GOURDS, SQUASH and FORBEARANCE

A sermon given on Sunday, July 19, 2026

by the Rt. Rev. Alan M. Gates, Bridge Pastor

            My father was an original organic gardener.  Fifty years ago, long before it was fashionable, his vegetable garden was covered with mulch and compost.  Among the produce was always a bountiful quantity of squash, and plenty of gourds.  Over the years some cross-pollination took place.  Volunteer plants would sprout up which were a hybrid combination of squash and gourd.  Dad called them “squords” –I suppose because it would have been confusing to call them “gosh!”

            The problem with these squords was that you couldn’t tell by looking at them whether they were mostly squash, in which case they were okay to eat, or whether they were mostly gourd, in which case they were awful to eat!  You couldn’t tell until you’d gone to all the trouble of cooking them and taken a bite.  To my mind these squords were a great nuisance and not worth the trouble.  Why spend all that time and effort watering, cultivating, picking and cooking, when it might all be wasted effort?  But Dad had infinite patience with his squords.  He always gave them the benefit of the doubt, never wanting to risk throwing out something that might in fact be good.  And so, much to the amusement of the neighbors, the Gates garden grew squords.

            Such precisely is the thrust of today’s Gospel reading, the Parable of the Weeds [Mt 13:24-30,36-43] – or sometimes, the Parable of the Wheat and Tares.  It’s about God’s forbearance.  God’s patience.  God’s reluctance to risk losing something of value.  The servants say to the Master, “Shall we gather up the weeds?”  But he replies, “No: lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest.”  This made some sense to Jesus’ listeners, since the poisonous ‘darnel’ weed of Palestine did in fact look much like wheat until late in the season.  Jesus indicates that, in God’s time, it will become clear to God who is who, and what is what.  But for now: forbearance, patience, and the benefit of the doubt.

            This should come as good news to us.  It is good news because as Growing Things you and I are all both wheat and weed.  Striving to be numbered among the righteous, still we know the truth of the familiar words from First John [1:8]:  “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  Saint Paul said it for all of us when he wrote, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do …” [Rom 7:18-19]  We know about such things.  Resolutions broken.  Opportunities missed.  Harsh words spoken and regretted.  Good intentions never acted upon.  We know very well that the ‘wheat’ and the ‘weeds’ do grow side by side – in the world, and within each one of us.  So it is comforting news indeed to hear of God’s forbearance, God’s patience, God’s slowness to judge.

            Together with comfort, however, this parable also brings a challenging reminder where it concerns how we relate to one another.  When locating ourselves in this parable we must consider that, in addition to being the plants which grow and need patience, we might sometimes be the servants – the servants who say eagerly to the master, “Shall we pull up those weeds?”  For Jesus the issue was society’s outcasts.  The righteous of his day were apt to assume that the poor, the blind, the prostitutes and lepers, were nothing more than weeds.  “Shall we pull up those weeds?” said the servants.  But the Master said No.  By the time Matthew recorded the parable two or three generations later, the issue was the Christian community itself – groups holding conflicting views on dietary laws, on circumcision, on adherence to particular commandments, even on the nature of Christ himself.  Followers of Jesus were flinging accusations at one another, each convinced that the other should be declared unfit.  “Shall we pull up those weeds?” said the servants.  And Matthew tells us that the Master said No.  Here is the theme of today’s Gospel: forbearance, patience.

Now, our initial application for this teaching might well be our relationships with one another.  It’s about patience with each other, about suspending judgement, about offering the benefit of the doubt.  This we should do.  Forbearance nourishes our relationships, and it manifests the humility for which we should strive.

When we look around, we see that this teaching is also needed – deeply and urgently needed – not just on the personal level, but in our society, our nation, and the world.  We need only look at the news to see the tragedy which ensues when the “servants” from that parable are not restrained but encouraged in their eagerness to destroy others they deem to be weeds.

Consider places which international humanitarian groups have labelled as scenes of genocidal conflict:  Sudan. Gaza. The Congo. Myanmar.  In each case the killing of innocents is within a framework of political power, to be sure.  But in each case that slaughter is rationalized by a framework of ethnic or religious cleansing. One set of human beings is encouraged to think of another group as little more than weeds to be destroyed.  To the question, “Shall we pull up those weeds?”, the tragic reply comes: “Yes, destroy them.”

Here in our country there is a growing movement to use the language of ‘spiritual warfare’ as a justification for the oppression or purging of those who are deemed unfit.  There’ve been high profile incidents such as Q-Anon conspiracy theorists attacking pizza parlors, or religious extremists attacking politicians and their families.  But the mainstreaming of this spiritual warfare paradigm now has even groups like Lutheran and Catholic charitable foundations being labeled as “demonic” by those who don’t approve of how or to whom they minister.  Alarmingly, this violence – verbal and physical –  is supported by people claiming the mantle of Christianity.

Extremist groups, those under the Christian nationalist banner and others, employ more and more this language of spiritual warfare in the purging of behaviors and people they deem to be “demonic.”  As an essay in this week’s The Atlantic, notes:

Until recently, all of this might have been considered a dispatch from the fringes of American religion, except that [such ideas] are becoming more and more mainstream. … [I]invoking demons can be a means of dehumanizing and delegitimizing political enemies, which has often been a precursor to actual warfare and political violence. “It’s a very useful way to get around the Christian imperative to love your enemy,” [says] Matthew Taylor, a visiting scholar at the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. “For the most part, that is the ironclad command. So how do you get Christians to hate their enemies? Or to hate them even if they love them? Demons are easy to hate. They are irredeemable objects of hatred.”[i]

  It is hard not to see the current treatment of immigrants in our midst as a product of this pseudo-religious rationalization.  I am not speaking about varying views on immigration policy.  The question of international borders is complicated.  We can have different opinions about such policy, which often do not track with partisan identity.  No, what I am talking about is authority – including state authority – which purports to be looking for violent criminals, but which demonizes and casts its net with indiscriminate violence and careless indifference to human life.  So it becomes clear that this is not the judicious protection of communal well-being which it claims, but rather an expression of wholesale “weeding” akin to today’s parable.

Such actions must be abhorrent to us as Christians.  And the same is true of every action – whether individual behavior or communal policy – which asserts that a child of God is not just different from us, but lesser, and even worthy of God’s judgement which somehow we have been designated to carry out.  We have not!

Hostile policies based upon race, religion, gender or sexual identity, or ethnicity – these are unchristian not just because they are “not nice;” they are unchristian because they fly in the face of Jesus’ explicit teaching.  The imagery of today’s gospel – which speaks of collecting weeds and binding them up in bundles to be burned – is acted out perversely in complete opposition to the passage’s actual message which clearly says that such judgment and destruction is the prerogative of God, only God, and only on God’s timetable.

The Gospel’s invitation to us this week is to reflect upon forbearance and the withholding of judgment.  Give thanks for God’s patience with our own failures, yours and mine.  Consider where in our own relationships with one another we are failing to model that forbearance.

And: consider where in our common life are policies that dehumanize and demonize, especially actions which manifest a moralizing rationale, a weeding mentality to be concretely opposed.  Where then might we need to reject and fight against the intolerance of others?

            We are (if you will forgive this!) all “squords” in God’s garden.  Mixtures of the worthy and the not-so-worthy.  As such, let us be humble. Humble towards God, giving thanks that God judges us with unwarranted patience. And humble towards one another, reflecting God’s forbearance with our own patience and slowness to judge.

“Shall we pull up those weeds?” said the servants.  And the Master said, No.

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[i] “The Demon Next Door,” Stephanie McCrummen; The Atlantic online magazine, August 2026