This is the day that God has made holy:

​I’m not a gardener. I don’t have a garden. In fact, I’ve got one house plant and that’s doing much
better now it’s with my neighbour’s plants.
​

​This is the day that God has made holy:
Let us rejoice and be glad!
This is the day that God calls us together:
Let us rejoice and be glad!
This is the day that God calls us to praise.
Let us rejoice and be glad!

Stf. 455 ALL MY HOPE ON GOD IS FOUNDED                                         

​PRAYER OF ADORATION & THANKSGIVING
O God of the universe, we thank you for your daily care:
You know us completely, you know all our needs,
You are familiar with all our ways.
We give thanks to you with all our hearts:
We will glorify your name forever.
We thank you for the natural world,
For its wonder and variety,
For the beauties of form, colour and texture
In which we can delight.
We give thanks to you with all our hearts:
We will glorify your name forever.
We praise you for the gift of loving and being loved,
For friendship and understanding.
We give thanks to you with all our hearts:
We will glorify your name forever.
we thank you for language, history and culture,
for learning and imagination which opens up the world to us;
for visions and dreams which challenge and inspire us.
We give thanks to you with all our hearts:
We will glorify your name forever.
Help us to hear you during this time of worship,
Through the songs we sing, through the words we hear,
Through the conversation we share:
Guide us in the way of hope,
That the place of stones may become the gate of heaven
And we may live to your praise and glory.
Amen 

PRAYER OF CONFESSION
Lord, we have failed you in words, thoughts and actions.
We have not lived as your children,
But as people who have no inheritance or hope.
Forgive us for the words we have spoken to wound and hurt.
Forgive us for thoughts which we have encouraged
And which have led to guilt and pain.
Forgive us for the actions we have taken hastily
And which cast a shadow on our lives.
Forgive us for the way our wrong-doing is entangled with the wrongdoing of others:
Lord have mercy, with that generosity which you show towards all creation,
Forgive what we have been,
Help us to turn aside from despair and decay,
And make us the people we ought to be,
Your children of grace and love.
God, in Jesus, hears the words of our prayers and our hearts.
Amen. Thanks be to God

LORD’S PRAYER
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
 Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen

Stf. 728 O GOD YOU SEARCH ME AND YOU KNOW ME

​Genesis 28:10-19a
Jacob’s Dream at Bethel
10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for
the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head
and lay down in that place. 12And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top
of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And the
Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of
Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14and your offspring shall be
like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north
and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.
15Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land;
for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ 16Then Jacob woke from his
sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 17And he was afraid, and said,
‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of
heaven.’18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head
and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He called that place Bethel.

MATTHEW 13:24-30, 36-43
The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat
24 He put before them 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.” ’
Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds
36 Then 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!​

WHEAT AND WEEDS
I’m not a gardener. I don’t have a garden. In fact, I’ve got one house plant and that’s doing much
better now it’s with my neighbour’s plants. I wonder if it’s because it has someone or some plant to
talk with. I wonder if you are a keen gardener. And if you are, I wonder what you made of today’s
gospel story, the parable of the wheat and the weeds? Though I’m not a gardener I can tell you that
re-wilding is ‘on trend’. There’s a move away from manicured lawns to allow about wild growth
because research tells us that when we allow the weeds to grow a bit this is healthier for our eco-
system. But please remember, this isn’t a reflection on gardening but God, God’s ways, and the
Kingdom of Heaven.
Unusually, this parable has an interpretation. I say unusually, because on other occasions the
gospels tell us that Jesus refused to interpret the parable. But here in this one we are given an
interpretation.
The one who sows the good seed = the Son of Man (thought to be Jesus)
The field = the world
The good seed = the Children of God
The bad seed = the children of the evil one
The one who sows the bad seed = the evil one
The harvest = the end of the age
And we are told at the end of the age the weeds from the bad seed will be destroyed and the wheat
from the good seed will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of heaven.
That seems straightforward enough, doesn’t it? Until we go back to the parable itself and realise
that before the end time the weeds are not to be gathered in but left until the end time. But now it
is for the wheat and the weeds to co-exist. And that doesn’t make the garden a very tidy place. Or
the world.
This parable reminds us that ultimately the judgement of good and evil is God’s judgement not ours.
It is God in the end who will decide.
It also reminds us that judgement will come in God’s time, not our time or the time when we want it
to happen. It is God in the end who will bring about that judgement in God’s time, not according to
what is convenient for me.
The warning about not separating the wheat and the weeds too quickly is a warning about not
jumping to conclusions too soon. After all it is very easy to define what we are not ourselves as evil.
The church has a long history of doing this, of othering people who don’t fit the social norms. When
those in power decide some people are sinful and belong outside of the fold until they become more
like us. It is such thinking which led to black people being enslaved, generations of women not being
educated to the same level of men and child sexual exploitation being ignored because somehow
the child victims were thought to have brought it upon themselves. It is too easy to define as evil
what is different or strange or what we fear. The parable for me is a warning against us not doing
this. We might be uncertain or unsure, but in the end God will judge.
A second problem with identifying evil is that in doing so our own actions can become evil, or at
least graceless, even if our initial intention is good. Think about how high-profile criminal cases
sometimes bring out mobs of people baying for blood, pounding the prison vans and threatening
violence against the perpetrators. Whilst there might be genuine anger at what has happened how
is this a response of grace? We need to be careful we do not lose our own humanity by
dehumanising and calling other people monsters.
So, for me this parable is about allowing the wheat and the weeds to co-exist. And when we can’t
make sense of what’s happened to allow God to be God in the situation; because some things are
God’s decision and not mine and some things need to handled in God’s time, not mine.
The wheat and the weeds co-exist in the world. Wheat and tares are better for the eco-system.
The wheat and the weeds co-exist in me too. Like St Paul I want to say For I do not do the good I
want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:19). I’m not totally good. I’m not totally
evil. I like to think I’m more good than evil, but I recognise I don’t always get it right. I know
goodness and evil co-exist in me.
And if good and evil co-exist in me, then I think they probably exist in you.
And if good and evil exist in us, then I think they probably exist in the institutions and systems which
make up our lives. Like the NHS, which does an enormous lot of good; but when it fails it seems to
fail terribly. Or the benefits system, which is designed to support the poorest and most vulnerable in
our society, but sometimes ends up labelling people as the undeserving poor.
Good and evil co-exist in the church too. I don’t mean Kingswood Methodist church. I mean every
church. Of course, that’s not what we are called to be. We are called to live our community life as a
vision of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even if we love our church, most of us, can’t say we know our
church to be always totally good and in all circumstances. We may become disillusioned when we
realise the church isn’t perfect. But the wheat and tares are likely to co-exist in every church,
because the wheat and tares, good and evil, co-exist in all of us who come to church.
So, for me, and for us as Christians I think the question is how do we live authentically in the world
of wheat and tares where goodness and evil co-exist?
The problem of evil has been debated by much better philosophers of religion than I will ever be and
down through the centuries as God’s people have tried to make sense of the world in which they
live. In the end for me, it may all be quite simple. I might like a tidy life and a tidy world, but that
isn’t going to be whilst the wheat and the weeds co-exist. In the end I need to trust in God; and
God’s love, for ultimately it will be God who decides in God’s time. And in between all I can do is
seek to choose the response of goodness and love, made real to me Jesus’s life and work, in all the
decisions of my life.

stf 615 LET LOVE BE REAL

A prayer of Intercession

Loving God, we bring our prayers to you in the power of your Spirit trusting that you will
hear our prayers for the world, ourselves and for your church.
Faithful God, we thank you for the generations of people who have followed you in the past,
especially those who have guided and inspired us. We pray for all the people who are
seeking you today. Help us speak to your word of truth with confidence and in unity, so that
those who are searching and listening for you, will be able to see and clearly hear your
message of love and grace for them.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Creator God, we pray for people and nations of our world whose voices are not heard as
they struggle with the effects of war, flood, famine, wild-fires or drought;  where anger,
hatred and greed seek to destroy any hope of peace.  We thank you for the many
organisations who seek to bring relief, support and peace to the needy of our world.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer
​
Father God, we thank you for all the people who continue to work so hard to keep us safe.
Our Police, Fire Service, Paramedics and our NHS.
We pray for our neighbours and the people we work with, that as we meet with them, you
will give us understanding and insight into their cares and needs, so that we may be able to
love, help and serve them.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Gracious God, we pray for people we know who are ill, anxious or bereaved, for those who
are lonely or living alone, and for those who are weary and carrying heavy burdens due to
the economic effects of the rising cost of living.  Please name in a moment of quiet anyone
on your mind.
We pray that you will lead them, and us, towards the answers to their problems and your
healing and wholeness.
Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer

Loving God, we offer ourselves to you in faith and confidence.
Fill us with your Holy Spirit to guide and lead us.
Show us, as we go out into the world how we can best serve you wherever we are. We
commend ourselves and all people to your unfailing love.
Loving and merciful God
​accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.  Amen​
 
stf 595 LORD WE HAVE COME AT YOUR OWN INVITATION

stf 563 O JESUS I HAVE PROMISED

BLESSING
 May the boldness of the Spirit transform you, may the gentleness of the Spirit
lead you, may the gifts of the Spirit equip you to serve and worship God; and
the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be wit
you and remain with you always. Amen