Genesis 28:10-19
Saint Matthew 13:24-30; & 36-43
My partner grew up on a farm in the far Northwest corner of Iowa and one of his memories from childhood was “walking beans.”
I grew up on the far northwest side of Chicago - not far from here - and had no idea what he was talking about.
“How do you walk a bean?” I asked. “Do you put a little collar on them and then place the on the ground to see where they go? Do they romp? Can you tell them to sit and stay and when you say ‘Here, Bean, Bean, Bean’ do they rush to you?”
He looked at me like I was being an idiot. (Which I was!)
Lowell patiently explained to me that before the age of really sophisticated farm equipment - (So sophisticated, in fact, that the first time I climbed into his brother’s combine his only words to me were: “Just don’t touch anything!”) - weeds in the bean fields had to be removed by hand.
So his parents would have him and his siblings go out and help them “walk beans.”
Remembering that these were not green beans, or any of the kind of beans we are used to at the grocery store, but rather soy beans, I asked him “How did you know the difference?” To which he replied “practice.”
I was still a little stupefied.
Which is why I completely understand the listener’s reaction to Jesus’ parable and his explanation to them.
If you sent us, you and I, Chicagoans, out into a soybean field who knows what we’d do. We’d have no idea what to look for? We would have no idea what was a weed and what was a soybean? So Jesus has the master say to his listeners what Lowell’s brother said to me when I was sitting in his combine: “Don’t touch anything!” Jesus adds, “God will sort everything out in the fullness of time.”
The parable is not about weeds and weeds it is about us.
It is almost human nature to try and sort things out for God. It is a constant temptation for us to try and figure out who is doing the will of God and who is not.
It is a constant struggle not to give into the notion that we can figure out who will be welcomed into God’s kingdom and who will not. We think we know who is a weed and who is a wheat in this life and Jesus plainly tells us we don’t.
We are like city folk in a soybean field who, in our inability to tell a plant from a weed would probably leave nothing behind but a barren landscape.
And we certainly would have pulled up guys like Jacob and thrown him into the compost bin of history.
Your pastor was so right last week when she labeled him as “something of a heel, someone who is not very admirable, someone who does questionable things for their own benefit.” 1 (Jacob could have had any job he wanted in Washington!)
To our eyes he would have been a weed.
When we pick up his story today he is on the run from his brother Esau from whom he has just embezzled the family inheritance.
The first act of this tawdry take ends with words: “So Esau hated Jacob because of what he had done to him. He said to himself, “‘My father will soon be gone, and then I will kill Jacob.’” 2
Jacob is on the lam. And if we were God we would probably say: “Serves you right. All the troubles in your life you have brought on yourself so that’s it! Good riddance.”
Much to our surprise, and Jacob’s, God comes to him when he is tired, worn out and using a rock instead of a My Pillow.
The Pastor for Youth Ministry where I worship regularly, The Rev’d Rocky Suplinger, wrote is a devotional this week:
It occurs to me that perhaps the Lord is present in that place not simply in spite of Jacob's ignorance but because of it. Had Jacob been looking for a holy truck stop, I wonder if he would have wandered to some other locale. Maybe there would be a big mountain in view. Maybe a babbling brook the shores of which would be suitable for meditating.
Instead, Jacob just needs a place to rest himself. He's not thinking of holiness, or even of God, as he beds down with his rock pillow. And that is how God finds him. Because Jacob wasn't looking.
God comes to us. That is the good news. We may be seekers, yes, but our seeking after God will never come close in ardor or insight to the seeking after us that God is doing all the time, in the least likely of places.3
And I would add in the least likely of ways with the strangest of signs.
Today it is a ladder. The inspiration of the hymn, “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” Did you know that there is such a thing as a Jacob’s ladder?
I was badgering the guys in the bible study I participate in at Fourth for an application for this sermon and a Navy veteran told me that the classic rope ladder that we have all seen in movies and perhaps in person is called a Jacob’s ladder because it has to be lowered down to you. You can only toss it so high. It has to be lowered from above.
Upon further research I also found that “today, Jacobs ladders are mostly used to board lifeboats [and] life rafts."
You could probably finish this sermon without my help.
God doesn’t care if you are a weed or a wheat.
God doesn’t care if you are a saint or a scoundrel.
God doesn’t care if you are on the lam or following the Lamb.
God will find you even when you are not looking and offer you a way into God’s lifeboat of love, grace, and mercy.
Ponder that this week and then come back next week to find out if Jacob accepts God’s offer. Come back and find out whether Jacob is a soy bean or a bean head. Come back and find out whether he grabs hold of the ladder of God’s grace or continues to try and do everything his way.
Come back to this place we call holy and find out whether Jacob accepts God’s offer or not.
Here’s a hint: The answer is both “yes” and “no.”
Thanks for listening.
___________
1. Erin Bouman, “Take Hold.” Sermon preached at Irving Park Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, July 16, 2017.
2. Genesis 27:41a. (TLB) (TLB=The Living Bible)
3. Rocky Supinger, Fourth Church Devotions. July 18, 2017. Accessed July 18, 2017. http://www.fourthchurch.org/devotions/2017/071817.html.
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