To go along with the lectionary passage for June 19, 2020, the parable of weeds among the wheat in Matthew 13, Pastor Jenny Smith Walz read, for children’s time, How the Stars Fell into the Sky, by Jerri Oughten, the retelling of a Navajo folktale. In this clip, we learn how First Woman tried to write the laws of the land using stars in the sky, only to be thwarted by the trickster Coyote.

“What is there to do next that is half so important as writing the laws,” said First Woman. But Coyote lacked First Woman’s patience and shattered her careful patterns. “There was no undoing what Coyote had done.”

Says Jenny — “these stories help us know why it is so hard to know what is to be done. When you feel confused, maybe you look to the stars. Maybe you talk to God. I hope we can remember that God is patient, patient with us, with a confusing world, and that God will always help us and hold us.”

“Help us when we are confused and scared to remember the stories you teach us and that you are always there….”

Here is Matthew 13: 24-30

²⁴ Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field; ²⁵ but while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. ²⁷ And the servants^[a] of the householder came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then has it weeds?’ ²⁸ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants^[b] said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹ But he said, ‘No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”