Live Like Wheat
Prayer of Preparation
Most loving God, whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our care on you who cares for us. Preserve me from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from me the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Phyllis Tickle.
The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime. A Manual for Prayer. Doubleday: New York, 2001. 112.
Live Like Wheat
Sunday Scriptures from the Narrative Lectionary:
There are tares among the wheat.
I realize that the parable of the tares and the wheat is not part of our Narrative Lectionary readings for this week, but it has been rattling around in my mind. In my coursework this week, our required reading was from the works, and about the works, of Augustine. Augustine (354-430) served as Bishop of Hippo. He is recognized as a Saint. His work is influential in and on the Western world.
Augustine, in a sermon on Matthew 13, affirms that there are indeed tares – weeds – growing among the wheat. Those tending the fields are to let them grow because it is up to God to determine the tares from the wheat. And both, tare and wheat, belong to God who is Creator of all the world.
That both belong to God brings some comfort. The world and all that it is in belongs to God.
And that the wheat will be gathered for the barn and the tares tossed into the fire adds some discomfort. It's often easier to long for justice for someone else. But judgement isn't just about "them." It is also about us.
Tare and wheat grow in the same field. God is the one who tells them apart. And so, it seems wise to strive to live like wheat,to follow Psalm 90 which counsels us to be wise with our time:
8 You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your countenance.
9 For all our days pass away under your wrath;
our years come to an end like a sigh.
10 The days of our life are seventy years,
or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
11 Who considers the power of your anger?
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
12 So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart. (NRSV Translation)
“So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.”
Teach us, O God, to live like wheat.
What does it mean to live like wheat? Peter, in the passage from Luke, helps us there.
Peter is a fisherman. Leah Schade notes that fishermen “owned no land and were forced to pay for both the right to fish on the emperor’s lake and the right to sell the fish they caught through a toll exacted on their catch.”
To catch nothing meant he was in debt for the failed attempt to catch something, had nothing to eat or feed his family, and had nothing to sell. If you have never struggled to pay a bill, never skipped a meal because there was nothing to eat, never gone without a pay check, you are fortunate. Peter was experiencing all three.
Then enters Jesus. Go back out, Jesus tells him. Incur more debt? Take on more risk? What?
But Jesus insists. Go to the deep water and let your nets down. Even though you have worked all night, go out again. Let your nets down.
And they catch a WHOLE BUNCH.
The fishermen were astounded. Thunderstruck. Flabbergasted. Stupefied.
Peter, when he realizes what has happened with the catch of fish, that he’s been rescued from potential doom in the face of the Roman Empire, that he’s been saved simply because immediately responds with an acknowledgement of his sinfulness. “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man!” (5:8).
One way to live like wheat is to set aside our self-assuredness. After all, the tares and the wheat are difficult to tell apart.
That second fishing run that Jesus prompted resulted in a humdinger of a catch that put the chins of the fishermen on the ground. It was more than enough for taxes, more than enough for food for all of their families, plenty to sell in the market to earn money not just for today, but for tomorrow and beyond. For someone in debt, with no food to eat and nothing to sell, that seems like a moment to start bagging fish up and heading to market. But Jesus tells them they will be fishing for men and they leave the haul and follow him.
They leave wealth, security, wellbeing, position – all of it, to follow Jesus. To learn to live like wheat.
A second way to live like wheat is to consider very, very hard what it is we love and focus very, very hard on loving the right things – God and neighbor. All neighbors. While it is difficult to tell the tares from the wheat, there are “wheaty” things we can do to orient ourselves toward God. To love rightly is one of the most important.
Augustine said that it was possible to tell a lot about a society by what it loves. What tares love and what wheat loves are separated not by love and the lack of love, but by which way the love is oriented.
Self-love that has become sick love is marked by a concern for self above all others. It is ME, ME, ME love. It is inward love.
Wheat love is marked by a concern for others – all others. Others like us and others different from us. Wheat love realizes that all people are God’s image bearers, and that all of creation belongs to God, and so, wheat love is other love. It is outward love. Jesus models outward love. It takes effort to learn to love like Jesus.
Psalm 90 ends with a prayer over our efforts, our work, our lives:
17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and prosper for us the work of our hands—
O prosper the work of our hands!
A third way to live like wheat is to get at it. Our days are numbered. We can cruise through the hours watching cable news and playing Candy Crush or we can learn to live like Jesus and seek to live like Jesus. What does Luke tell us about Jesus? How does this passage about fishermen and fish and fishing for men and following Jesus instruct us to live like wheat?
There are tares among the wheat and it is up to God to sort them out. In the meantime, as the days are short, it seems wise to strive to live like wheat. Being wheat does not mean we are perfect now. Rather, it means we are growing in the right direction.
May God grant us wisdom and discernment to have eyes to see and ears to hear.
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Works Cited:
Phyllis Tickle. The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime. A Manual for Prayer. Doubleday: New York, 2001. 112.
Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/narrative-lectionary/fish-for-people/commentary-on-luke-51-11-7
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