Our Bishop, Ken Carter, shared these thoughts on the scripture from this past Sunday and the scripture for this coming Sunday:

The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 describes the contexts in which the word of God is heard and lived, or not. The different soils (hard surface, shallow, thorny, good) are analogous to the way we hear the word and the way we live. Jesus then offers another parable, about good soil in which weeds and wheat grow up together.

This is a biblical vision of the church–not a political vision, not a sociological vision, not a marketing vision. On this side of heaven the church is always wheat and weeds, a school for saints and a hospital for sinners at the same time.

The two parables, side by side, call us to the inner change of being the good soil, which is holiness, receptivity and transparency, and the outer change of refraining from purging or purifying the church and allowing God to be the judge, at the harvest, which is in his own time and in his own ways.

We can live into this call because we are deeply into the Sundays after Pentecost, and we believe that the Holy Spirit continues to do this work among the saints and sinners who compose every church, and indeed among the wheat and weeds that grow in every human heart.

Amen, Bishop!

See you all on Sunday as we hear more about wheat and weeds.

Cliff

The Hope For Families Center