[Painting by Roger Wagner, “The Harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are angels,” 1984]

Audio of the sermon is here:

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

            Did you hear what we prayed? You said “amen,” so you prayed it too. “Amen” is assent to a prayer or a word, yes, yes, that is true. So we prayed together: everything you brought in here with you today, all your worries, anxieties, joys, happiness; all your requests; they were “collected” together into the Collect of the Day, which we prayed together as the people of God in Jesus Christ, in line with His Word. “O God, so rule our hearts and minds by Your Holy Spirit, that ever mindful of Your final judgment, we may be stirred up to holiness of living here and dwell with You in perfect joy hereafter.” Rule our hearts and minds; mindful of the final judgment; that we may be stirred up to holiness of living; and dwell with God forever in perfect joy. Lutherans don’t talk too much about holy living, but we prayed for it, so we should probably think about it a little bit.

            We’re also praying about the “here” and the “hereafter.” And it seems like there’s always a pendulum swinging back and forth between them. Sometimes the focus is on the end, on death and judgment, on what’s going to happen after we die. It may be a crisis, or a widespread sickness, like a pandemic, or some kind of disaster. It may be like the shift from 1999 to 2000. The Church focuses on this at the end of the Church Year, so we are kept ever mindful of the final judgment. But it is not a fearful thing, because God rules our hearts and minds with His Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies us in the Body of Christ. He puts us with Jesus, who alone makes the judgment of God for, rather than against, us. Because the Holy Spirit puts us with Jesus in His death and raises us with Him in His resurrection, we know that the judgment has already come in His dying and rising. The new has come; the old has gone.

            At other times, people rebel against too much focus on the end of things, on the hereafter. They say, that stuff isn’t very important. Who knows what happens after you die? What’s necessary is to focus on what we need to do here and now. Care for people. Make this a better place for everyone. That’s what’s important. And God has certainly put good works before us for the sake of people around us. He commands us to care for our neighbors and do them good, according to His good and holy will. So the pendulum swings this way, and then it swings that way.

But Christians know that it is not either the “here” or the “hereafter.” It is, always, both. But the prayer puts things in the right order: ever mindful of the final judgment, we are stirred up to holiness here, and then we will dwell with God in perfect joy hereafter. Is it necessary to care for your neighbor? Can you claim to love God, whom you have not seen, if you do not love your brother or sister, whom you have seen? No. But the fact is that you can feed and clothe and house people; you can do it all perfectly—you won’t, but even if you did, that person is going to die. To help people live in this world of corruption, disease, disaster, death, and sin is a good thing. But we need more than just a little more time in this world as it is. It is all passing away. Jesus says, Do not labor only for the bread that perishes, but labor even more for the bread that endures unto eternal life, which, He says, I will give you. We need also the eternal bread of life that has come down from heaven to give true life to the world, life that lasts beyond this life.

So we try to hold both together: caring for body and soul; doing what we can to support and help life here; and giving people the bread of life that lasts into the hereafter; being ever mindful of the final judgment, stirred up to holiness of living here. For whom? Does God need your holiness? He’s got all the holiness He needs. If you refuse to do good works for your neighbor, is God going to be stuck? Is He restricted or hand-cuffed by human refusal to do what He commands? No, of course not. His will will be done; His kingdom will come; His name will be holy. So is your holy life for you? That you should live in holiness toward others so you can build up your holiness and prove yourself worthy or righteous? No, you are in Christ, and you can’t be holier than Jesus. Your holy life—never perfectly holy here, of course—is for your neighbors, and they do need it. You are commanded to be holy for their sake, to discover in every moment what your neighbor truly needs according to God’s will, and to do that as well as you can; to discern God’s divine and holy will for this person at this moment. And you are free within your creaturely limits to do it. God, rule our hearts and minds by Your Holy Spirit and stir us up to holiness of living!

And we need to be stirred up because we are not in some ideal world. We are not in Eden. And we are not yet in Paradise, or the New Jerusalem. You have been created by God to be in this world, and you cannot get out of it unless He takes you out of it, or you deny and defy His creative word of making you with your gifts and talents and abilities. Not only did He put you here by creation, He has baptized and made you a new creation and put you back into the world. He planted you, just as He plants His whole Church in the field of this world. In this parable, the seed is not the word of the Kingdom as it was in last week’s parable. Here, Jesus says the good seed sown into the field of this world is the sons of the kingdom. God plants His Church, and it is good and it is for the good of this world.

But what is this? The slaves of the master come to Him and say, Didn’t you plant good seed in Your field? Why, then, are there weeds? There is nothing new under the sun. You think that atheists in the twentieth century came up with the question about why there is evil in God’s good world? You planted good seed in Your field. Why, then, are there weeds? Jesus says, an enemy has done this. But that’s not really an answer, only a cause. It does not answer our questions about why God allows particular forms of evil to go on, or how bad they could be, or why there is evil in the first place. But when do they notice the weeds? Not until the wheat produces grain, or bears fruit. Because this kind of weed looks very much like the wheat. I looked it up. Apparently, it’s still a problem for wheat farmers today. And the best way, it seems, to get rid of this cheat weed is to wait until it sprouts, get rid of it, and then plant the wheat.

            But that’s not what Jesus does. He plants the wheat and then the enemy plants the cheat. It’s like the saying often attributed to Luther that wherever God puts a church, the devil builds a chapel. The devil plants his seeds in the middle of the wheat, but God’s Church is right in the middle of all the weeds. And His Church is for the sake of His field, His world. The weeds are not just people, though they are called the sons of the devil. What will be removed from the Kingdom are all things that cause people to sin, and all lawless ones. This world is not the devil’s. It’s Jesus’ field. He is Lord, and this is the word that He has given to the Church: all this is His. It doesn’t look like it now, but the children of the kingdom will see it in the final judgment, when all things are put right, and we live in new bodies in a new heavens and earth, where righteousness alone dwells.

            The Church, against all human wisdom and reason and expectations, is the way that God makes known that Jesus is Lord, that His death and resurrection make the difference between life in this age and life in the resurrection. And the slaves are told by the master that they cannot try to remove the weeds now, otherwise they might remove wheat as well. This is not the Church. This is not about excommunication. This is the world, and there is no way to remove unbelief, sin, idolatry, and evil from this world, certainly not by force. So this world remains this world, even as it remains God’s. And so we pray: rule our hearts and minds by Your Holy Spirit! Keep us mindful of the judgment of the living and the dead! Stir us up to holiness of living here and bring us to dwell with You in perfect joy hereafter! And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness, as we wait for the sons of God to be revealed. The suffering of this world is not even worth comparing to the perfect joy hereafter. This world is subject to corruption and bondage, to weeds among the wheat, the causes of sin surrounding and amid the sons of the kingdom. Even so, we were saved in hope of the redemption of our bodies, even as we have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit now. Come quickly Lord Jesus, with Your angel harvesters, and gather us in!

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, ESV). Amen.

— Pr. Timothy Winterstein, 7/17/26