Sunday 19th July 2026  The Seventh Sunday after Trinity

 

Collect

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things:  graft in our hearts the love of your name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of your great mercy keep us in the same;  through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

 

A reading from Genesis   (28.10-19a)

 

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran. He 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.

    And 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. And 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; and 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. Know 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.’

    Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place — and I did not know it!’ And 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.’

    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. He called that place Bethel.

 

This is the word of the Lord.

    Thanks be to God.

 

Psalm 139. 1-12 

 

1    O Lord, you have searched me and known me.

2    You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

3    You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

4    Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.

5    You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

6    Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

7    Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

8    If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

9    If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

10    even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

11       If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’,

12       even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it is now, and was, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

 

A reading from Romans   (8.12-25)

 

So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

    When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

    I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

    We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 

 

This is the word of the Lord.

    Thanks be to God.

 

Listen to the Gospel of Christ according to St Matthew   (13.24-30, 36-43)

    Glory to you, O Lord.

 

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And 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?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let 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.”’

    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.’

    He answered, ‘The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!’

 

This is the Gospel of the Lord.

    Praise to you, O Christ.

 

Reflection - AE

A funny thing happened with writing about these readings.   There’s all sorts in here - patience, ecology, God’s protection, adoption, Zionism, Christian Realism.

I wanted a story to use as a starting point, but it was very hot, and my brain was seized, so I thought I just try typing in Google - ‘Story about Patience.’

With a few seconds a story quickly appeared, that seemed to come from a Chines tradition, although it didn’t give an actual source.

A young monk impatiently demanded to be taught about patience.

An older monk showed him a cocoon, hanging from a tree as the caterpillar inside transformed, slowly and maybe painfully, until it reached the point where it could break free on its oown to emerge as a beautiful moth.

If anyone would try to help the process, speed it up, breaking open the cocoon, they would almost certainly end up killing the moth.

It had to be left until the right time, to grow at its own speed.

I guess Google could have given me a similar story about a chick inside an egg, taking time to develop before emerging as a fabulous jewel coloured humming bird.

The young monk understood the metaphor though, and took himself back to his boring ask of sweeping the temple, not with boredom now but with purpose and faith to trust the slow growth happening inside himself.

 

Much of twentieth century European and American political thought has been impacted by ideas of Christian Realism.

If there was a problem, evidence of something perceived as evil, the right thing to do was fix it, take it out, immediately.

There was a regime perceived as evil in Vietnam, so the Americans did what many Christian politicians considered the right thing, and pitched in to fix it, remove the evil.

The same thing happened in Iraq in 2003.  Arguably its happening in Iran now.

 

I’m not sure history is going to reach the view in 100 years that any of those were such good ideas in the long term.

The passage from Matthew can be read as putting forward a different approach.

‘Let both grow together until the Harvest’

Don’t break the children of the Kingdom, leave it until the end of the age, when the Son of Man will remove all causes of evil.

Have patience, and let God sort it out in his own good time.

 

Meanwhile, like the monk sent back to his sweeping, we must wait.

 

That is the time of groaning, of futility, for some even the bondage of decay, that we are all in now.

 

We all have to patiently wait.

 

But what is this harvest that we are waiting for?  How can we be gathered up to shine like the sun in the Kingdom of the Father?

 

What we are waiting for is adoption.

 

That very word, adoption, comes now with quite a few layers of complication, many of them unhelpful.

 

Although I have no close personal experience of it myself, I am fully aware that it can conjure up all sorts of negativity about rejection, abandonment, disappointed expectations.

 

More recently there have been added complexities as its become easier to trace birth parents, so there’s a whole new potential for disappointment, for failed happy endings.

 

At its very best, though, the idea of adoption, of a family lacking a child building home through love for a child that lacks a loving family is a beautiful idea.

 

One story about that, which I have read as an actual hard copy book with pages, is Mrs Harris Goes to New York, by Paul Gallico, which some of you may know.  That has a happy ending.

 

It worked well when Joseph adopted Jesus as his son, offering love and protection.

 

Where it is a relationship built from love, that fills a deep need for both child and parents, it is a gift in the best sense.

 

That is the gift offered to each of, to all creation, through no obligation at all but through love, by the grace of God.

 

Even the word Father can be problematic for people who had not had good experience either as natural of adoptive children of Fathers, or indeed mothers, and have found that the place where love should sit can be filled instead with anger, bitterness, fury.

 

The Fatherhood of God, though, is different.

 

It is unconditional, and loving, and the care within it is shown in the depths to which Christ went at the crucifixion, and the extent to which he knows us all, held in the lines of the psalm.

 

“You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. … “    and with that knowing comes his unique level of care.

 

“If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”

 

That attentive and loving care is the nature of adoption we can look forward to, along with all of Creation, when at last we obtain the freedom of the glory of God, in eternity.

 

When that might happen, we don’t know, but like the young monk sweeping the temple floor we must learn patience, and trust in the promise of God confirmed by Christ and by the Holy Spirit that, when at last the harvest is gathered at the end of it all, the righteous will find that God’s right hand will hold them fast.

 

Amen

 

Lord God, your Son is the true vine and the source of life, ever giving himself that the world may live:  may we so receive within ourselves the power of his death and passion that, in his saving cup, we may share his glory and be made perfect in his love; for he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.  Amen.