Hear the messages that Father Jeremiah delivers each week
to the congregation of Grace Anglican.
As Jesus tells the people parables, one thing to remember is that the parables are about Jesus. He is revealing something of himself to the people who can hear. We should recognize that Jesus is the center of these parables and know that he is working to make us his own in his Kingdom.
image: Phillip Medhurst, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons
In the Parable of the Weeds, Jesus says that the Master of the field told his servants to wait until the harvest and to let the weeds grow amongst the wheat. And so the weeds remained with the wheat until the reapers came to separate them from one another. This would take great patience from the servants. Likewise, we too live patiently in the world awaiting the final coming of the Kingdom of God and the return of our master, Jesus. And in living patiently, we discover the Kingdom is working in us to make us more and more like the wheat.
Image: An etching by Jan Luyken illustrating Matthew 13:24-30 in the Bowyer Bible, Bolton, England, Phillip Medhurst, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons.
It is so easy for us to view the various soils from Jesus’ parable of the Sower as static soils regarding our hearts. We are one or the other. And yet, there is an aspect of which our hearts shift and receive the Word of God differently at different times. Father Jeremiah explores this idea and helps us to see how God will plow and prepare our hearts over and over so that the word can grow in us.
Image: The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation). Image location: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/d0348V1962
Bishop David came to receive some into the Anglican Communion on this Sunday. He preached on Jesus’ parables from Matthew 13. The particular ones he works through remind us of the smallness, the hiddenness, and the valuableness of the Kingdom before us. We are all in places of opportunity to reveal the Kingdom to others and are given the insight to share this Kingdom today.
Image: Parable of the Hidden Treasure, by either Rembrandt or Gerrit Dou. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. No changes made. Location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parable_of_the_hidden_treasure_Rembrandt_-_Gerard_Dou.jpg
When you think of prayer, where are your thoughts drawn? Are they drawn to how you should pray? Do you think about the way in which you pray? Or do you consider the character of the one to whom you pray? Father Jeremiah reminds of the importance of basing our prayers not on how we pray, but on the one we pray to. Remembering the kind of God we pray to undergirds our prayers continually.
Photo: Grace, by Eric Enstrom [Public domain], taken in 1918. Image location: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eric_Enstrom_-_Grace_-_bw.jpg
How does the Kingdom grow? What causes it to grow? How are we part of that growth? These are the questions that spring out of the parables told by Jesus in Mark 4.26-34. Listen to find out more about how these parables raise and answer these questions and what it has to do with you in your own life.
Image: From the book, With the Children on Sundays, through eye-gate, and ear-gate into the city of child-soul, by Sylvanus Stall. No known copyrights.
Grace Anglican Church, Sundays @ 10 AM, 800 Robinson Rd, Gastonia, NC
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 551081, Gastonia, NC 28054
