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Pip: There is a cave, and there is a candle — and this week, someone lit it by asking who gets to decide which plants are weeds.

Mara: That question runs straight through the posts Fr. John published recently — a sermon that moves from a Charlie Brown comic strip to a Persian king to the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Let's start with the field.

Sermon: Proper 11 RCL A — Identifying Weeds

Pip: The sermon opens with a very relatable Lucy moment — she tells Charlie Brown his problem is simply that he is himself — and uses it to name something the sermon treats as a persistent human instinct: the confidence that we can correctly identify who the troublemakers are.

Mara: The sermon sets up that instinct and then runs it straight into Isaiah, where the Lord designates a deliverer for Israel. Here is the passage: "I have stirred him up in righteousness, and I will make all his ways level; he shall build my city and set my exiles free, not for price or reward, says the Lord of hosts."

Pip: And the deliverer in question is not David, not Gideon, not Jesus — it is Cyrus, a pagan king who worshipped idols and had never heard of the God of Israel. Which means the people hearing Isaiah's announcement would have looked at their liberator and seen exactly the wrong kind of person.

Mara: That is precisely the tension the sermon develops. Cyrus conquered Babylon, freed the Israelites, and funded the rebuilding of Jerusalem — all without sharing their faith. The sermon then moves to the gospel parable, where a farmer's field fills with Darnel, a poisonous grass nearly indistinguishable from wheat until the grain head forms.

Pip: By the time you can tell the difference, the roots are so tangled that pulling the weed destroys the wheat. So the farmer says: wait. Which is, frankly, a harder instruction than it sounds when you have already mentally drafted your weed-pulling list.

Mara: Augustine is quoted directly on this: "How many sheep are outside, how many wolves within! And how many sheep are inside, how many wolves without! How many are blaspheming Christ who will yet believe in Him!"

Mara: The sermon holds up Paul as the case in point — present at Stephen's stoning, feared by the early church, and yet the future Apostle to the Gentiles. The people who saw a wolf were not lying; they were simply wrong.

Pip: So the sermon's practical instruction lands in Romans 12 — repay no evil for evil, feed your enemy if he is hungry — because the alternative is letting someone else's sin generate yours.

Mara: And the sermon closes with a sharp reversal: those who crucified Jesus believed they were doing exactly the right kind of weed removal. The job of identifying and pulling, the sermon argues, belongs to the angels at the end of the age — not to us.

Pip: What stays with me is Cyrus — the idea that the person you would most confidently label a weed might be the one God has already called by name.

Mara: That tension between what we see and what God sees seems like territory worth returning to. More to come from Candle in a Cave.

Pip: There's a Peanuts cartoon that opens a sermon, and somehow it leads directly to eternal life — which is either a bold homiletical move or proof that Lucy van Pelt has always been theologically underrated.

Mara: This episode covers one sermon from Fr. John, working through what it means to be part of a body where every gift counts — not just the ones delivered from a pulpit.

Pip: Let's start with the sermon itself, and the question of who actually does the work of the church.

Empowered for the Mission — Every Gift Counts

Mara: The sermon is built around a deceptively simple question: if not everyone is called to preach or heal or cast out demons, what exactly is everyone else doing in the mission of God?

Pip: The answer comes from the tail end of Matthew 10, Jesus wrapping up his instructions to the twelve before sending them out. The setup is that hardship is guaranteed — and so is help from unexpected quarters.

Mara: The sermon lands the key line directly from that passage: "Whoever receives you, receives me, and whoever receives me, receives the Father." The argument is that welcoming and supporting those who carry the mission makes you a participant in it.

Pip: Which is a genuinely generous theological claim — you don't have to be the one casting out demons to get credit for the demon-casting.

Mara: Two Old Testament figures anchor that claim. Elijah and the widow of Zarephath: she shares her last flour and oil, and the jar never empties. Later, her son dies and Elijah raises him. Elisha and the Shunammite woman: she feeds him whenever he passes through, and Elisha promises her a son she had stopped hoping for.

Pip: Both women receive what the sermon calls the prophet's reward — not because they prophesied, but because they made the prophet's work possible.

Mara: Paul's letter to the Corinthians supplies the structural argument: "There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good."

Mara: The upshot is that no single gift runs the whole operation. The apostles need the widow's flour. The prophet needs the Shunammite's hospitality. The body needs every member.

Pip: And the sermon loops back to Lucy at this point — those five fingers, individually nothing, curled together into something formidable. It is, against all odds, the correct analogy.

Mara: Archbishop Michael Ramsey gets the closing description of what that body looks like across centuries: "Human lives united to Jesus, receiving his presence, and showing his goodness, his love, his sacrifice, his humility and his compassion. Living stones."

Pip: The sermon closes by naming the stakes beyond the prophet's reward — Christ's reward, forgiveness and resurrection, the food that does not perish. The call is direct: find where your gift fits, and get to work.

Mara: The harvest line from Luke lands as the final push: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." Every laborer counts, regardless of what kind of laboring they do.

Pip: One sermon, but the argument keeps widening — from twelve apostles to a widow's jar to every person sitting in a pew wondering if they have anything to offer.

Mara: The answer the sermon gives is yes, unambiguously. The body needs what you have. More on that territory next time.