Sacred Ground

 

2026 07 19 Sermon for First Presbyterian, Inverness

Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 Let’s begin with a question: what, for you, is sacred ground? Last weekend I was in central Ohio at Emanuel Lutheran Church, a beautiful old building in downtown Marion, a block away from the equally old and beautiful Presbyterian Church. But it was not the building that made the ground sacred, it was the folks I was with. It was the annual meeting of the Order of Lutheran Franciscans and the time we spent together made it holy ground for us. 

A place is called sacred because we have an encounter with God there. We could have been at Liberty Park or Stumpknockers here in Inverness, it still would have been holy ground for us.  You see, it’s not necessarily the location but an event or moment that makes a location sacred. It’s a place where we believe we have had an encounter with the Divine.

But, even with that understanding, we are forgetting something.  In Genesis 1, the author describes the beginning of every thing, and God calls it good. In other words, everything touched by God is sacred. It’s us people who tend to limit the holy to our own understanding and preferences. Still, we also like to identify some moments as especially sacred, and we often mark that place or moment with a marker of some kind.

In the reading from Genesis, Jacob has a dream or vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder that connects earth and heaven. He sets up a stone to mark the spot as sacred ground, because this is a place where God is. Scholars debate how big the stone was. “Was it bigger than a bread box?”, for example. It must have been large enough to be located again. Who wouldn’t want to return to such holy, sacred ground?

Today, we have a fuller understanding. We call the lands of Israel and Palatine and Egypt the Holy Lands. The land, ha-Aretz in Hebrew, al-Quds in Arabic, is holy, sacred ground. Never mind that peoples have fought for control of it since biblical times, it is sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims, because it was given to the people of God, by God, thousands of years ago.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells a puzzling story. It seems fairly simple to us: seeds are planted, crops grow, and there are weeds among the wheat! But pulling the weeds out while the wheat is still growing will uproot the wheat as well. So, it’s best to wait until harvest time to do the separation; by then it will be easier to see the difference and separate them. Then the weeds should be harvested first, bundled and burned, with the wheat gathered into the barn. Actually, today, we spread weed killer while the weeds are still small.

The disciples ask Jesus to explain this parable. There is lots of scholarly speculation about whether this explanation came from Jesus, because he usually doesn’t explain parables. But, it’s in the text we have, so we accept it and deal with it. The explanation is an allegory, assigning a category to each element in the parable, and separating the good elements from the evil elements, people who do good from people who do evil.

The Jews of Jesus’ time paid special attention to the labeling of people as in or out of favor with God. This radical acceptance of weeds among the wheat must have sent the disciples’ brains spinning. What do you mean, to let them stay? Don’t the weeds contaminate the wheat? Won’t the Gentiles spoil the righteousness of the Jews, and ruin us all forever?

I notice in this parable and its explanation is that the judging is done at the harvest time, at the end time, whenever that is, and that the harvesters are angels – which means they are messengers of God – and it is Jesus who will do the judging.  

And what I notice about Jesus the judge is that he welcomes many people that others would call unwelcome. So, perhaps, there will be some weeds among the wheat in Jesus’ barn. I am reminded of a quote I heard a long time ago. Weeds are plants we haven’t found a good use for, yet. So, even if the wheat could be considered sacred and the weeds not sacred, it’s not up to us to do the labeling.

Paul gives us some further instruction, I think, in what is sacred ground. We are all God’s children, and rendered sacred by virtue of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Our experience in the world may be easy or challenging. It may appear to others that we don’t know God, or that God doesn’t know us. But it is only in the sorting at the end of the age, or the end of our own days on earth, that we may be labeled wheat or weed, good fruit or not. But we know, because God has said so, that we are God’s beloved children, destined for salvation, for being made whole, holy, sacred.

Psalm 139 is my favorite psalm. Whenever I read it, I am assured, reassured actually, that I am never alone. God is always with me, even if I don’t want God watching me. There is no way to escape God. And indeed, why would I want to!? Do I feel weedy sometimes, and wish God didn’t see that? Sure! But the psalmist assures us that there is no place we can go that God is not present. God’s presence with us makes everywhere we are sacred ground. So, God sees my weedy moments and remembers that I am God’s own child, and therefore not a weed.

Our nation, and the whole world, is at odds with one another. Wars erupt. Politicians won’t work together to pass legislation. This is also true in circles much smaller than national and local politics. It happens in congregations, and in families. We find it harder and harder to have a pleasant conversation. We decry one another’s beliefs and activities, and we refuse to consider the opinions of the other as valuable. It’s too easy to label people as weeds or wheat.

What’s the antidote: to remember that everyone lives on what they consider sacred ground. And to remember that God considers each person a beloved child, filled with God’s Spirit, and to treat even those we mistrust as God’s children. Amen