Tag: Christianity

Embracing Differences: Lessons from the Weeds and Wheat

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

In today’s parable, the Master indicates that the weeds should be allowed to grow with the wheat because if the weeds are removed, then the wheat may be damaged. At face value, it appears that this parable is about the end times when the angels will separate the believers from the non-believers, but I caution us from jumping to that conclusion. I caution us about assuming that there is such a thing as those that are in and those that are out, and I do so because binary thinking is not only dangerous, but it is usually wrong. It is natural for us to want to have clarity, and on the surface this parable provides that: the people who follow the rules, the wheat, will enter the Kingdom and the people who don’t, the weeds, will not. The slaves, who represent us, want to hurry up and get rid of the weeds—the people that do not fit our vision of who belongs.  

The difficult truth is that we live in a world consumed by this exact kind of weeding. Our current landscape is defined by deep, exhausting partisan divisions and international standoffs. Whether it is political polarization here at home where we view the “other side” not just as neighbors with different ideas, but as enemies, or global conflicts flashing on our screens, the secular world is constantly demanding that we sort humanity into binary columns. We are told to pull up the weeds, to cancel, to exclude, and to isolate. We want the field clean, and we want it done now.

But when we do this, we miss the whole context of the world Jesus was talking to. In ancient Jewish teaching, a parable like this was called a mashal, basically an extended metaphor or story used to make a comparison. And Jesus follows it with a nimshal, which is just the explanation of the story. You see this structure all the time in rabbinic commentaries, where stories of kings planting orchards are used to show God building up or pulling up people based on whether they follow his will.

But Jesus puts a much more urgent spin on his explanation. He says that at the end of the age, the angels will collect the “evildoers” and throw them into the furnace. Now, in English, “evildoers” sounds like a word for the absolute worst villains of history. But the actual Greek phrase Matthew uses, poioūntas tēn anomīan (poy-OON-dahss teen ah-noh-mee-ahn) takes the word for the Law, the Torah, and puts a negative on the front of it. It literally means living against the Law 

And what is the Law according to Jesus? He tells us later in this same Gospel: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.

So, if you look at it that way, the weeds aren’t people who hold the wrong opinions or fail our social litmus tests. The weeds are simply those who live against the law of radical love. The wheat, the righteous, are the ones actually enacting that love.

God has been lovingly tolerating humanity far longer than we ever will and it is not our job to decide who belongs; our job is to love each other like Jesus did. The hardest part of this whole situation is that we do not naturally love each other, mostly we just tolerate each other and try our best not to exclude the people that annoy us the most. So on one hand we know it is so much easier to just do what feels right in the moment, to just take care of ourselves and the people who are closest to us; but on the other hand our entire faith tradition says that we are supposed to do the complete opposite; we are supposed to give aid and comfort to everyone, no matter what; we are supposed to include everyone, no matter what; we are supposed to love everyone, no matter what.  

Earlier I cautioned us about binary thinking because it can lead to misinterpretation and inaccurate assumptions. The reason the master, who is God, said to leave the weeds is because he knew that some of those weeds might actually turn out to be wheat. There are many plants in my garden that I mistake, every year, but I leave them because I suspect that they might be flowers and when they do flower, I am grateful that I left them. It is also worth mentioning that a weed is only a plant growing in a location you do not want it to be in. It is very possible to cultivate a weed into a beautiful thing, but it takes time and that is what God in their infinite patience knows.

The process of becoming people of love takes time, and if we kick people to the side too soon, if we write off entire groups of people because of the political signs in their yard or the country they reside in, then they will not have the chance to grow into the people God intends them to be, and if in the end they don’t “make it”, that is between God and them.

Now, focusing on doing God’s will and loving people doesn’t mean we are earning our way into heaven by our own merits. This isn’t about “works righteousness” meaning doing morally correct things. Think of it like a mechanic who fixes up a broken-down car. Once the car is fixed and saved from its old state, the owner is expected to actually start driving it to get somewhere. If you just refuse to drive it, you completely ignore and undermine all the hard work the mechanic just did. It’s the same thing here. Jesus saves us from our sins so that we are freed up to actually do good works and live out that righteousness. Refusing to love, refusing to do those good works, basically cancels out the whole purpose of what Christ did on the cross. The parable is showing us what it looks like when saved believers actually live out that righteousness.

So, the only weeding or dividing, we can, or even should do, is within ourselves. We need to look deep into our souls and weed out those traits of our character; our tribalism, our judgments, our self-righteousness, that inhibit our ability to love like God. Daniel Berrigan, who was a Jesuit priest, once said, “If you are going to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood.” Let me repeat that, “If you are going to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood.”  

The message of Jesus was radical. It was radical two thousand years ago and it is radical today because it is contrary to human nature and that is the point. Jesus was nailed to a piece of wood because he told people to love each other and that idea was so radical, so contrary to the way his society thought, that they killed him. You see, Jesus was killed because people thought he did not belong, they thought he was the weed. Whether we are a weed or wheat does not matter because we are all children of God and we are all loved wholly and equally, even though we are really bad at loving other people.  

Jesus was willing to die for his radical message of love; he was willing to look good on the wood, are we ready for that? Are we ready to love so deeply, across ideological and political divides, that we will face discomfort or even social “death” for that love? My guess is no, and in the end, what matters is that we try to love each other, and when we fall short, not if, but when, we work even harder to make sure that we don’t fall short again.

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Abiding in God: Navigating Trauma with Faith

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

As with the entire lectionary, the gospel passage for today is taken out of context. One might think that it comes after the resurrection since it is the 7th Sunday after Easter, but chronologically Jesus is still seated at the table with his disciples the night before he died. He is preparing them for his departure, yet he speaks as if it has already happened. The language of this passage switches back and forth between future and past tense as if time has no meaning—and truthfully, it doesn’t. In this moment, Jesus is standing firmly in the room with them, yet talking as though he has already left the world.

The primary theme of this passage is eternal life, but we need to let go of our definition of that term. We almost always think of eternal life within the context of death and resurrection, which is linear thinking. We treat it as something we experience far in the future, stretching out after we die, like a prize we win after we cross the finish line of death. But it isn’t in the future, and it also isn’t in the past; it is always. Eternal life is not a reference to what will be, it is a reference to what is. God is eternal, creation is eternal, and we are eternal; not in the sense that our physical bodies will live forever, but that our existence is not limited or defined by the short time we exist on earth. When Jesus says, “This is eternal life: that they may know you,” he is using the present tense. It is an immediate reality, a current state of being that we are invited into right now, right in the middle of our messy lives.

Throughout the gospel of John, we hear terms like “abiding” and “dwelling.” In the original language, both of these words denote patiently waiting, living permanently within a space, and thinking about something at length rather than rushing past it. It means refusing to run away when things get uncomfortable. All of these definitions combined still do not fully capture what it means to live eternally with God, but it is as close as we can come with our limited human understanding. These terms aren’t meant to be theological puzzles; they are meant to convey a tangible sense of calm, comfort, connectedness, and most importantly, inclusion. To abide means to rest in the certainty that you belong permanently and safely in the heart of God, no matter how chaotic the external world becomes.

Yesterday, some of us attended a seminar on trauma and the church’s role in addressing it, and the concepts there fit beautifully with this idea of abiding. We learned about a concept called the “window of tolerance.” This is a psychological state of being in which we are able to experience joy, compassion, connection, and curiosity, precisely because our nervous system is not overly taxed or triggered by trauma. When we are in this window, we are mentally, emotionally, and physically present. In a very real way, being inside this window is the real-world equivalent of what John calls abiding.

This is, of course, a state that is fluid. We can very easily slip out of this window into an altered state where it becomes difficult for us to function. On one side, when we are overwhelmed, we might shoot up into the “fight or flight” response where we become overly agitated, anxious, or angry. On the other side, we might drop down into the “freeze” response where we shut down, numb out, dissociate, and feel completely exhausted or disconnected.

When the trauma and stress of the world pull us out of our window of tolerance, we lose our capacity for connection and curiosity. We can’t “abide” because our bodies are stuck in survival mode, convinced we are under attack. Jesus knew the trauma his disciples were about to endure the very next day, which is exactly why he prayed so deeply for their protection and their unity. He knew they would need each other to stay grounded.

This is where the church’s role becomes so vital, when the church stops being just a social club or a lecture hall and becomes a sanctuary for holy regulation. When Jesus invites us to abide in him, he is inviting us back into that safe, regulated space. And when the church understands trauma, we can become a community that helps widen each other’s windows of tolerance. By offering a space that mimics God’s character—one of calm, predictability, safety, and unconditional inclusion—we help soothe each other’s overtaxed nervous systems. We pull people out of the isolation of shutdown, and we calm the panic of hyper-arousal. In doing so, we create a sanctuary where people can step out of the chaos of linear time, drop their defenses, and return to the quiet, grounding truth that they are already safely held in the eternal life of God.

Long story short, our liturgy is the thing that provides the predictability. It helps us provide a sense of calm, it is in this space that we need to leg go of the things from the outside world. We need to let go of the anger, we need to let go of things like bulletins not being printed correctly. We need to let go of other people’s opinions or what we think about them. And we just need to be present for each other and abide in God’s love, which is why we are here. Amen

The Role of Boundaries in Spiritual Transformation during Lent

Published on by The Rev. Jason A BurnsLeave a comment

Boundaries are a significant part of modern life. For some they play a vital role in maintaining a sense of control and for others they are a challenge to their sense of control. This concept is heightened by the fact that we live in America, a nation built on the idea that boundaries are meant to be broken. In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner, outlined his argument that it had been the frontier, or the boundary between the known and unknown, that had defined American character and democracy. To that point he argued Americans had always identified with the possibilities that lied beyond the boundary and that our desire to know what lies beyond shaped us and instilled a sense of curiosity in the unknown as well as a willingness to cross established boundaries to satisfy that curiosity. Whether it be the Appalachian line drawn by the King in 1763, the countless barriers placed in front of the civil rights of all citizens, or the race to put a man on the moon, Americans have always seen boundary’s, not as a limitation, but as a challenge.

For Adam and Eve, the boundary was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the serpent was their own curiosity. If God did not want creation to have such knowledge then they would not have created the knowledge in the first place, nor would they have placed it within arm’s reach; I do not believe that the creator of the universe didn’t know that Adam and Eve would eventually eat the forbidden fruit, nor do I believe that God placed the restriction on eating the fruit as some cosmic test. Ultimately this story is just a story that reveals something about human nature. It reveals that when faced with a boundary we have the ability to cross the line, indicating that we have free will, which is vitally important because just as we can choose to ignore boundaries, we can also choose to love.

Prior to the fruit tree incident, Adam and Eve had no reason to fear God; they had no reason to fear anything. But once they ate, they learned the truth, which is that life is hard. They learned about hunger, thirst, pain, and death for the first time. They learned that God had been protecting them from the burden of free will by not denying it to them, but by putting off their loss of innocence for as long as possible. By delaying this inevitable weight of self-determination, the Creator allowed them to remain in a state of grace until they were ready to become the masters of their own destiny. The transition from the Garden to the wilderness was not merely a change in geography; it was a shift in consciousness. In the Garden, boundaries were external, a physical tree and a spoken command, but once that line was crossed, the boundary became internalized. Humanity moved from a state of passive being to a state of active becoming.

We trade the safety of the Garden for the dignity of the “Hard Life” every time we choose to grow. We accept the hunger and the toil because we refuse to be mere spectators in our own lives. We are a people of the frontier, defined not by the fences we build to keep the world out, but by our courage to look past them and ask what lies beyond. In our national history and our spiritual journey, we find that the boundary is not a wall; it is a horizon. It exists to define the moment of our next great choice, reminding us that to be truly human is to stand at the edge of the unknown and decide to step forward.

As we continue our journey through Lent, we find ourselves in our own version of the wilderness, standing between the comfort of what we know and the transformation of what is to come. Lent is, in many ways, a season of intentional boundaries like fasting, discipline, and self-restraint, but these are not meant to imprison us. Rather, like the frontier, these forty days serve as a perimeter that helps us define who we are when the distractions are stripped away. In the wilderness of Lent, we walk the same path Adam and Eve trod when they left the Garden: a path where hunger and thirst are real, but where the opportunity to rely on God’s grace is even more tangible. We use this season to examine the lines we have crossed in error and the new boundaries we must cross in faith, moving ever closer to the ultimate “boundary-breaking” event of the Resurrection.