The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.

Ora et labora.

Pray and work.

This is a common phrase which became associated with the Benedictines, though Saint Benedict never actually wrote it in his Rule. This is a kind of motto or mantra for the life of the Benedictine - pray and work.

Pray and work such that work is transformed into prayer.

Pray and work such that the two become, ultimately, indistinguishable from one another because the spiritual life so thoroughly saturates the mundane tasks we flit about day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

I often forget the significance of this motto. The significance that everything we do is a kind of prayer to God. Everything we do has the possibility, the unmarked potential, to lead us closer to God - or further away.

Ora et labora.

Work and pray.

A few weeks ago, on Sunday, June 28 I departed Tucson at 5:45 am (I am not a morning person) alongside 12 middle & high school youth from the Diocese and 2 very brave adults to lead the Diocesan Youth Mission Trip. We partnered with the Sierra Service Project, a group that organizes almost two months of service opportunities in northern California and in the Southwest every summer.

Together, along with a Methodist church from Tempe, and a UCC church from Claremont, California, we made up nearly 40 youth, 9 adults, and 8 staff. We all gathered at the chapter house in Teec Nos Pos, a small town in Navajo Nation just about 8 minutes from the four corners region in northern Arizona.

Our goal was to serve elders who requested support by performing roofing repairs, or by building accessibility ramps over the 6 days we were there.

Now. Priests do many things, and we strive to serve Christ.

Christ was the son of Joseph, a carpenter.

And so you all probably assume that, like Jesus, we learned how to do carpentry work like roofing and ramp construction in seminary!

ALAS! You would be mistaken. Seminary failed to prepare me for many things, one of which was roofing repair work!

But we learn, we grow, and it was an incredible experience. To watch the youth organize, troubleshoot, problem solve. To watch them become friends. To watch them work hard in the blazing sun for 7 hours a day all to help someone in need was truly marvellous.

I was reminded that our acts of service on those hot and dusty days were acts of prayer offered to God, even if it wasn’t on our minds as we were trying to wrestle a tarp down while hot gusts of wind tried to blow it and us off the roof!

Ora. et. labora.

Acts of service are fundamental for the development of the spiritual life. It is by giving of ourselves to others that we come to know the service, love, and compassion of our God. As 1 John 4:19 remarks, “We love because he (Christ) first loved us” and Jesus himself states in Matthew 20:28 that He has come “not to be served, but to serve.”

We imitate Christ when we do acts of mercy, compassion, and service. Our work becomes one more point of connection to our God.

An overarching goal of the Christian life is, after all, to know more fully the God who creates sustains and redeems us - and to become like this God. Our faith in God - orthodoxy - transforms into a lifelong practice of being like our God, incarnate in Christ Jesus - orthopraxy.

Today’s parable revolves around wheat and weeds which ultimately, at harvest time, bear fruit - and the parable invites us to consider - what type of fruit are we bearing in the world, for the fruit we bear is the outward manifestation of our inward state. As we root in the faith, deepening our relationship with God, we bear fruit - action, praxis, service - in the world.

The world - or the field - is full of humans who seem to be both weed and wheat; we are capable of acts of deep love and compassion; we are also capable of depraved and cruel works. Do we give more focus to the weed, or the wheat?

The weeds which are sown are likely darnel, a great headache for ancient farmers because it looks almost exactly like wheat - except it’s completely inedible and, in fact, poisonous. Darnel is almost impossible to distinguish between wheat, until close to harvesting time.

The wheat stalks are heavy, drooping, loaded with grain; the darnel is upright and turns a dark purple - making them very easy to separate one from the other at harvest time.

The fruit of the wheat turns into more seed for growing, it turns into flour for baking and sustaining others; it is a wholesome, and joyous fruit.

Darnel’s seed, unfortunately, is not so pleasant - it can poison an entire flour supply when ground up and cause severe nausea, dizzyness, and even death when consumed. 

The Parable of the Weeds distinguishes the two plants by the fruit they bear. Jesus says as much in chapter 7 of Matthew’s Gospel, “Thus you will know them (His followers) by their fruits.” (v 20)

Bearing fruit is a metaphor which points to the outward manifestation of the inward spiritual life, which is nothing short of our life and proximity to the One who is Life itself - God Almighty.

We become known to the world as Christ’s followers by being like Christ, bearing forth the fruit of the Spirit identified in Galatians 5:22-23, which are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

But we cannot know these fruits without practicing them.

Ora et labora. Prayer and work. Pray and then put to practice the faith. 

The fruits we bear cannot exist merely as an intellectual exercise.

Rather we must be rooted in the faith and love of God, as we are fed and fertilized each Sunday while receiving the blessed Sacrament of the body and blood of Christ, and as we keep our daily prayers. We leave Church rested and recovered and held in prayer, offering ourselves to the transforming and pruning hand of the sower to be shaped into grain which bears fruit.

This is a transformation which takes place in the mundane, in the day-to-day. 

Ora et labora. 

Pray and work. Pray and be changed. Pray and labor to bear fruit worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The parable invites to consider our orientation - as weed or wheat - and to root into the love of God in order that we may, in Christ, bear that grainy fruit of wheat as we continue to do acts of service and mercy in the field of the world.

Amen.