proper 11a: ladders in the weeds

we may say in the creed about jesus that "he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead," but it seems that few of us live as if that were an important part of our expectations. indeed liberal theologians often speak of how mistaken the "early church" was in expecting the immanent return of christ. i sometimes wonder whether the phrase "early church" implies that we are the "late church," and that therefore we might be surprised by a trump at any moment.

of course there are those who are making big bucks off "the second coming." if, however, the gospel for this sunday is correct, the left behind folks have it just about backwards: it will be the tares, the weeds, who leave their clothes behind on airplanes, with the good wheat left behind (on an earth that will be recreated, according to the revelation to john).

meanwhile, we have to live amongst the weeds. I once worshiped with a parish that was jokingly called "bede's-in-the-weeds," as if somehow her mother parish downtown were in a perfect wheat field. i confess i find this persistence of weeds less enjoyable when i think of the parable in jungian terms, and realize that the weeds are often within my own heart. if the weeds were only those persons with whom i share the field who were less perfect than i, i could probably forgive them. but the truth is that there are many things growing in my heart for which i pray clearance, and that sometimes i pray with my fingers crossed behind my back.

it is in the context of my own heart that i find the story from genesis hopeful. ". . . the holy one is in this place, and i never knew it." again and again the holy one comes into the stony desert where jacob was fleeing from his brother, no stonier than my weed-filled heart can be, not just a "second coming," but comings "seventy times seven." for as john wesley wrote in his notes on the new testament, "the mediation of christ: he is this ladder: the foot on earth in his human nature, the top in heaven in his divine nature; or the former is his humiliation, the latter is his exaltation."