Seaside With Jesus: Catclaw and Sea Robins Matthew 13:24-30, 47-50

There’s something the ladies of my first appointment would tell you if they had an opportunity.  They would tell you that it is a good thing that Lee is cutting the grass at the parsonage.  They would tell you that Pastor Lee doesn’t know a thing about grass, flowers, and weeds.  Why?  Here’s what happened.  I had been serving as interim pastor of Salem in Oxford for about six months, having started in December.  When it was clear that I would be reappointed, they had given notice to the family renting the parsonage that they would need it when the lease ran out at the end of June (their previous pastor had not lived in the parsonage, and instead chose to receive a housing allowance).  They worked feverously to prepare the house after the renters left (any of you with rental houses know what they were having to do).  Anyways, it came time for me to move in.  They told me that the previous tenants had mowed the grass before they left, but had not had a chance to weed-eat around the house.  I told them it would be no problem, I had a weed-eater and I’d take care of it.

Now theres’s something I’ll confess before I tell you the rest of the story.  I am one of those folks that believe that if it is green and growing in the front yard it is grass.  I don’t believe in killing the grass that God has growing in order to replant other grass.  I am also a believer that if you call it a natural area, it should be a natural area…it should be left to grow as God has it growing.  The first time we go to pulling weeds or digging holes to plant flowers, it is no longer natural, it is a manicured area.  Now you know my mentality when it comes to landscaping—those of you who make a living doing landscaping, I’m the kind of person that ensures you will stay in business.

So, since the folks felt that the areas around the sides of the house needed weed-eating in Oxford, I took to weed-eating.  I cut back everything that wasn’t a shrub growing around the side of the house.  Several weeks later some of the women of the church came by and wondered how the flowers they had planted were doing, the ones that had just starting to come up between the driveway and the side of the house when we moved in.  Do I really need to fill in the rest of the story?

I try to take notice of what is growing when I move into a parsonage now.  I rejoice in some areas of the state where certain plants and trees do not grow.  We are in one of those rejoicing zones here.  I move into new areas hoping that I am done with some of what I dealt with in the last area.  Sadly, while I was able to rejoice that one of my allergy producing trees don’t grow well in the sandy soil of the island, as I walked along the sidewalk upon moving to Cape Lookout Drive, I saw next to the porch a plant growing that I despise.  No, it wasn’t the azaleas or the crepe Myrtle.  It was the catclaw weaving its way through the azaleas.

If I used the word “hate” about anything, I would say that I “hate” catclaw---so instead of hate, let’s just say that I have strong feelings against catclaw.  I dislike how it grows up through your shrubs and other plants.  I dislike how it takes its tendrils and attaches itself to your shrubs or other plants.  I dislike how when you go to grab hold of it the first time, or the tenth time, because you didn’t know, and then you forgot, that you get a handful of thorns. I would love to just grab hold of every vine and yank it out.  The trouble is, if you do, there are several unintended consequences.  First, if you just go in and start yanking, because those tendrils are wrapped around your plant, there is the strong possibility you can damage or destroy your plant.  Secondly, if you don’t wear gloves, there is a good chance that your hands will get torn up.  Thirdly, if you decided to try and use something like Roundup to kill it, it is so tightly bound to your plant, by the time you get enough of it on the catclaw, you’ve gotten it on your plant, and it will suffer along with the catclaw.  If it could talk, you could ask the hydrangea at our last parsonage, who suffered and almost disappeared as a result of the Roundup…and by the time it came back, the catclaw came write along with it.

Now I will admit this, and I probably already have, and probably will do so again.  Although I grew up spending two or three weekends a month, from April to November, fishing, with even longer stents during the summer, yet, all of those were centered around Kerr, Holt, Roger, and Devin lakes.  I may have had a week or weekend of pier fishing during the summer, but most all of my experience is freshwater…so I don’t know a whole lot about saltwater fishing.  Because of that, I asked one of our fishers here what would be considered a “junk-fish” or “bad fish” here at Harkers Island if caught in the nets.  I was told that most of our fishermen have absolutely no use for the fish known as a sea robin.  It is an ugly, bony, bottom dwelling fish that will get caught up in the nets that many fisherman just consider an absolute annoyance.

Here’s the thing.  Let me start by asking, do we have anyone from Boston or Europe here?  Depending on how long you’ve been away, you might be able to verify this, but it seems that sea robins are becoming somewhat of a delicacy in those places, as one of the primary fish in Boullabaisse, a spicy French stew.  What appears to be useless, junk, or bad in our eyes, may be extremely valuable and essential in the eyes of someone else.

So with that in mind, we hear those parables of Jesus again:

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And 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?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let 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.’ ”

Jesus is saying, my brothers and sisters, that “yes, there are going to be weeds among the wheat; yes, you are going to run into those you consider ‘bad’ amongst those that have been gathered into the church; but I want you to leave them alone.  If you start weeding your congregation, you are liable to do more harm that good.”  You see, we are liable to upset and destroy the harvest by destroying the good while trying to pull up the bad, because either through the root system or tendrils, the bad have a way of intertwining themselves with the good.  There is also the risk we run, if we try to pull the weeds before the harvest, that what we are pulling up is not a weed, but a stalk of wheat that just hasn’t fully matured…kind of like weed-eating flowers that haven’t bloomed.  Only the one who planted the seeds can truly tell the difference, so we leave them alone, growing together, trusting that the sower will take care of the sorting when the harvest comes.

Likewise, “the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Note that Jesus didn’t say that the fishers were to pull up their nets in the middle of a day of fishing and check the nets, casting out the fish they thought were bad.  Jesus also didn’t suggest that the captain of the fishing vessel sent crewmen overboard to check the net during their fishing expedition.  Pulling your nets in early, correct me if I’m wrong fishermen, risks missing the fish you were after; sending your workers down to the nets while their in the water runs the risk of, 1) scaring off the fish, 2) having the workers get tangled up in the net and ruin the net, or 3) having the workers get tangled up in the net and drown.  The sorting isn’t done until the end of the day, and the bad are not sorted out quickly, Jesus says they sit down, taking time to examine the fish that have been caught, before deciding what is good and what is bad.

Jesus is again saying, you don’t go to sorting out the church, you don’t go to trying to separate the good from the bad in the middle of the fishing trip…you don’t go to sorting our the “good folk” from the “bad folk” in the middle of our efforts to reach all for the sake of Christ—for when we do, we run the risk of scaring away those who have not yet come into a relationship with our captain, Jesus; we run the risk of destroying the “net” or destroying ourselves.  The sorting isn’t done until the end of the day, until the end of the age…and as Jesus points out, just as the reapers were assigned by the sower, those who will sort out the net of evangelism will not be us, other fish in the net, because that’s all we really are, but it will be those that God appoints to do the sorting.  Why? Because we have a tendency to let our limited experience and our personal likes and dislikes determine what is good and bad, and in doing so, we might toss out a “fish” that holds great value in our captain’s eyes…and truth be told, our captain so valued every fish in the sea that He gave His life for us all.

So the advice of Jesus?  The one through whom every plant was given life…the one through whom every fish was placed in the sea…the One in charge of the Harvest…the One in charge of the fishing expedition…let them be…and let Him deal with them in His due time.

In the Name of the Father, in the Name of the Son, and in the Name of the Holy Spirit!  Amen.