Community Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, KY

08/30/2026

The Demands of Your Faith.

I want to talk to you today about the cost of discipleship. An old pastor friend of mine once said that my redemption cost God his son and Jesus his life, and if I paid less than that, I got it too cheaply. Keeping that in mind, I have a serious question for you: “What does your faith demand of you?” You are faithful, life-long church attenders. What does your faith demand of you? It’s a question we do not, in my experience, entertain seriously very often. It’s much more pleasant to view our faith as a familiar habit or a pleasant tradition than as something which makes demands on us. Nevertheless, living a life of faith comes with demands. Entering into the Kingdom of God demands transformation. What does your faith demand of you?

For some, their faith demands that they abstain from alcohol. Others understand their faith to demand that they be “nice” people who don’t pick fights or use bad language. A shocking (to me) number of people to whom I speak seem to think that their faith demands that they stand for the playing of the national anthem or displaying the flag, though I don’t get that connection at all. I meet a lot of “or else” people who believe that they are to do what their church says or else they’ll go to hell and they don’t want to go to hell.

Another example might be the little friend of Kat’s we once took to the buffet at Carter Caves. She insisted that we say grace before we ate, and we did. Then we went back for seconds and she insisted that we had to say grace again because, she explained, praying before eating made the food taste better. She had been taught that following the teachings of one’s faith grants personal benefit.

That said, what does your faith demand of you?

In the passage we read from Matthew, Jesus has just ruined everyone’s day.

Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Just try to imagine how you would feel if your friend and teacher said such a thing to you! “undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed.” How would you react?

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

Jesus, the Son of the living God, was having none of that and reacted with considerable force.

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Whoa! That’s pretty rough! Can’t we have a difference of opinion without getting personal? Well...no, not if one of the parties to the conversation is God’s only Son. There’s only one answer to the question of what your faith demands of you. Living a life of faith demands that we set our minds not on human things, but on divine things.

I was only called to do that once and it nearly broke me. I was given a “death qualified” murder case. I listened to the demands of my faith and what I heard was, “Thou shalt not kill.” If I were to prosecute such a case, I would have to offer to the jury, and the people of my county, reasons why God’s commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” could be ignored in the pursuit of some other human goal. I could not speak the teachings of Jesus into my community. I would have to make the human desire to get even appear moral.

Prosecuting such a case happens more behind the scenes than out in public. Defense has to get the death penalty off the table so negotiations center on that outcome. A plea is normally undertaken for a life sentence in return for a guilty plea. That would have been the “safe” way to approach this conflict between what my faith was demanding, and the political realities of my job. Bad guys go to jail, the commandment not to kill has been obeyed, and nobody has to confront God’s commandments as anything but a Sunday School lesson.

The problem with such a strategy is that sneaking around the demands of my faith to preserve my job means not speaking the Word of God into my community. I told the judge that my faith would not permit me to argue to a jury that they had the power of life or death over these children of God. I lost my job. Big deal! Jesus endured torture, then was nailed through his hands and feet to make his death as miserable as it could be. I just lost a part of the income of my family.

This church came to my rescue, providing a pulpit from which I could serve the demands of my faith, as well as I could understand them. Central to those demands is the recognition that, “You will never look into the eyes of someone not loved by God”. We know this. We just agree to forget it when it is inconvenient.

This week, in a discussion of the political convention, someone, perhaps tongue in cheek, reported that a person “out Wayne” had expressed his belief that the Democrats were coming for “our guns, our Bibles and our chickens”. One has to be from around here to know that Wayne County, West Virginia is always referred to as “out Wayne” and that some people out Wayne still keep chickens in their yards. The fear being expressed was that tribal totems will be destroyed.

Sorting out our totems from the demands of our faith is what what makes Moses’ theophany so powerful. God tells Moses what to do and say, and Moses asks, “Says who?” God thunders His answer.
“I AM WHO I AM.”

This is clearly where the rubber meets the road, why Peter got so strict a correction and why I couldn’t compromise the demands of my faith. God is not an opinion, your position with Him is not an opinion, whether your acknowledge God or not is not relevant. You are His creation, and He Is Who He Is! This rings throughout the Scripture.

God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.

Over and over, this is the message of Scripture! “This is my title for all generations!”

No one is as holy as Adonai, because there is none to compare with you, no rock like our God.

Over and over Scripture thunders that no matter how fondly attached you are to your chickens, no matter how passionate a UK fan you are, no matter your politics or your preferences, no matter even if you attend church just to be seen as a decent sort of person or because it makes the food taste better, your relationship with God isn’t defined by what you think about it. It is defined by God, Himself!

God could not be clearer about it than this:

I am the Lord your God...you shall have no other gods before me.

However much you hunger for the approval of your friends and relations, your loyalty is to God. Not your first loyalty or your best loyalty. Your complete and total loyalty. Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that the primal sin of humanity consisted in putting the knowledge of good and evil before the knowledge of God. There must be some substantial continuity between what we mean by good and evil and what God means; otherwise we are in moral darkness indeed.

For the Christian, the demands of God upon your person, your life, your very thoughts are owed to Him alone.

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

Only that, church. Only that.
AMEN

BENEDICTION
The church teaches:

When we come to Christ, the goal is not to do certain things, to check off the box to show that we have a right to enter into the kingdom of God but it’s a transformation of who we are. It’s a transformation of our hearts. It’s a transformation of our desires. The person who serves others begrudgingly is not serving. The person who is generous, hoping to get something in return for it is not really giving.

When we seek transformation of who we are, we need an example for it is a harrowing undertaking. Jesus is our teacher, but we were given a contemporary example of a life focused on the divine in the life of Dolly Parton, who saw her great wealth as held in trust for those in need. As Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Follow Jesus. Remember Dolly.

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

08/23/2026

SERMON -UNSEEN HANDS
“WAIT!! Who is this Jesus fellow, again?” That’s the question which occupied the early church. Jewish Christians had lifetimes of scripture studies along the line of the Shema:

The Shema is Judaism's most essential declaration of faith, starting with the words "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad" ("Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one"). It comes from the Torah and is recited twice daily.

If the Lord our God is one, who is this Jesus fellow? The new church had to find a way to understand Jesus just as we must. We’ll look at a story of how that worked out in practice. In our story, Great Pharaoh is busy making great plans to protect his people from the threat he believes the Hebrew people posed. What’s the name of this great mover and shaker? He’s not named. We know Moses. We know his mother’s name, Jochebed. We know his sister Miriam and brother Aaron, but Pharaoh? Meh! He doesn’t get a mention. Interesting, don’t you think?

Moses, of course, is the one who will bring the Law to the Hebrews, but that's only after he leads them out of Egypt. Our story of Moses in the bullrushes is set before God gave the Law to the Hebrews. God will work through him to bring about sweeping change in His people, but first, Moses must survive Pharaoh's genocidal decree. He does so through the hearts of three wonderful women – his mother and sister and Pharaoh's daughter, who rescued the rescuer of Israel from the great plans of Pharaoh.

This is a critical point. Pharaoh, we are told, was acting from fear of the Hebrews. He saw his “job” to be to protect his people from the threat posed by these foreigners living within his borders. (Sound familiar?) Since this is a worthy goal in his mind, anyone who interferes with him is acting for the harm of Egypt and is doing evil. Pharaoh branded any impediment to his genocide as unforgivable. Jewish tradition names Pharaoh's daughter Bithiah. When Pharaoh found out what she had done he banished her. Busy little Pharaoh was beating his chest, but Moses was saved by the hearts and courage of these women.

Moses was ordered to be drowned in the Nile but was saved by these women so that he could play out his part in this story, saving his people by leading them to the promised land and delivering to them God's Law. Joseph was sold into Egypt by his brothers for their own ends, but ends by saving his brothers and his father from starvation. Tiny pushes to just the right domino by a hand unseen to those at the time.

Did Pharaoh have the slightest idea of the momentous forces he was dealing with? Not a clue. My favorite atheist and all-round troublesome person, Frederich Nietzsche, put it like this:

“If I wished to shake this tree with my hands, I should not be able to do so. But the wind, which we see not, troubleth and bendeth it as it listeth.

We are sorest bent and troubled by invisible hands.”1
The course of history is formed more by unseen hands than by our great plans. That's perhaps why one thinker said that the secret to happiness lies in enthusiastic co-operation with the inevitable. God's will is inevitable. We would do well to co-operate enthusiastically with it.

What started me down this road of inquiry was the nightly news. Israel killing Palestinians. Hamas killing Israelis. Some group called ISIS killing journalists. Flooding in the Midwest. Drought, death, fire, murder, wingnut conspiracy theories, climate change. I don’t know where to turn! I’m scared silly. I have a granddaughter invested in a future that looks to me dystopian. I can see all the big plans. The nightly news rubs my nose in them! It’s the drumbeat of our lives. Pharaoh was concerned. I’m terrified!

But...then I think about Moses in the bullrushes. I think of Jesus telling his disciples to tell no one that the Messiah has arrived. And I think of cranky old Frederich and his windblown trees, troubled and bent by unseen hands. And lastly, I recall Jeremiah’s prophesy:

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.

The talking heads on the nightly news wouldn’t have reported on the finding of a baby in the bullrushes, but the salvation of God’s people was in that tiny ark. The commentators on Sunday TV wouldn’t have discussed the conversation in which Simon son of Jonah declared, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Nevertheless, the salvation of the world was in that room. I don’t know what tiny feet are even now dancing about Vivanie’s future to secure it for her welfare and not her harm. But if I am to claim the name Christian, terrified as I am, I must believe that God plans a future for her for we are reminded that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Through my terrors and anxiety for her, I will comfort myself in the words of Isaiah:

Thus says the Lord:
“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness,
you that seek the LORD.
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.”

I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following God's will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

We, all of us, march blindly into an unknown future. Unbelievers do so with a sense of dread and uncertainty or just decide not to bother their heads about it. Believers carry with them the promises of God and follow the path laid down by “this Jesus fellow”. To me, that represents the better course.
AMEN

BENEDICTION
Since the year 451 AD, we have been taught that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. The doctrine that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine at the same time in one single person is known as the hypostatic union.

◦ One Person, Two Natures: Jesus is one divine person (the Son of God) with two complete and distinct natures.
◦ Without Confusion: The human and divine natures do not mix or blend into a new third nature.
◦ Without Change: His divinity was not reduced, and his humanity was not upgraded into divinity.
◦ Without Division: The two natures cannot be split into two separate persons.
◦ Without Separation: The natures are permanently united in the single person of Jesus

The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

08/17/2026

My future

Here's a chat someone thought you'd want to see.

08/17/2026

My future from here as it appears to me now

Here's a chat someone thought you'd want to see.

08/16/2026

Tonight: Love Under The Olive Tree

08/16/2026

I’m unwell and Kathy’s pending surgery means I can’t post. I wonder…does anyone read them?

08/10/2026

So very sorry that I'm late, but I took a fall, injuring my knees and breaking three ribs! So...let's begin.

Our text today tells us of the family difficulties of Israel, and the problems Joseph experienced with his half-brothers. I don't want to talk about ancient families--I want to talk about it in contemporary terms so I'm going to talk about an event at the Chapel of St. Arbuck's where I do my sermon preparation. If you think of coffee, I think you'll realize where the Chapel of St.. Arbucks is.

RENOVATION

I’ve been talking for the last few Sundays of the challenges of living a Christian life in a world ruled by sin. Thinking about that for this week’s sermon, I was reminded of something that happened at the Chapel of St. Arbuck’s. The Archbishop decided that it was time for a good wash and brush up. The interior and exterior got new paint, wood that had been suffering from the ravages of the weather was replaced and I have to say, it turned out well. The Chapel just gleams.

Truthfully, before the gleaming could begin, there was a mighty rough spot that had to be gotten over. The Archbishop had put the Sexton in charge of the renovation, instructing him to hire the workers, and he came back with the least inspiring collection of humanity I ever saw short of a jail cell. One was immensely obese and could hardly move. One was missing an arm. Another looked as if he’d been sleeping rough for months. He actually still had a vine caught in his beard when he showed up the first day. Another was full of attitude. Another seemed to be full of something else. As you can imagine, the Archbishop was beside himself to see this rag-tag bunch show up to renovate his church. He had imagined a crew in uniforms arriving in a shiny truck, someone who looked the part of people chosen to renovate God’s house. I happened to be passing by His Excellency’s office as he was telling the Sexton off.
“Why do you doubt?” the Sexton asked. “I have chosen these workers as being best suited to the job. If they need help, if they fall short, I will be there to assist.”

There followed more, pointed, expressions of the Archbishop’s opinion of the Sexton’s judgment, but, as we all know, the Archbishop is a silly man, and no one pays much attention to him, least of all the Sexton. It wasn’t long before the Archbishop was called away, and by the time he returned, he’d forgotten all about the Sexton’s unsatisfactory work crew.

You don’t have to ride around the sun very many times before you begin to notice that the world contains an awful lot of unlikely-looking people; people who don’t seem to share your idea of what it takes to make it in the world. This one is addicted, that one is a drunk, this one is just dumb, that one so full of hate that it is painful to speak with him. What are these unlikely-looking people doing in my nice, tidy world? A lot of the people you meet, it seems, look an awful lot like the crew the Sexton brought in, or even a lot like Joseph’s brothers in the text today.

Joseph’s family was a big one. Jacob, their father, fell in love with Rachel. He worked seven years for her father to win permission to marry her, but on the wedding night, her father substituted her sister Leah for Rachel and when Jacob awoke he was married to the wrong sister. He had to promise another seven years’ labor for Rachel. Jacob loved Rachel but didn’t care at all for Leah, and she was heart-broken.

When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, “It is because the LORD has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”

If that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what will.

There are two other women in the story, Bilhah, Rachel’s maid, and Zilpah, Leah’s maid. Genesis tells us:

When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I’ll die!”
Jacob became angry with her and said, “Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?”
Then she said, “Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.”

Bilhah had two sons, Dan and Naphtali.

Meanwhile, after bearing four sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Leah stopped having children.

When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said, “What good fortune!” So she named him Gad.

Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son.

Then Leah said, “How happy I am! The women will call me happy.” So she named him Asher.

Leah then gets back in the game and bears Jacob two more sons, Issachar and Zebulun along with a daughter, Dinah. Finally, we’re told:

Then God remembered Rachel; he listened to her and enabled her to conceive. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son and said, “God has taken away my disgrace.”

Rachel’s son was Joseph. Joseph the best-loved. Joseph of the coat of many colors. When we pick up the story, Joseph, who had already spoken of a dream in which all his brothers were bowing down to him, is working as a helper to his half-brothers, who are the children of the two maids.

“Helper” my foot! Joseph the best-loved, jumped up in a fancy coat, is being sent to spy on his half-brothers, and they know it. That’s where the trouble started. The brothers knew that Joseph was spying on them and they were mad – almost mad enough to kill. It’s all well and good to say that these were ancient people in an ancient time, but the ties of blood are the strongest we know. How did these boys, for boys they were, come to a place where they would really plan to kill their own brother?

“Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”
Not only kill their brother, but cover it up by lying to their father. Think of his pain! How do you come to such a place?

Let’s not forget that these boys are all Jacob’s sons, and Jacob has been given a new name: Israel. These are the children of Israel, the forefathers of the twelve tribes, God’s chosen people. This bunch God has chosen don’t look to me much better, and in many ways they look much worse, than the work crew the Sexton came up with.

Meanwhile, back at the chapel, I watched the Sexton with his unlikely workers very closely. I was particularly struck by the way he matched the jobs he assigned to the limitations and skills of the worker. The Sexton placed each worker carefully, and the busiest of all was the Sexton himself. He was everywhere, lending a hand here, making a suggestion there. He wasn’t so much supervising as he was bringing out the best in each workman. As a consequence, the work moved ahead smoothly and well. How many times have we all seen mug shots or street people or alcoholics or addicted people and thought that they couldn’t possibly be in God’s plan? They must be children of the devil. Certainly they have nothing to do with my tidy world. The Sexton recognizes that the job must be done with the workers available. He showed one how to use an electric saw. To another, who had thinned the paint so much that it didn’t cover well, he advised,

“Repaint, and thin no more.”
(Sorry! I just always wanted to do that)

Jacob’s sons could learn a lot from the Sexton. And yet, because of their jealousy and rage Joseph was sent off to Egypt and from Egypt, Joseph will save the whole family from starvation. The consequences of our actions are visible in fullness only by God.
In a nutshell, that’s a lesson for the whole passage. God’s will, God’s plans, will be accomplished, even if he has to work with a bunch of pretty unlikely-looking people. God’s will will work itself out even through hatred, and murderous urges, and self-righteous indignation.

In the end, as I said, the Chapel sparkles. The paint gleams, the woodwork is flawlessly polished. There was even a new sense of pride and accomplishment in the eyes of the unlikely-looking workers who, by trusting in the Sexton’s assurance that even if they failed, he would sustain them, now felt that they could walk on water. The Sexton’s faith in them showed them they could overcome their limitations. They grew, becoming more than they had been. Living as a Christian in a world ruled by sin is just like the Sexton’s approach to his unlikely work crew. At the end of the job, they became more than they were at the start.
AMEN

BENEDICTION
None of us are able, without God’s help, to accomplish His will for us. Our good fortune is that we have a loving Sexton who will sustain us. Be grateful. Repent and sin no more.
The Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.

07/26/2026

Today's sermon "Leavening"

I have a question for you: “When we speak of being a Christian, what exactly do we mean? Are we referring only to the church to which we attend, or do we have something more serious in mind?”

Father Richard Rohr once said something which has stuck with me. He said:
Christianity is a life-style – a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared and loving. However, we made it into an established “religion” (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s “personal Lord and Savior”… the world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

Can we truly say that we have embraced the lifestyle change Father Rohr speaks of thoroughly for that lifestyle clearly imposes a duty of care on all of us? If we have not, are we not at least partially responsible for the resulting suffering on Earth about which he speaks? That’s what I want us to think about today. Accepting the title “Christian” has meaning and carries responsibilities. Each of us is answerable to our Lord for the things we do in His name. Looking back through history will horrify you at the things we have done in our Father’s name.

Father Rohr nails it precisely:
However, we made it into an established “religion” (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s “personal Lord and Savior”

Matthew tells us:
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

What happens to bread dough when you add leavening? It rises. Without leavening, you will have a Communion wafer. With leavening, your dough becomes light and life giving and a pleasure to all who eat from it. A world with no Christians in it is matzoh, a flat wafer. Does not our acceptance of the title “Christian” carry with it the obligation to leaven the ways of the world, that the world itself becomes life-affirming?

Matthew continues:
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Here, Matthew speaks for many contemporary people who are frightened by the current events and comfort themselves that God protects us from the chaos in the world and we are right to celebrate our Father’s treasure. And with the confidence of Our Father’s presence, we go confidently to church, there to worship Him in whom our confidence resides. That confident worship needs to be seen by all the world, yes, particularly in these times of declining church attendance, for the world, believers and non-believers alike must see God’s presence.

Matthew concludes his parables:

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Notice that the Kingdom is something hidden or overlooked – but a small thing with the power to change everything. We need, in these times, to adjust our focus. Or, as Father Rohr would have it,
Christianity is a life-style – a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared and loving.

If the style of your life is simple, non-violent, shared and loving, you are following the path shown us by Jesus and His followers. The world isn’t easily changed, but the way to do so is by living the teachings of Jesus, by presenting yourself to the world as a life that is simple, non-violent, shared and loving. In that way you can leaven the world in which we live.

This is challenging, indeed, for, as Americans, we were fed from the first on violence. I saw a commercial this week for a video game. Explosions all over the screen, people shooting, people dying. On the TV or in the theaters, somebody was always shooting somebody and that violence solved whatever problem there was. This is what we were fed as children and this is what we feed our children. Violence is dependable and we lapped it up. We still do. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it this way:

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

We want simple and dependable, just what the TV feeds us. It takes character and effort to be simple, non-violent, shared and loving. It cost Jesus his life! We somehow take our task to leaven the world to be easy.

It is time and past time to remember that taking the title “Christian” means more than going to church in a building you have loved for years. It means sharing familiar hymns with dear friends but it means more than that. It carries with it the obligation to bring the Kingdom closer by our words, deeds and thoughts.

Don’t step away from God’s creation-- step into it with the Gospel in hand. Bring the certainty of God’s love to those with whom you live. Leaven the world you touch that it becomes life-affirming as Jesus showed us.
AMENvvvvvvv

07/19/2026

The Wheat and the Weeds

The world in which we live is a sordid mess. The world we are promised is one of peace and light. That’s an uncomfortable thing to say. We want to protest that God is the ruler of this world, but Jesus tells us that Creation waits in hope that it will be set free from its bo***ge to decay when the children of God are revealed and all Creation obtains the freedom of the glory of the children of God. The question for Christians is this: “What are we to do in the meantime?”

We don’t think of sin as an influence on our world such that we could speak of being ruled by sin. Rather, we think of sin as the bad things other people do out of sheer badness. This view allows us to entertain the thought that if our criminal laws are pursued with sufficient strictness, our world will become less of the sordid mess that it unquestionably is. That completely misses the point. Sin isn’t what bad people do. Sin is an influence within the world which leads us along wrong paths and excuses the bad things we do by convincing us that they weren’t bad to begin with.

The solution seems so simple: beat the devil out of the world. And yet...Jesus disagrees.

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.

I suppose we could argue that Jesus is offering farming advice, but he is not. This is the world in which we live – one of wheat and weeds. Worse yet, we’re being told that we can’t simply eradicate evil.

Few better examples of what Jesus is speaking about could be imagined than the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis six years ago. A store clerk believed Floyd had used a counterfeit bill to make a purchase and called the cops. One of four police officers who arrived on the scene, Derek Chauvin , knelt on Floyd's neck and back for almost ten minutes, fatally asphyxiating him. This is a transcript from the officers’ body cam as Floyd was dying:

Officer Lane, “Should we roll him on his side?”
Officer Chauvin, “No, he’s staying put where we got him.”
Officer Lane: “Okay. just worry about the excited delirium or whatever.”
Officer Chauvin: “Well that's why we got the ambulance coming.”
Officer Lane: “Okay, I suppose.”

Often, in making an arrest, police must use force. The youngest officer was thinking of the harvest and asked if Floyd couldn’t be placed in a safer position. The senior officer, focused on the arrest and the removal of one of the “bad guys” said no. Nine minutes later, Floyd was dead.

When the Disciples asked Jesus to explain His parable, He told them:

“The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.”

There is hope, though. We might not be able to remove the weeds from the field, but we can still tend to the harvest. The point I’m reaching for is that because we are IN the world, we are part OF it. We aren’t uninvolved observers. When we get all self-righteous over the misdeeds of others or speak of devils, we start to divide the world into the “good guys” and the “bad guys”. The truth is that we, each of us, is a field sown with wheat and weeds. We are composite creatures, alloyed of good and bad.

Another example: Congressman John Lewis, known as the conscience of the Congress, died at age 80. As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he was one of the “Big Six” leaders of groups who organized the 1963 March on Washington, and played many key roles in the Civil Rights Movement and its actions to end legalized racial segregation in the United States.

On March 7, 1965—a day that would become known as “Bloody Sunday”—Lewis, several religious leaders, activists, and some 600 marchers attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, named after a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, to protest the police shooting death of unarmed protester Jimmie Lee Jackson a few weeks earlier. The plan was for marchers to walk to then-Gov. George Wallace’s office to ask questions about Jackson’s death.

Gov. Wallace saw a march and a protest as disruptive to his community’s peace and order which he was sworn to protect and ordered the Alabama Highway Patrol chief to “use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march.” He could easily convince himself that he was removing weeds and never see that in gathering the weeds he would uproot the wheat along with them. Similarly, the marchers failed to see that they were attacking a treasured custom and that those treasuring it would turn to violence to protect it.

At the end of the bridge, marchers were confronted by Alabama State Troopers, who ordered them to leave. Instead they began to pray. Police then launched tear gas, while mounted troops began beating nonviolent protesters with nightsticks. Lewis’ skull was fractured in the melee and the scars from that day were still visible as he got older. The visions of police beating protesters, which were broadcast across America, prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson into signing the Voting Rights Act into law on Aug. 6, 1965.

Or, I could suggest that we pay attention to the deadly actions of ICE. ICE was supposed to enforce our immigration laws, and the government insisted that ICE was deporting only “bad guys”. The facts don’t support that. For the period 2015–2021 there were 59 shootings by ICE officers, 23 of which were fatal. Why would we passively permit masked agents in unmarked cars to pursue and shoot American citizens in cases like that of Renee Goode or Alex Pretti? We permit it because we are told that people different from us are a danger to us and that such people must be removed to ensure our safety. Neither Goode nor Pretti were armed but there has been no state investigation of their killing because only the state can bring murder charges and the evidence was only turned over to state authorities last week, seven months later. The truth is that we, each of us, is a field sown with wheat and weeds.

I have another example, one in which I got to do as Jesus decreed. Decades ago, I was a University policeman – a campus cop. As these things go, that’s pretty far down the pecking order. As history rolled on, our country involved itself in a war in Vietnam, a war widely viewed as unnecessary and unlawful. Many young people were opposed and expressed their opposition, including young people at the University of Kentucky. The protests caused some property damage, and the National Guard, with fixed bayonets, were called in to protect the University property. Think of that! To protect the University PROPERTY it was deemed appropriate to threaten our children with weapons of war! Surprisingly, the role of the University Police was to patrol the area between the Guard and the students, and to keep the two groups apart, lest there be injuries.

Truth is, I have done some good things in my life. I’m proud that I was able to do so, but if I ever get it into my head that I did those good things because I’m one of the “good guys”, you can look for me in the weeds. Any good I have accomplished is to the glory of our Father and as a result of His leading me to it, not any merit on my part. For my part, I am a field sowed in wheat and weeds.
AMEN