Dichotomy 2 - A Sermon for Sunday July 19 2026
GOSPEL: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The holy gospel according to Matthew.
Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus tells a parable about the co-existence of good and evil in this world. God’s judgment will remove all evildoers and causes of sin, but not until the end of human history.
24[Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field;25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
36Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”
The gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
It is incredible how quickly things can change.
I went to the Stampede
and I needed a bag.
I chose a reusable grocery bag
that had a Canadian flag on it.
I asked my friend - is this too political?
In my mind,
I wanted to make a kind political statement
as we anticipate a referendum in this province.
A pro-Canada statement.
Carrying a bag with an Alberta flag on it
might be saying something different right now.
Just a couple years ago,
the Canadian flag represented something different,
it became a symbol for the freedom convoy.
Things change so fast.
Not long ago the Canada flag was a symbol of division
and now it seems to be a symbol for unity.
The flag you bear
shows where your allegiance is.
These symbols say
there’s a right way to do things, my way,
and a wrong way to do things.
There are two kinds of people in the world:
People who hang the toilet paper roll from the top,
and people who are wrong.
There are two kinds of restaurants,
those who serve Coke,
and those who say “Is Pepsi okay?”
In this world, there is a right way to do things,
my way,
and the wrong way.
But we all want to fit in,
we all search for belonging,
so we find other like-minded people
who do the things the right way,
my right way.
People often find their allegiances on one side of a dichotomy.
Dichotomy means a division or a contrast
between two things that are opposed
or entirely different.
Like public vs private -
we might have a public persona
and then act like ourselves in private.
Urban vs. Rural is another dichotomy
that we ought to pay attention to.
We see it with sports teams.
We might find our allegiance
with one hockey or football team from Alberta -
and certainly not the other Albertan team.
Part of the identity then becomes
anti-that city or anti-that province.
There’s growing anti-rural and anti-urban sentiments out there.
I even heard it at camp Kuriakos recently:
People from Edmonton don't like people from Calgary,
it’s just the way it is.
we learn this division at a young age.
For better or for worse,
we pick sides,
and then those sides become engrained in us.
We live in a time of unparalleled access to information,
and even with all the fake news out there,
You'd think that with such variety of media,
that we would be making progress towards unity.
The truth is there is money - lots of money -
to be made on our polarity,
be it google or social media,
generative artificial intelligence,
it’s the algorithms
that ensure we see the articles,
the posts,
the opinions,
that align best with our views,
further polarizing us.
For example,
imagine if we brought forward two of you,
one who leans left politically
and another who leans right politically,
if you both did the same web search on your phone,
you’d probably get different,
catered search results.
Part of our polarization is due to private profit,
and we are the product,
sold to the highest bidder.
I am convinced that you and I really don’t like polarization.
We really do want Christian unity,
but we each want it to look a certain way.
Many of us really don’t like the Us vs. Them rhetoric.
We proclaim our unity in Christ,
but we often participate in our division,
either actively or passively,
knowingly or not.
We believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,
called and gathered by the Holy Spirit.
We are united by Christ’s life, death, and resurrection,
We proclaim one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
we are one!!!!
yet we too often choose to live into
Us vs. Them.
It’s the wheat and weeds.
It’s the wheat and weeds.
God work is bringing order and beauty out of chaos.
When you see order and beauty happen in the world,
expect to find God’s fingerprints.
We love our dichotomies
and we take pride in our affiliations,
Canadian or Albertan (can’t we be both?)
Calgary over Edmonton
Conservative or Liberal,
This kind of Christian and not that kind of Christian.
We love our dichotomies,
but the truth of God
and God’s saving work in the world
is that Salvation is not just for
one group of correct-believing people.
Rather, God’s work of salvation
is intended for all creation.
That’s God’s will.
God’s desire is that all creation be redeemed,
that all creation be reconciled,
that all creation be renewed.
All creation means all people,
liberal and conservative and apolitical,
Christian and not,
Feminists and Alt Right,
those stuck in binary thinking
and those seeking to be opened.
All creation means People
and trees
and rabbits and coyotes
and lake
and air
and dirt.
Every time we use religion to draw a line
to keep people out,
Jesus is with the people on the other side of that line.
(Hugh L. Hollowell).
Every time we draw a line
between us and the other,
Jesus takes out the eraser.
God’s work is removing barriers.
So don’t draw the line.
In the kingdom of heaven,
It is not our decision who is in and who is out.
It is not up to us to decide
who is wheat and who is weed.
In the parable that Jesus offers,
both the wheat and the weed grow together.
God plants the wheat,
but the enemy has planted weeds.
At the harvest,
God decides what is wheat and what is not.
We hear this parable,
and hope to God that I am counted with the wheat
and not the weeds.
But the truth is that we are both.
I am both wheat and weed.
You are simultaneously saint and sinner.
We are simultaneously forgiven,
justified before God,
beautiful and good,
and we are also simultaneously sinner;
broken,
hurting,
divisive,
evil and in need of being uprooted.
The wheat in us grows alongside the weeds in us.
God decides what in us
is wheat and what is not.
So until then,
we grow in faith,
wheat and weeds, together.
We strive for producing good wheat, good fruit.
Fruit that looks and tastes like:
love, joy,
peace, patience,
kindness, goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness, and self-control.
God’s Word,
God’s life giving and life saving Word
has been planted in your hearts.
So we can trust that, by the hand of Jesus, the Gardener,
the wheat will grow in us,
that by God’s Spirit,
we might nurture the wheat,
and trust that God will deal with the weeds.
God’s Spirit is a refining fire,
that burns away impurities,
God’s Spirit is at work in the faithful now,
burning away impurities.
Don’t fight it.
send the Fire, Lord.
send the Fire.
We may want it to be simple,
God saves the good people,
God burns the chaff and weeds - the bad people.
But the truth is that we are both,
I am wheat and weed,
you are wheat and weed,
the dichotomies and polarities
aren’t just out there in the world,
they’re inside our very selves.
Paul uses the image of the flesh,
sarx in the Greek,
the flesh is weak,
the flesh seeks out gratification.
But flesh is good.
Flesh is part of who we are,
we are made with a body,
with skin and muscle and tissue,
there is nothing wrong with your flesh.
listen to your body.
When I give into temptation,
When I do the thing I shouldn’t do,
when I chose not to act when called to:
it is not my skin doing it,
it is not my flesh doing it,
I make the decision.
The devil didn’t make me do it.
The weeds in me grow along with the wheat.
Lord, let my heart be good soil,
open to the seed of your Word,
where love can grow
and peace is understood.
All what was,
all that is now,
and all that ever will be
belongs to God.
God is first and last,
Alpha and Omega,
There is no rock other than our God.
This is the same God in whom we find our belonging
in a fruitful way,
in a faithful way,
in a life-giving way
that no one side of dichotomy,
that no one side of polarity
can come close to matching.
It’s not our affiliations:
it is not the sports team
or the political party
or how we place the TP
or if we prefer Coke over Pepsi,
that unites us.
It is not our affiliations that unite
It is Christ that unites.
So may we be united in Christ,
and find our belonging in the body of Christ.
As Christ unites us,
may we be vessels of unity
amidst prevalent dichotomy and polarization.
May God separate the wheat and the weeds in our hearts
so that God’s righteousness in us
might shine like the sun.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
