“A Weedy World” (In bulletin as “Grow Where You’re Planted)
Preached Sunday, July 23, 2023
Preached Sunday, July 23, 2023
In case you didn’t realize it yet, you have a millennial pastor. Millennials are loosely defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996. So we’re between 27 and 42 years old - not teenagers, that’s Gen Z, born between 1997 and 2012 - so people between the ages of 11 and 26. I share this because millennials and Gen Z (and the generation before millennials - Gen X) are largely missing from our churches - especially mainline denominations. In February of 2023, Relevant Magazine reported a study on Gen Z trends that said that only 10% of Gen Z attend church at least once a month and only 39% say that religion is important to them. For comparison, 29% of millennials attend church at least once a month. And across studies, the trend is clear - from the Silent Generation, to Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z…involvement in church and even religion as a whole, is on a downward trend with each new generation.
I share this because I want to help you understand what it means to be a multi-generational church and what it means to have a pastor who is in a different generation than most of those in the pews. I have actually found the latter to be such a reciprocally rewarding relationship. As members of different generations, pastor and congregants, we have so much to teach each other - to equally listen and learn. In his book, “On The Brink of Everything”, American writer, teacher, and activist Parker Palmer talks about the wonder and benefit of being in relationship with those of different generations than you. In part he says, “It is the dance of the spiraling generations, in which the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, reweaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn.”
Okay, I need to reel this back in because what I actually want to talk to you about today is sin. But it’s all related. See, as I said, part of my job is to help you understand what it means to be a multi-generational church and a large part of that is outreach to Millennials and Gen Z, younger generations that are largely missing from our faith communities. And so a common misconception about outreach to these younger generations is to not talk about sin. I have seen this shared on listicles and online articles about being in ministry to, for, and with younger generations. And I am going to say the opposite to you, younger generations are actually desperate to hear about sin - but to hear about it in a way that is different from the traditional sense in which they have normally heard it talked about.
The ways in which the Church normally talks about sin involves finger pointing, blaming and shaming. A personal list of wrongdoings that are thrown at people with the intent of injecting a good dose of guilt and fear of hellfire. That understanding and approach to sin is counterproductive and actually downright harmful to the cause of the Gospel regardless of what generation people are in.
So when I say that younger generations are desperate to talk about sin, I am saying that we are desperate to hear the Church talk with relevance about the world we live in and the realities of evil all around us. Because we are all too aware of the evil around us that is the manifestation of sin - both individual sin and systemic, corporate sin.
Our dying planet.
Our dying children, in the halls of their schools.
The injustices that marginalized and oppressed groups experience on account of their race, gender, ethnicity, or other identifying marker.
The growing chasm between the rich and the poor as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The atrocities of war and violence on all scales.
And the list could go on.
These things are sin at work in our world. And we are all too aware of how they are at work in our lives and the lives of all those around us.
And in the midst of all this sin and evil in our world, younger generations have not turned to the Church for answers because the answers the Church has been traditionally giving people don’t ring true for them or don’t actually answer the questions they are asking. Answers have traditionally been about personal salvation, individualistic repentance, and a reward beyond this life. But what I believe that younger generations are craving is hope. Not hope in some distant future or heaven that seems lightyears away but hope for the here and now. We want solutions and a better life for now. We want social justice, equality, and equity. We have grown up in a world where the doomsday clock is dangerously close to midnight - right now 90 seconds from midnight, aka, the end of the world. And we, younger generations, and actually all generations, need real, visceral, embodied salvation - here and now. A reason to hope that we will not only be able to survive but to thrive - and that our children and our children’s children will have a world to call home and where, if they even have a planet to live on, where they don’t have to struggle every day to survive
…But those are not the answers or the hope that the Church, or really, anyone, has supplied them with. And so instead, younger generations, especially Gen Z have turned away from the Church, away from religion in general, and turned toward cynicism. Marketing firms have defined cynicism as one of the top four defining traits of Gen Z and it’s easy to see why - in a world where mass shootings are the number one cause of death in children, in a world where our ecosystems are becoming more and more inhospitable and extreme weather events more common, in a world of war, and a world where the future has never been promised to them… and then they are seeing very little to no efforts to make this world a better place…cynicism is a really easy place to land. Cynicism, and even nihilism, can also protect against the pain of this world and the uncertainty of the future. Protect like a shield around our hearts, but one that also walls off our hearts from the world in both directions.
This cynicism and nihilism are not the abundant life that God wishes for any of us. God wants us to have hope. To work towards making our world more like the Kingdom of God, more loving and more just. And to care deeply about ALL of God’s creation: our planet and each other.
And so, this is where we as a church need to rethink our approach to understanding and talking about sin for the benefit of all of God’s children and today’s Gospel reading is a good place to start.
Often when we talk about sin it is prescriptive, telling us what we should and should not do. But a helpful way to understand the sin-sick world we live in is not prescriptive but descriptive - to simply call it what it is: a world filled with sin. A world filled with weeds. In today’s parable, seeds have been planted in fertile soil. Seeds of Love. Seeds of Hope. Seeds of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But then, seeds for weeds are scattered in the same field. Seed of dissonance. Seeds of hate. Seeds of cynicism. And these seeds make it impossibly hard for the seeds of Love to grow.
And today, here and now, we live in a weedy world, a world where evil and the causes of evil are all around us. We live in a weedy world - a world where good and evil grow up alongside each other. We, I am sure, are all too familiar with this weedy paradox. We have already listed the reasons, the weeds, the sin, that choke out hope for an abundant life and future for younger generations.
Ever since Augustine, the concept of Original Sin has been ingrained in Christian theology and world worldview. This idea that sin is passed on genetically from Adam and Eve down to us today, so that every human born is inherently sinful. This understanding of sin leads us to that individualistic understanding of sin as a list of dos and don’ts that fails to resonate with the answers that our younger generations are seeking as they struggle to understand this weedy world they live in. Quick disclaimer: I am not saying that sin isn’t personal. We DO sin through individual actions. And, what I am saying is, we need to widen our understanding and ways we talk about sin. So John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, actually wrote about something called “Inbeing Sin.” While original sin is based on sin being passed on through parents and that first act of disobedience, “inbeing sin” is this idea that the world we live in is so filled with sin, so filled with weeds, that it is impossible for every person born into this world to not be affected - and infected - by it.
This is the world we live in, with the weeds and the wheat. Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a field with both grain and weeds. NOT that the Kingdom of Heaven will come when all the weeds are gone. But that the Kingdom of Heaven can be present, even amongst the weeds. That there can be Love and Hope, even in our weedy, sin-filled world. A theological term we have to describe this current state of our world: With the seeds of God’s Kingdom bearing fruit of love and hope and the seeds of evil filling our world with weeds, with sin sickness…with both these things existing at the same time, theologically we call this “the-already-but-not-yet.” That is, Jesus has ALREADY come to Earth and began to establish his Kingdom here and now…but he has NOT YET come again in final victory, not yet completed his salvific work, not yet redeemed all creation.
For Jesus WILL redeem all of creation. There is a wealth of Scriptures that talk about how God plans to redeem all of creation, create a new heaven and a new earth - and establish God’s Kingdom here on that new earth. Our passage from Romans this morning talks about this as well:
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.”
ALL of creation has been subject to sin, to weeds, bonded to the pain and decay of this world. We are ALL waiting for the redemption of our bodies, again, not just in a heaven after this life, but a redemption of our whole world, all of creation, new heaven and a new earth. God will recreate, save, redeem - everything. And THAT is our hope. It is as St. Teresa of Avila says, “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
And that is what the church needs to preach on sin and share with younger generations. That yes, we live in a weedy world. We live in a world where we deal with evil every day. We live in a world where it is easy for us to not see the harvest of love and hope growing because the weeds threaten to choke it out. And instead of giving into those weeds, instead of turning to cynicism, and instead of a shame and blame approach to understanding sin… let us offer ourselves, each other, younger generations, the whole world proof that those seeds of Love are still growing. And because those seeds of Love are still growing, there is HOPE for all of us, hope for the whole world, that all shall be well - that Christ will redeem ALL. That sin and evil and weeds will not win.
For today’s Scripture does not end with God being passive about the evil in this world. In fact, the last part of this passage can be downright jarring. When the harvest time comes...God will root out the evil from the good wheat. While the language of weeping and gnashing of teeth can be quite frightening, stop and think of what your reaction might be to having parts of your life that are not fruit-bearing being trimmed away by God. Or being trimmed away from those who are deadset on holding on to those weeds - because those weeds do benefit some. This weeding, it’s not an easy process. St. Teresa of Avila, the same one who I quoted “all shall be well” - she once complained to God that her life was too hard, that she faced trial and tribulation all the time. She writes that God replied, “Teresa, you are my friend.” She said, “If that’s how you treat your friends - no wonder you don’t have many!” The process of rooting out the weeds in our lives and in the world will be painful - but God can do it.
The end of this passage points toward a time when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized and the evil and causes of evil in this world will be no more… This is a message of hope for our weedy world, one all generations need to hear because it speaks directly to our reality of being overrun by weeds in our world. We see all the evil in this world. Violence and hate and oppression...we know it all too well… And we can know that God KNOWS and sees it and will defeat it, pulling out all the weeds.
In the meantime, let us trust in God, grow seeds of love and hope where we are planted - in a weedy world. And share those seeds of love and hope with ALL, because they are so desperately needed.
May it be so. Amen.
Okay, I need to reel this back in because what I actually want to talk to you about today is sin. But it’s all related. See, as I said, part of my job is to help you understand what it means to be a multi-generational church and a large part of that is outreach to Millennials and Gen Z, younger generations that are largely missing from our faith communities. And so a common misconception about outreach to these younger generations is to not talk about sin. I have seen this shared on listicles and online articles about being in ministry to, for, and with younger generations. And I am going to say the opposite to you, younger generations are actually desperate to hear about sin - but to hear about it in a way that is different from the traditional sense in which they have normally heard it talked about.
The ways in which the Church normally talks about sin involves finger pointing, blaming and shaming. A personal list of wrongdoings that are thrown at people with the intent of injecting a good dose of guilt and fear of hellfire. That understanding and approach to sin is counterproductive and actually downright harmful to the cause of the Gospel regardless of what generation people are in.
So when I say that younger generations are desperate to talk about sin, I am saying that we are desperate to hear the Church talk with relevance about the world we live in and the realities of evil all around us. Because we are all too aware of the evil around us that is the manifestation of sin - both individual sin and systemic, corporate sin.
Our dying planet.
Our dying children, in the halls of their schools.
The injustices that marginalized and oppressed groups experience on account of their race, gender, ethnicity, or other identifying marker.
The growing chasm between the rich and the poor as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
The atrocities of war and violence on all scales.
And the list could go on.
These things are sin at work in our world. And we are all too aware of how they are at work in our lives and the lives of all those around us.
And in the midst of all this sin and evil in our world, younger generations have not turned to the Church for answers because the answers the Church has been traditionally giving people don’t ring true for them or don’t actually answer the questions they are asking. Answers have traditionally been about personal salvation, individualistic repentance, and a reward beyond this life. But what I believe that younger generations are craving is hope. Not hope in some distant future or heaven that seems lightyears away but hope for the here and now. We want solutions and a better life for now. We want social justice, equality, and equity. We have grown up in a world where the doomsday clock is dangerously close to midnight - right now 90 seconds from midnight, aka, the end of the world. And we, younger generations, and actually all generations, need real, visceral, embodied salvation - here and now. A reason to hope that we will not only be able to survive but to thrive - and that our children and our children’s children will have a world to call home and where, if they even have a planet to live on, where they don’t have to struggle every day to survive
…But those are not the answers or the hope that the Church, or really, anyone, has supplied them with. And so instead, younger generations, especially Gen Z have turned away from the Church, away from religion in general, and turned toward cynicism. Marketing firms have defined cynicism as one of the top four defining traits of Gen Z and it’s easy to see why - in a world where mass shootings are the number one cause of death in children, in a world where our ecosystems are becoming more and more inhospitable and extreme weather events more common, in a world of war, and a world where the future has never been promised to them… and then they are seeing very little to no efforts to make this world a better place…cynicism is a really easy place to land. Cynicism, and even nihilism, can also protect against the pain of this world and the uncertainty of the future. Protect like a shield around our hearts, but one that also walls off our hearts from the world in both directions.
This cynicism and nihilism are not the abundant life that God wishes for any of us. God wants us to have hope. To work towards making our world more like the Kingdom of God, more loving and more just. And to care deeply about ALL of God’s creation: our planet and each other.
And so, this is where we as a church need to rethink our approach to understanding and talking about sin for the benefit of all of God’s children and today’s Gospel reading is a good place to start.
Often when we talk about sin it is prescriptive, telling us what we should and should not do. But a helpful way to understand the sin-sick world we live in is not prescriptive but descriptive - to simply call it what it is: a world filled with sin. A world filled with weeds. In today’s parable, seeds have been planted in fertile soil. Seeds of Love. Seeds of Hope. Seeds of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But then, seeds for weeds are scattered in the same field. Seed of dissonance. Seeds of hate. Seeds of cynicism. And these seeds make it impossibly hard for the seeds of Love to grow.
And today, here and now, we live in a weedy world, a world where evil and the causes of evil are all around us. We live in a weedy world - a world where good and evil grow up alongside each other. We, I am sure, are all too familiar with this weedy paradox. We have already listed the reasons, the weeds, the sin, that choke out hope for an abundant life and future for younger generations.
Ever since Augustine, the concept of Original Sin has been ingrained in Christian theology and world worldview. This idea that sin is passed on genetically from Adam and Eve down to us today, so that every human born is inherently sinful. This understanding of sin leads us to that individualistic understanding of sin as a list of dos and don’ts that fails to resonate with the answers that our younger generations are seeking as they struggle to understand this weedy world they live in. Quick disclaimer: I am not saying that sin isn’t personal. We DO sin through individual actions. And, what I am saying is, we need to widen our understanding and ways we talk about sin. So John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, actually wrote about something called “Inbeing Sin.” While original sin is based on sin being passed on through parents and that first act of disobedience, “inbeing sin” is this idea that the world we live in is so filled with sin, so filled with weeds, that it is impossible for every person born into this world to not be affected - and infected - by it.
This is the world we live in, with the weeds and the wheat. Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a field with both grain and weeds. NOT that the Kingdom of Heaven will come when all the weeds are gone. But that the Kingdom of Heaven can be present, even amongst the weeds. That there can be Love and Hope, even in our weedy, sin-filled world. A theological term we have to describe this current state of our world: With the seeds of God’s Kingdom bearing fruit of love and hope and the seeds of evil filling our world with weeds, with sin sickness…with both these things existing at the same time, theologically we call this “the-already-but-not-yet.” That is, Jesus has ALREADY come to Earth and began to establish his Kingdom here and now…but he has NOT YET come again in final victory, not yet completed his salvific work, not yet redeemed all creation.
For Jesus WILL redeem all of creation. There is a wealth of Scriptures that talk about how God plans to redeem all of creation, create a new heaven and a new earth - and establish God’s Kingdom here on that new earth. Our passage from Romans this morning talks about this as well:
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved.”
ALL of creation has been subject to sin, to weeds, bonded to the pain and decay of this world. We are ALL waiting for the redemption of our bodies, again, not just in a heaven after this life, but a redemption of our whole world, all of creation, new heaven and a new earth. God will recreate, save, redeem - everything. And THAT is our hope. It is as St. Teresa of Avila says, “All shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
And that is what the church needs to preach on sin and share with younger generations. That yes, we live in a weedy world. We live in a world where we deal with evil every day. We live in a world where it is easy for us to not see the harvest of love and hope growing because the weeds threaten to choke it out. And instead of giving into those weeds, instead of turning to cynicism, and instead of a shame and blame approach to understanding sin… let us offer ourselves, each other, younger generations, the whole world proof that those seeds of Love are still growing. And because those seeds of Love are still growing, there is HOPE for all of us, hope for the whole world, that all shall be well - that Christ will redeem ALL. That sin and evil and weeds will not win.
For today’s Scripture does not end with God being passive about the evil in this world. In fact, the last part of this passage can be downright jarring. When the harvest time comes...God will root out the evil from the good wheat. While the language of weeping and gnashing of teeth can be quite frightening, stop and think of what your reaction might be to having parts of your life that are not fruit-bearing being trimmed away by God. Or being trimmed away from those who are deadset on holding on to those weeds - because those weeds do benefit some. This weeding, it’s not an easy process. St. Teresa of Avila, the same one who I quoted “all shall be well” - she once complained to God that her life was too hard, that she faced trial and tribulation all the time. She writes that God replied, “Teresa, you are my friend.” She said, “If that’s how you treat your friends - no wonder you don’t have many!” The process of rooting out the weeds in our lives and in the world will be painful - but God can do it.
The end of this passage points toward a time when the Kingdom of God will be fully realized and the evil and causes of evil in this world will be no more… This is a message of hope for our weedy world, one all generations need to hear because it speaks directly to our reality of being overrun by weeds in our world. We see all the evil in this world. Violence and hate and oppression...we know it all too well… And we can know that God KNOWS and sees it and will defeat it, pulling out all the weeds.
In the meantime, let us trust in God, grow seeds of love and hope where we are planted - in a weedy world. And share those seeds of love and hope with ALL, because they are so desperately needed.
May it be so. Amen.
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