You Aren't Taking this Seriously Enough...And Don't Forget to Smile

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
July 19, 2026
Proper 11, A
Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:11-17
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Did you notice that in Jesus’ parable of God’s kingdom here on earth, there was no separation between the righteous and the unrighteous? The church wasn’t separated from the world. The people of the church didn’t isolate themselves from those they thought were too sinful, or not good enough, or impure. When churches do try to isolate themselves from everyone else outside the church, they miss an essential piece of God’s kingdom here on earth. God’s kingdom is lived out among all of us together, the wheat and the weeds, the good and the bad, the righteous and the unrighteous. Welcome to Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat.

Of course, you’ve also got to notice that the wheat and the weeds weren’t the ones separating each other out declaring who was righteous and who was unrighteous. That was done by angels at the end of the ages, and we know from other teachings of Jesus that Jesus will be the one who judges us as righteous or unrighteous. 

So, to anyone who has ever been told you aren’t good enough to belong to a church, or anyone who has been told you are too sinful to be able to be a part of a church, I present to you Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat. We aren’t meant to separate out the unrighteous from the church and leave only the righteous people in the church. 

When we do, we end up with things like the Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition; people die when we end up declaring “only the righteous may stay and the unrighteous must leave.” 

I think in modern times of so many gay kids who have been kicked out of their churches for being gay, and then kicked out of their families for being gay, and then ended up killing themselves because everyone they loved had rejected them and told them they were weeds, good for nothing but destruction, and of course there are countless others who have been rejected by various parts of the church for not being righteous enough. Jesus said that people’s lives were on the line when they tried to pull the weeds out from among the wheat, and we know from our lived experiences in the church that Jesus was right.

In addition to the sometimes life or death decisions of telling people they don’t belong in the church, we have the little problem that if you want to uproot someone and have them gone from the church, remember, there is probably someone else who feels the same way about you. So, as the church, we are meant to be the wheat and the weeds living together, and even though we do try to help each other in living in loving ways, in not harming each other so much, even though we may say things like, “No, you can’t shout and fight with people in the church,” we don’t declare who are the weeds and who are the wheat. We do get to say things like, “You need to go away for a while because of your behavior,” but we also get to say, “You can come back.”

Monty Python - No One Expects ths Spanish Inquisition

Of course, it is certainly easier to feel safe when we get to declare who’s in and who’s out. I’m safe from God’s judgement so long as I’m in, and I know I get to be in so long as they’re out. When we start making these determinations, however, we end up turning God into ourselves. So, let’s look at what scripture says about the God who judges us as wheat and weeds.

In the Wisdom of Solomon, we’ve got this image of God who judges justly and mildly, who gives hope through repentance for sins. We’ve also got this image in Matthew of God burning all evildoers and causes of sin in a furnace of fire. How do we reconcile these images of justice and mild justice, with repentance of sins, and burning fire? How can God have justice and mercy? How can God have judgment and forgiveness?

Usually in the church, we’ve come up with very clear, easily definable answers to these questions. Some have said God’s justice is for those who aren’t Christian (or the right kind of Christian), and God’s mercy is for those who are Christian (or the right kind of Christian). That’s kinda lovely, I guess. It certainly makes the math really easy. Unfortunately, if God’s justice is only for those other people, then we aren’t taking God’s justice seriously. If God’s mercy is only for us and those who believe just like us, then we aren’t taking God’s mercy seriously. This has been our challenge for around 1,700 years. 

Around that time, around 1700 years ago, much of the church fearfully decided to follow certainty in their beliefs about who gets God’s judgment and who gets God’s mercy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the church decided that people who were a part of the church got the mercy and people who weren’t a part of the church got the judgment. They used grand theological concepts to support their fearful assurance of God’s mercy towards them, concepts like election and predestination, and none of that took God’s justice or mercy seriously because all of those things gave us assurance of salvation and gave them, those outside the church, assurance of damnation. 

What we hear from Jesus is more complicated. What if instead of easy answers with bows tied around them, we took seriously both God’s justice and God’s mercy for all people?

We all have sin, and we all do evil. So that puts us on the burned up side the Jesus’ parable. We also all have righteousness and love, so that puts us on the shining in God’s kingdom side of Jesus’ parable. So, rather that fearfully deciding who gets God’s punishment and who gets God’s mercy, how about we put our trust in the one who judges? 

Jesus will be our judge, the one who welcomes sinners and guides them into a new life. Jesus will be our judge, the one who has no time for our self-righteous judgments of others. Jesus will be our judge, the one who said, let not your sin keep you from approaching God, but rather come humbly before God and be healed.

If any think that because they believe in Jesus, they are now wheat, and any who do not believe in Jesus are pure weed, people who think that need to stop fooling themselves. We’re told in the Wisdom of Solomon that, “God’s strength is the source of righteousness.” That means we all have plenty of righteousness in us, of course we do. Sorry to Augustine and Calvin, who really liked the who’s in/who’s out theological systems, but we are not totally depraved with no goodness within us. 

Of course we have goodness within us! God made us and declared us very good! Sure, we screw up, but that doesn’t destroy all goodness within us. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden didn’t destroy all goodness within us, and passages of scripture which indicate that they did are misunderstood and read out of context. There is plenty that is good in all humans. There is lots of good in non-Christians, and as much as Augustine or Calvin may say that non-Christians’ good works are hated by God because they don’t believe in Jesus, scripture tells a different story. Heck, just not being an idiot tells a different story.

Jesus said that at the end of the age, he’ll talk to all the people throughout the earth, folks who believe in him and folks who don’t, and he’ll say to some of them, thanks y’all for being kind and loving towards others, when you did that them, you did it to me; welcome into God’s eternal kingdom. That’s in Matthew 25. The love they showed to others is greater even than whatever faith they may or may not have had. So it’s great if we believe in Jesus, but if we don’t have love of others, our faith is meaningless. That’s in 1 Corinthians 13. So, what does God really want from us? Justice. Mercy. Kindness. Caring for others. Walking humbly with God in our lives, and we all have that ability in us. That’s in pretty much all of the prophets.

So yeah, there’s a huge amount of goodness in all humans. 

There is also plenty that is pretty darn broken and harmful in all humans. Of course there is. We get hurt. We get traumatized, and our brains react in ways that harm others, who then get hurt and traumatized, and the whole cycle just keeps on going. We have goodness within us, and we have evil within us. Welcome to Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat. 

So, what are we to do? We are to grow together. We are to love one another as best we can and seek to help one another heal. We are to trust in Jesus and seek strength and healing from him. 

Sometimes we do have to have someone go away for a while, but that is always meant for healing, with an invitation to return. What we don’t get to do is declare who are the weeds and who are the wheat. We don’t get to kick out those evil ones, assuming that we’re the righteous ones. The folks who did those things never had Jesus’ backing. In fact, what we find over and over in scripture is that the weeds the righteous kicked out were the one Jesus had mercy on. Welcome to Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat.

Blessing In the Face of Cruelty

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
August 17, 2025
Proper 15, C
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Psalm 82
Luke 12:49-56

During the time of the kings of Israel, from King David all the way up to 700 years before Jesus was born, they had a series of good kings, and decent kings, and really terrible kings. The bad kings forgot about following God and God’s ways and instead began worshipping other gods and idols. They treated the people terribly with injustice, oppressing the lowly, and gaining wealth through lies and exploiting workers. Under their leadership, others did the same, and Israel became a place of injustice, exploitation, and oppression. 

The very worst of these bad kings was Ahab. Ahab was married to Jezebel, who was famous for her devotion to Baal, the deity of her native country. Ahab started worshipping Baal with Jezebel, and that led to all sorts of other atrocities. He even had a man killed because he wanted the man’s field. Never mind that he had no legal right to the field. He wanted it, so he killed the man and took it. 

Long afterwards, the prophet Micah told the people of Israel that they were doing the same things as when Ahab was king: injustice, oppression, exploitation. They weren’t worshipping Baal. Their words and prayers were worship to God, but by their actions, they were worshipping something other than God. It wasn’t called Baal, but it was something other than God. If you’re practicing injustice, oppression, and exploitation, you can’t be worshipping God, even if your words say you are.

So, Micah told the people of Israel they were living in a time just like when Ahab was king, and as a result, God was going to give them over to oblivion. They would work and produced nothing good. They would never be satisfied or filled. Children would rise against their parents, and their enemies would be members of their own households.

Well golly, that’s just what Jesus said in our Gospel reading today. “I’ve come not to bring peace, but division. From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

That was God’s judgment against Israel during the time when Micah was prophesying, and Jesus was declaring God’s same judgment for the same reasons. Jesus was declaring to the people of Israel, Y’all are living just like during the time of Ahab. Y’all are living with injustice, oppression, and exploitation. 

There will be division, Jesus was proclaiming, because of how so many in Israel were going along with oppression. Then, in addition to proclaiming God’s judgment, Jesus asked them how they could be so blind to the injustice of their leaders.

You can tell when it’s about to rain, Jesus said. How can you guys not realize you are living in the time of Ahab? How can you not tell that your leaders are sending you down paths of oppression of the lowly, injustice, and exploitation? How do you guys not get it? Jesus wondered.

When we have leaders who oppress people, who give unjust rulings and support unjust laws, who exploit workers to get as much wealth for the rich as they can, then we too are living in the time of Ahab. When we live in the time of Ahab, then we will live in a society that is divided. We will live in a society that can never get enough. We will live in a society that works constantly and yet finds mostly emptiness for all of our labor. 

That sounds kinda like today, and I find Jesus’ words are just as relevant now as they were when he spoke them. Divisiveness and emptiness are the judgements of God for a nation that lives with injustice, oppression, and exploitation. We have a nation deeply divided. We have so much emptiness in our lives. We strive for fame and fortune as for a lover, and we’re left empty because neither fame nor fortune can love us back. We strive for power and possessions as for a dear friend, and we’re left empty because neither power nor possessions can love us back.

We’re living in the time of Ahab, just as Israel was when Micah prophesied to them and just as Israel was when Jesus spoke to the people. So, what are we to do about living in a time of injustice, oppression, and exploitation? Are we to fight, and kill, and destroy leaders who are taking us down these dark paths? Of course not.

We are to follow the teachings of Jesus who taught us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and love one another as he loves us. When our leaders follow ways of injustice, oppression, and exploitation, how we treat one another matters even more. When there is cruelty from leadership, the love we practice is vital. When the powerful have disgust for the lowly, then compassion for one another is more needed than ever.

Where there is hatred, we are to live in love. Where there is discord, we are to bring about communion. Where there is darkness, we get to be light for one another. Where there is sadness and misery, we get to hold one another and cry together. 

We are to worship God in word and in action. We are to remember that when we follow paths of injustice, oppression, and exploitation, we can’t actually worship God, no matter what our words say.

 

So what do we do with our hatred, with our anger, with our desires for vengeance? We offer those desires to God as part of our worship. We say, “Here you go, God. Here is my hatred. Here is my anger. Here is my desire for vengeance. I don’t know what to do with it all, so I am giving it to you, and you can do with it whatever you know is right.”

We make offerings of praise and shouts of joy to God, and that is true worship. Just as our offerings of rage are true worship. That way, we give our rage to God and don’t take it out on one another.

We follow the teachings of Jesus to show our faith truly is in God and not in something else. We live the kingdom of God and follow our prayers and worship with actions that make our words true.

Throughout our lives, we’re going to have good leaders and bad leaders. We’re going to have leaders who seek justice and those who seek injustice. We are called to follow not the way of those leaders, but the way of Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. Our leaders are not our God, and no matter how good or bad they are, no matter how much harm or healing they bring to the world, our calling as the church is to follow Jesus. Our leaders come and go. Jesus remains forever. Following Jesus, we seek justice. We seek to lift up the oppressed. We seek to help the exploited. 

In how we vote, in what we tell our elected leaders, in how we treat one another, in how we rise in the morning, and how we go to sleep at night, we seek justice. We offer love and mercy. We walk humbly with God.