Sermon
Sunday July 19, 2026
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
We already started last Sunday on the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, in which Matthew attempts to help us understand what is this kingdom of heaven that Jesus has come to establish—kingdom of heaven. Specifically, in Matthew, it is called the kingdom of heaven because Matthew writes to a Jewish audience, and the Jewish audience did not appreciate using the name of the Lord in vain and would consider calling it the kingdom of God as inappropriate for Jewish people. So in other gospel passages, you will hear the same thing about the kingdom of God, but in Matthew, it’s called the kingdom of heaven. Just a little thing you would have learned if you joined Ian and me at Bible study on our Wednesdays—so, an advertisement for Bible study. You can also join in online.
The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God—what is this all about? Jesus came to establish something new, and anyone who chooses to embrace Christ in a real way is supposed to already live in a new reality, in a new kingdom, in a new way of perceiving the world and one another. The kingdom of heaven has very specific qualities to it, and here Jesus attempts to describe or name those qualities. What is the closest thing we can think of as the kingdom of heaven here on earth? Well, I would venture to say that we think of church, right? Church is a community of believers—people who come together in order to exist within this new reality that Jesus has come to establish.
But the kingdom of heaven is larger than the church. Jesus is speaking about something way bigger than St. Barnabas Church, or even the Anglican Church, or even individual different churches—the ones that are growing and the ones that aren’t. But let’s start with the church as the idea. What is the purpose of the church? Well, the primary purpose is to change our lives: to change our way of engaging the world, of seeing the world, and of seeing ourselves. In other words, if we truly engage with Jesus, we should have no reason to be sad ever.
St. Francis of Assisi, whenever he would see one of his brother Franciscans sad, would tell him that the only reason you must be sad is if you probably committed a sin, because for a Christian, there is no reason to be sad. Forest fires—is that a good reason to be sad? Any kind of tragedy in life, when we place it against what Christ has come to offer to us, and if we really experience the peace of Christ, then even in the most difficult, challenging, and sad moments of life, it’s impossible for us to remain without hope.
So this is what the church is meant to be. But this is also what church often fails to be. Isn’t it true when we speak, all of us as churchgoers? How many times do we get derailed by the details of life that take away our peace and our hope so often?
So what is this parable that Jesus gives and presents to all of us today? The parable of the good seed that grows along with the bad seed that grows. Anyone who has had a garden knows how frustrating it is tending to a garden. The frustration is really not about the garden; it’s about the weeds. It’s always about the weeds. The weeds get in the way.
And this was not something that Jesus just came up with in his own mind; this was a reality of the day. If you really wanted to get back at your neighbor who was a farmer, you would do just that: you would sow bad seed amongst their good wheat. And the wheat that was supposed to grow and feed the people was supposed to get all entangled with this other very specific weed that looked just like wheat. They were indistinguishable from each other until harvest time. At harvest time, the only way to separate them was to take the grain of both and separate them by color. Women usually would sit there and do this painstaking task of separating the brown color of the wheat from the greenish color of the grain of this weed.
Jesus uses this real-life example to say: be patient. Patience is the quality that defines members of the kingdom of heaven, members of the church. It’s supposed to define who we are. It’s so easy for us—even for a person like me who likes cleanliness and who likes getting things done—to be like those servants who want to rip up the weeds right away whenever they appear and say, “No, look at us. Look at our church. We only have saints in our church. We only have good people here. Everything’s clean and everything’s organized. No problems here.” Well, then if that’s the case, then maybe we don’t really even need Jesus in our community; we have it all figured out, don’t we?
For anyone who’s looking for a church, I would say make sure that it’s a community of mixed kinds of people—a community both of wheat and weeds. A community that is patient enough to accept all kinds of people into its midst, and patient enough to realize that our job is not to separate, not to judge, and not to uproot those things and those people that we do not see as worthy of our community. Rather, be patient enough to recognize that it is God’s job at the end of time to decide what happens and to make the separations that need to be made.
So what is the church? What is the church called to be? This kingdom of heaven: we are called to be a community of both wheat and weeds, both perfect and imperfect, brokenness and wholeness. Not only as we look around our community and say, “Well, there’s lots of imperfection here,” but how do I inject patience into the reality in which I find myself? How do I move forward as a person, as a family, as a community, as a country with patience—recognizing that there is still a lot of good that I can do without worrying about everyone else’s sins and everyone else’s imperfections?
Patience. St. Paul speaks about patience in our second reading today: patience, humility, and patient endurance. Just imagine what our life would be like if we truly embraced the virtue of patience, recognizing that God has a unique role to play in my life, in my church, and in my community.
Jesus gives these parables about the kingdom of heaven not to solve all our problems, but to help us understand that there is more to life than the simplistic answers we are able to offer today—that our whole life is a continuation of growing in understanding and appreciation of what this life is all about. Anyone we encounter who pretends to have all the answers—we should be careful with people like that. You know, sometimes I seem like I have all the answers, but none of us do. And that’s why Jesus speaks in parables. He doesn’t give clear answers because Jesus requires us to continue to enter into the mystery of life, to continue to realize that we don’t have all the answers, but we have a role to play even in the most complicated situations in our life.
And if we remain humble and patient, connected to God, then even in the darkest and most confusing moments of our life, we will maintain our peace—the peace that only God can give through his kingdom. May our community, this church, our families, and our very beings and hearts be rooted in the kingdom of heaven which Christ offers to us each day.
Amen. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Father Wojtek Kuzma