The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - July 19, 2026 (Slides)
The M3 for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Slides)
Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43
Shine Like the Sun/Don't Be a Weed
For a young, 19-year old man, working at a golf course would seem like a dream job. So, I applied to work at South Suburban Golf course on the southernmost edge of Denver. I was home from the University of Colordao, taking a semester off from school. When I became well again, my Mom said to me that I could not just lie around until school starts in the fall, so I thought to myself that I'm getting an easy, fun, college job. Working at the golf course was not this kind of job!
I started off pulling trash, a pretty mundane job: driving a golf cart from tee to tee, and emptying the trash receptacle and checking the ball-wash fluid. Working at the golf course was regimented and hierarchical for the hourly employees. We had to report at the Maintenance Shed at 5 a.m.– like a military lineup. Then, we would get our assigned jobs, some guys rotating different jobs, while others–like newbies–always having the same: pulling the trash. I did this for a couple months, becoming very efficient eventually. Then, finally something different. We were told at one of our lineups that next week we would be "sanding the greens."
It was like early March. Sanding the greens meant aerating the greens, collecting the dirt-plugs, dumping a huge amount of sand on the green, and then pushing the sand in all the holes left behind from aerating with push-brooms. We did this for all eighteen holes! The grass eventually grows together to fill in the holes. I think that we were on hole three or four, and it was about 11. Remember I said everything was very regimented. We had been told to always take lunch at 11:15, letting the morning golfers finish their round and not eating when they would be around noon. So at 11:15 I took my lunch. I went back to the maintenance shed, sat at the table in the break room and started eating. It was only Bob the Mechanic and me eating. This was unusual and eerie. Bob was like the crazy killer guy in horror films: dressed perfectly, never said anything, seemed grumpy, always kind of lurky around in the background of things. It was just him and me at the table. He didn't look at me. I tried not to look at him. Busting this awkard, silent situation were the words that blared over his two-way radio, "Is that Kummer kid back there eating lunch?" Bob said that I was. "Tell him to get his a@% out here! We don't break for lunch, when we're sanding greens!" Bob said, "Roger that," set the radio down and said, "Don't worry about it! He's a pr*&k." So, I went back out, but instead of sanding greens I was punished. I was told to begin pulling weeds at all the tees, starting with the large thistle patch at one of the later holes on the course. I was pulling weeds.
In the parable Jesus tells, servants report to their master that weeds are growing among his crop. They rhetorically ask him if he sowed good seed. Of course, he did! The master says that an enemy has done this! He later in Matthew explains that the enemy is the devil, the field is the world, the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the good seed are the sons of the kingdom. The point: the devil will place people in Christians' lives who will challenge their growth in Christ and possibly kill that growth. Yet, the harvest is coming--that is the day of Jesus' second coming, making all things new without the curse! This cautionary and encouraging parable reminds us that we live in a world in which people will always be competing against everything that it is to follow Jesus. Yet, the second coming will happen. With this hope-filled promise, we persevere, paying attention to those with whom we share our lives!