While we’ve been on the farm we’ve visited the farm’s wheat field, last week in fact, where the weeds also were, mysteriously -- not ugly weeds but bearded darnel, a weed that looks so much like wheat you can’t tell the difference. We didn’t know how the bearded darnel got there. It was a mystery. No self-respecting Middle-Eastern farmer would purposely allow it to infest his field. But there it was. It was ludicrous, but it was there. And because it was there and we wanted to root it up and throw it out, we were instructed to leave it alone. When the harvest comes, the farmer said, the farmer himself and his angel farm hands would separate the wheat from the tares. No one else could, we were told. No one else would know wheat from weeds for sure. Only the farmer would know for sure.

 

Today on our last day on the farm were in the mustard field. It’s also a field intentionally sown, not indiscriminately like the field sown two weeks ago. Mustard has to be in a field separate and apart from the other cultivations. It requires careful cultivation and attention not to let the gorgeous stuff mix with the wheat, because, like darnel, mustard will take over the place. But when it’s cared for by the servants of the farmer and given its boundaries and attended to as wisely as the servants can, it blossoms like the most gorgeous tree of the forest, the very cedar of Lebanon, with birds and beauty proclaiming the reality of God’s sovereignty and love for creation…and God’s good, creative intent.

 

We also take a side trip today, we servants of the farmer’s field, as we seek to learn from the Master’s instruction, and Matthew’s. They tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like using other metaphors. We need to listen. It’s also, they say, like a country kitchen, where the aroma of bread pervades, driven in its risen delicacy and texture by yeast, ordinary yeast mixed with a few cups of the flour emergent from the good grain emergent from the good seed -- none is genetically evil, none -- leavened mysteriously, we don’t know why, in 2,000 years we don’t know why -- by yeast, ordinary yeast, but having as much potential for beauty and goodness as mustard seed. The good master’s will, will be accomplished. It will be accomplished through the wise, intentional efforts of the servant community, through their ordinary stewardship of ordinary things and of the mysteries. We don’t know how. But we do know that the master’s will (or “mistresses” will, the metaphors for God do not have to be carried just by the masculine) will be accomplished! How? Sometimes we just have to accept that it will.

 

The kingdom of heaven, the fabulous community of a peaceful city that we know about and long for, is like mustard seed, so small you can’t see it until it sprouts and grows and buds and, until then, can only see signs of occasionally. Maybe its here, maybe it isn’t, this kingdom that we long for, but this lesson from the book we affirm as true says it is here. It’s here. It’s invisible, but it’s here. Our assignment is to cultivate it, care for it, nurture it, partner with the creator-farmer who calls us, loves us, organizes us to care for the environment that the mustard seed will need, and who gives us order and structure, not to worship so that they become our gods, but to use in our task to assure the quality of the environment of the seeds of the kingdom.

 

Professor Walter Clyde, who taught ecclesiology and polity at Pittsburgh Seminary, once said to me, “God wills polity and order.” I couldn’t believe my ears and mostly refused to listen and mostly postured myself in ministry somewhere between passive resistance to rules and regulations and outright iconoclasm. But I read and re-read these gospel texts and maybe begin to understand. We are called to a stewardship and responsibility for the precious environment, the rich, fertile soil that is so scarce in which the tiny seeds of grace can grow, then blossom. Seed has been planted, and yeast has been mixed in with the flour. Sure, there are weeds; and, sure, there is flour infested with mites. But the good seed is there too -- here -- and the yeast is alive, and cedars of Lebanon will emerge one day, and the rich, brown, fully risen bread that gives life and sustains life is given like a gift for our welfare.         

 

Then, from the kitchen back to the field with Matthew as our tour guide. This time, maybe it’s a wheat field, maybe a mustard field, or maybe a pasture, or even a field that simply lies fallow. It doesn’t matter; were summoned by our Master and by the gospel writer to look. As we approach, we see there’s a treasure in the midst of all else that is there, weeds, mustard, wheat, and rocks. There’s a treasure there, one worth caring about, worth chucking all else we think we have to have in order to have it prosper and multiply in value.

 

Then, we move from the field to the market and the corner of the market place occupied by the pearl merchants. There, there’s someone, a pearl merchant, who has worked all his life and given his life to the pursuit of a single pearl that he knows is of such great value that all else can be traded in its behalf, even life itself. My sister Leslie and I know of an elderly couple, both of whom are now deceased, whose dogged determination over most of their 90-year life spans was to keep safe the pearl of great value which is the little Presbyterian church in the little town where they live in Western Pennsylvania, people of such determination that almost all else could be traded and all else given, even life itself measured out carefully and lovingly over 90-some years. That little faith community, that little church, was so, so important! Alice knows people like that as well, and of pearls of such value, and so do you, I expect.

 

I’ve known the faithful pearl merchant in every place I’ve lived and in every church I’ve served. So have you, I bet. The pearl merchant is here. He is hundreds and hundreds of St. Philip and old Central Presbyterian Church people and thousands and millions of faithful Christian people in faith communities all over the world. He is you and I. The pearl of such great value that all else can be sold in order to buy it is here...and the treasure only partially hidden...and the yeast that fuels the bread of life...and the mustard seed so tiny but having the potential to be a cedar of Lebanon.

 

We must notice them and not spend our time in the futile tasks of sorting wheat from weeds; but, in seeing the pearl of greatest value, caring for it, nurturing it, in accepting into our care the seeds of grace, planting them in the soil given to our stewardship, and having the courage to let the mustard be mustard, and affirming that the tools we are given to care for the garden, the structures and orders that sustain the faulty but only institution we’re given, one that contains both weeds and wheat, I fear, are just tools, but necessary tools.

 

Then, back to the field; just can’t get away, it seems, from our fundamental summons to be God’s gardeners, not weed-pullers, but gardeners; so back to field, on the way stopping at fishermen’s wharf. There’s an old trawler there, creaking and leaking, but with its hold filled with the catch of a bottom-drawn fine-mesh dragnet, filled to overflowing up the gunwales and over the rails spilling back into the sea with every creature and thing, good and evil, that the sea contains. There are angels there, separating and sorting, basket-full by basket-full. Not the job of the captain or ship’s owner, or the deck hands and sailors, but angels…angels. Like when the weeds were mixed in with the wheat. It wasn’t our job to separate them, but to sow the good seed and cultivate it, and cast the net, best we could, to the bottom of the sea, catching up all that we could in this old trawler called the church with the fine mesh dragnet of God’s love and salvation.

 

Our job, the job of deck hands and farmhands, servants of the creator-farmer, sailors obedient to a captain and savior who is one and the same as an ancient rabbi named Jesus -- our job is to mend and cast nets, care for the soil in which the seeds of grace are planted, patch up the old trawler and keep it sailing with whatever we have to work with – church councils, order, structures, compassion, and love -- in order that the nets are mended and always strong, that the context and environment for faith and its experience and expression is always healthy, that its peace, unity, and purity are preserved, that the pearl of great value is purchased and preserved, even at great price.