Some
Thoughts on the Liturgy
THE
ART OF INFLUENCE
+ In the arena of life, there
are wheat and weeds
- the wheat are the citizens
of the kingdom that Jesus is preaching about—
- the weeds are the
followers of the evil one
- Jesus’ story
concentrated on whether we are wheat or weeds, that is, a
citizen of Jesus’ kingdom or followers of the evil one
- and one of Jesus’ scare
tactics is that we should be a citizen of the kingdom because
if we are following the evil one, we will be “gathered for
burning,” that is, go to hell
+ A couple of years ago, in
one of the megastores in the Midwest a new manager was brought
in by the central office of that group of stores
- the new manager was told
to “clean it up,” to let some people go, etc.
- not an enviable job to
say the least, but he chose to do it in a unique way
- since no one knew who he
was—he was brought in from another state—he asked the
central office to give him a month before he was appointed,
and he went to the store and applied as one of the workers,
with no one knowing who he was
- he wanted to see how he
was treated by everyone, and where the workers felt the
problems were
- he took note of how he
was treated, who was kind to him, what the employees did in
their free time, how they talked, who they talked about, who
and what they felt were the problems, etc.
- and when he took over the
office of manager, he promptly let the people go who were the
problems according to most of the workers and attacked those
problems that the workers had talked about
- the store became one of
the best stores in the chain
- the manager found the
weeds, and in a sense, gathered them to burn
+ There may be some weeds in
here, that is, followers of the evil one, but I doubt it
- generally speaking, they
don’t hang around church or church services or places that
promote good living
- and if there are, our
Lord’s story should shock them a little into changing their
ways because the end result of the weeds is not so good
- no, we are all basically
wheat, I suspect
+ Here is an important fact
for the wheat:
- although we go to Church
or to situations that smack of Church, we are not always there
in that Church setting
- which means that outside,
we are going to run into other wheat and we will run into
weeds
- now, we don’t know which
are which—followers of the evil one, or citizens of the
kingdom, although too many of us judge that
- all we really know is
that we should be trying to be the wheat
+ What is the job of the
wheat in Jesus’ story as we rub up against other wheat and
especially the weeds in our arena of life?
- what should a citizen of
the kingdom be doing?
- in one of the Christian
manuscripts of a long time ago, there is an apocalyptic—that
is, false—ending suggested to the parable as Jesus told
it—the writer of the manuscript who was copying Jesus’
story wrote a different ending:
- the manuscript closed the
story of Jesus this way: after the Master told his servants to
wait until harvest time—
When harvest time came,
the Master found that as the wheat and weeds grew together,
the wheat had begun to change the weeds and the weeds actually
began to act like the wheat. At harvest time there were very
few weeds to burn.
- perhaps that is
what the “wheat” in the real world was supposed to do
- work with the weeds that
they are around, and try to change them, to influence them in
such a way as to make them become wheat, and make them
citizens of the kingdom rather than followers of the evil one
+ The point of the writer of
the manuscript: we influence people
- no matter where we are, we
convey an attitude of who we are and how we feel
- and perhaps one of the
conclusions to Jesus’ story can be that you and I have the
capability of changing someone from being a weed, a follower
of the evil one, to being wheat, a citizen of the kingdom
- and we do it simply by
our attitude
- the attitude of a person
of the kingdom of heaven
- a person who is
convinced that the message of Christianity is really good, and
therefore should be part of our lives, all the time
- incidentally, this
influencing of others is not something we are always conscious
of
- we may be conscious of
practicing or at least trying to achieve a good attitude of
living, but we may not know that we are influencing others
+ It is possible that our
very presence can influence the weeds of this world enough for
them to change
-
the question of Christianity is: how are we doing?
MEDIA
PRESENTATION
Song:
"Hey Mama" -- David Guetta featuring
Nicki
Minaj & Afrojack
DO
NOT WORRY
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