paint a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like. 

Extravagant Investments, Extraordinary Returns

Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 13, 2008, Ninth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

I’ve got a question for you this morning.  How many of you either presently or in the past have farmed or cultivated crops?  Oh good!  I need your help, since, being a city boy, I know very little about farming.  What are some things that you need to prepare the soil to successfully plant a crop?  How would you go about sowing your seeds?  (This is not a rhetorical question, you can go ahead and answer.)

From everything that I’ve read and seen, if a person is going to make a living out of farming, then the farmer will need to prepare the field carefully, ridding it of big rocks, tilling the soil to break up lumps of dirt, and then carefully plant and fertilize the seed into the well-prepared soil.  As I travel around, I’m often struck by the beauty of farmlands that have rows and rows of crops lining the field.  You can tell that not much was left to chance in the planting of those seeds.

Now suppose you hear about a farmer who, one day, decided to plant a field.  He loads up his broadcast seed spreader, hooks it up to the back of his John Deere, fires it up, and starts spreading seed while still rumbling down the asphalt driveway, indiscriminately scattering seed onto the road and gravel pits, into the side ditches, and upon the briar and weed infested patches before he even gets to his fields.  There are three words that might describe this sower: “dumb,” “crazy” and “ex-farmer.”  Everyone knows that seed is a precious commodity, and one doesn’t just indiscriminately scatter it around if one wants to maximize the return on one’s investment and maximize the size of the harvest.

But that’s exactly what this sower in Jesus’ parable does: he indiscriminately “sows” the seed onto all sorts of unsuitable places. 

Invitation to Rest

Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 6, 2008, Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

During these summer months, many of us look forward to taking our vacations.  In the United States, the average number of vacation days per year is 13 days.  In Korea and Japan, it is 25 days.  In Germany it is 35 days.  And in Italy, it tops out at 42 days of vacation a year.[1] Now, that’s some serious rest and relaxation!  And while 42 days of vacation might sound wonderful to us now, I hazard to guess that after five days of vacation, most of us will get restless and antsy about work, calling the office and sneaking an email here and there.  And after ten days of “vacation,” our spouses and children will be begging us to return back to work because they’ll need a vacation from us!  We in the United States live in a workaholic culture where much of our identity and significance are derived from how busy we are, and we demand high levels of productivity from ourselves and from others.  We live hectic lives.  We burn the candle from both ends.  At the end of the day, when we are spent and exhausted, we want to be like that woman in the old TV commercial who luxuriates in a bubble bath while saying, “Calgon, take me away!”  But bubble baths can only do so much.  The fact is, we are a people who are chronically weary and burdened.  And Jesus here is seemingly offering us a gracious invitation to rest.  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

What a wonderful invitation!  Those words are like a peaceful oasis of refreshment in the midst of the desert of our busyness and restlessness.  Now, if only Jesus could have stopped right there, I would have been totally with him, for who doesn’t need a break from work and the burdens of everyday living?  But Jesus continues his invitation in verse 29: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.”  Now, what could Jesus have meant by that?  When we think of the word yoke, we have in mind a crossbar with two U-shaped pieces that encircle the necks of a pair of oxen working together.  A yoke is something that binds two beasts of burden together for the purpose of farm work.  It is usually a metaphor used for any burden or bondage, not for rest and relaxation.  You won’t find one picture of a yoke in a brochure for some cushy spa vacation.  If Jesus had taken lessons from Madison Avenue, He might have said, “Come to me and take my hammock.  Come to me and have an umbrella drink by the beach.  Come to me and enjoy a massage.”  But “Come to me and take up my yoke”?  Doesn’t that seem a little sadistic for Jesus to add an additional burden of a yoke on people who were already weary and burdened?