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SERMON
When you try to do the right thing at the wrong time or in the wrong
way, the results could turn out to be about as bad as setting out to do
the wrong thing in the first place. The church has certainly done that.
Take excommunication for example – "weeding out" the heretics among us.
It may appear to be the right thing to do, and perhaps it is. After all,
certain things ought not to be tolerated. A passion for God's priorities
demands that action be taken at times, and sometimes the action needs to
be severe.
But it can go too far. History offers us some chilling examples. Think
about the Inquisitions or the Salem witch trials. Like their secular
counterpart of McCarthyism, these were the church's attempts to root out
the impure from within its ranks. But the sad lesson history teaches us
is that when this sort of wholesale "weeding out" has been done, the
innocent have often been hurt, the unsuspecting have been accused, and
not a few of the faithful have fallen away because they no longer wanted
to be part of a church that could do such terrible things.
Now, the church has known from the beginning about the Parable of the
Weeds. The problem is that its admonition to let the weeds grow with the
wheat is difficult to embrace. Now it's true, this is not the New
Testament's only word on how to deal with sin in our midst. Certainly we
have no business thinking that Jesus is telling us here that all church
discipline is wrong. The parable does not teach that we should never
confront one another in an attempt to promote greater godliness. But the
parable does set a standard that the church has not always followed. It
signals a warning the church has not always heeded. But just what might
that warning be? Let's think together about this. What is Jesus getting
at in this rather surprising parable?
The so-called Parable of the Weeds is part of a cluster of parables that
has to do with God's kingdom. It is also one of several that have to do
with seeds and agriculture. Time and again Jesus reminded us that the
kingdom of God is never quite what you might expect. For example, the
Parable of the Sower makes clear that, although the seed of God's Word
is powerful enough to change the world, it is at the same time oddly
vulnerable. It can be snatched away by birds, burned up by the sun,
choked by thorns. The parables of the Mustard Seed and Yeast suggest
that the kingdom is smaller and subtler than you might guess. God's
kingdom is the single most powerful and important reality in the world;
yet it doesn't have the flash or glitz that you would ordinarily
associate with the mighty movements of history.
Much of Jesus' teaching here is quite unexpected. Apparently God would
rather work behind the scenes, graciously changing hearts, rather than
force his will. And although the growth of God's kingdom is going to
extend throughout the world, Jesus reminds us that it may never exist
here in a pure state. And to make that point he told a parable. A farmer
carefully planted a field of wheat. His furrows were straight; his seed
was of the finest quality. He did it all right and went to bed that
night content that he had done everything he could to ensure a bumper
crop.
But while he was taking his well-earned rest, an enemy came and, with
equal care, planted weed seed in the same furrows. Worse, the weeds he
planted were the bearded darnel, which looks almost identical to wheat.
Now, if you don't separate the darnel from the wheat before grinding,
the resulting flour will be inedible. Well, once the wheat started to
grow, the farmer's hired hands recognized the weeds, and they noticed
that they were growing almost as uniformly as the wheat itself. Clearly
this was no accident, no stray seeds that drifted in on the breeze. This
was an act of agricultural terrorism!
So the servants asked the farmer if he wanted them to go pluck out those
nasty weeds. After all, it was the right thing to do. The last thing you
wanted was for the darnel to go to seed because next season you'd have a
field full of weed seeds. But contrary to good sense, the farmer told
the hired hands to let it be. They'd sort it all out later at the
harvest. Now, if Jesus' listeners knew anything about farming (and
presumably a lot of them did), the initial surprise of this story would
be the idea that a farmer would do nothing about such a disastrous
situation.
That is one of our best clues that this story really isn't about farming
– that, and the fact that Jesus began the story by saying, "The kingdom
of heaven is like…" It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out that the
parable is about something more than optimal farming practice.
Nevertheless, the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Could you spell
that story out for us a bit more? We don't quite get what you're driving
at." Of course, Jesus obliged. But if you go on to read his explanation
of the parable beginning at verse 37, you can almost detect a note of
weariness in his words as he connected the dots for them:
"The sower of good seed is the Son of Man – the good seed stands for
God's children – the bad seed stands for the children of the evil one
who sowed them – harvest time is judgment day and the harvesters are the
angels, who will weed out all those evil ones and throw them into an
everlasting fiery furnace. Meanwhile, the righteous ones will shine like
the sun. Now, do you get it?"
It's rather like telling a joke that a person doesn't get. Then he asks
you to explain the joke. But when you do, and the person finally
understands, he responds, not with a laugh but with a flat, "Oh, yeah,
now I get it." That was not the reaction you were looking for when you
told your joke in the first place, right? So also in Matthew 13: there's
something rather pedantic about Jesus having to spell everything out for
his disciples. By then the punch of the original story was already lost.
Look at it this way. If you read only the parable in verses 24-30, as we
did, in the end you are left wondering just what it might mean to let
the wheat and the weeds grow together for the time being. You have to
ponder how and why pulling up the weeds would threaten the wheat. And if
you're sharp enough to see that the wheat stands for the faithful of
God's kingdom and the weeds for imposters, you can't help but wonder how
you as a committed Christian are expected to behave when the Master
tells you that you're going to have to keep on growing right alongside
those vexing heretics.
That's what happens if you read just the parable. But once you read the
explanation, you might be tempted to forget some of that and instead
start delighting in the prospect of all those annoying nasty folks
finally getting their comeuppance in the end. You think less about what
it means to be wheat in the midst of weeds and start to focus more on
Judgment Day when the weeds will finally get properly incinerated. The
explanation can turn your attention away from the field to the future.
Let me remind you that, although we accept and must understand our
Lord's explanation of his own parable, we need to be cautious about not
missing the punch of the parable itself. Because the parable is not so
much about all wrongs getting righted by and by, as it is about how God
expects us to live right now. Bottom-line, this parable is about
patience. This parable is not first of all about what will happen to the
weeds come Judgment Day. It's about how the wheat has to behave during
the indeterminate time that leads up to that final sorting out.
The farmer in the parable seemed to believe the weeds themselves
wouldn't threaten the wheat – the two are capable of growing together.
According to the parable, the more serious threat comes from how we
react to the weeds. Put in theological terms, the danger is not being in
the presence of sin but trying to root out all the sin we see. But that
means that the real challenge presented to the church by Matthew 13 is
finding the strength to resist the temptation to take matters into our
own hands and start yanking up every sinful thing we see every time we
see it. I find it very instructive that, when in verse 30 the master
tells the servants to "let both grow together," the Greek word
translated there as "let" is the same word we find in the Lord's Prayer
and elsewhere that is translated as "forgive."
Bearing with the imperfect, putting up with what is annoying and sinful,
and just generally trying to deal with life's less-pleasant realities in
a gracious, gospel-like way is tough. It even seems counter-intuitive,
the very opposite of what you think you should do. If we are holy folks,
then whenever we see something we think is less-than-holy, shouldn't we
attack it? Isn't total purity the goal; and so if we see something that
sullies purity, doesn't being a child of the kingdom require you to hack
away at it, or drench it with some theological Weed-Be-Gone?
Apparently not. As I said earlier, there are other words of Jesus, other
verses in the Bible, that let us know that confronting one another in
love has its place in the life of the church. But Matthew 13 reminds us
that even so, patience sets the tone. And the fact that the word for
"let it be" is closely related to the word for "forgive" may also hint
that this parable is finally about grace. But if so, then it's about the
way that grace shapes our patience.
Sometimes we think that patience is a passive thing – it's what you do
when you can't do anything else – like waiting for an hour in the
doctor's waiting room or being stuck in a traffic jam. These things try
our patience. But if we manage to be patient in such situations, it is
primarily because we have no choice. If we could do something to hurry
the Doc along or clear the roadway, we would. But lacking such
abilities, we try to be patient. And so sometimes we see patience as
that virtue to which we turn when we cannot, as a matter of fact, do
anything else but wait anyway. At other times we think that being
patient is an excuse to avoid dealing with something unpleasant. For
example, if you say to someone, "Are you ever going to confront
so-and-so?" only to hear the other person reply, "I'm just waiting for
the right moment," you might conclude that this apparent patience is
actually a dodge, a sign of weakness not strength.
But patience as a kingdom virtue, patience as a fruit of the Spirit, is
not passive but in its own way active. It's not weak but strong.
Patience is the power of God's Holy Spirit helping us stick with God's
program and with God's gospel way of doing things.
Why is it that rooting out the weeds may do violence to the wheat as
well? I'll tell you why. It's because when anger takes hold, when the
desire for vengeance takes the driver's seat, when accusations start to
fly about the church, grace gets eclipsed. Compassion dries up.
Gentleness is shoved aside to make way for the stern hand of the
disciplinarian. When it seems we are more interested in purity than in
forgiveness and forbearance and understanding, then it begins to feel as
though our own roots are getting tugged at dangerously. And if that kind
of sorting-out enterprise goes unchecked, we risk losing the very
compassion that ought properly to define us as God's children in Christ.
It is the Spirit-generated fruit of patience that helps us strike that
delicate but necessary balance between anger and despair. Without
patience, we are tempted to lash out at both sin and sinner. We get
angry, frustrated, upset. We start saying things like, "Such things
should not be tolerated in our midst!" – then we take steps to ensure
that such things no longer will be. We don't want those weeds in our
life, so we start hacking away.
That's wrong – but so is the other extreme of despair. If it's wrong to
lash out in anger at the weeds of life, it is just as wrong to wring our
hands, hang our heads, and start believing that all of life is nothing
but weeds, that the weeds are stronger and are going to take over, so
there is no hope. That's wrong, too. True patience has its own kind of
roots, and those roots are sunk deep into the soil of faith. Patience is
strong and focused precisely because it grows out of faith in God's
faithfulness, not fear. It's patience that makes us strong enough to
hold back, to follow God's way of grace and forgiveness instead of the
world's quick and easy solutions of vengeance, punishment, and violence.
But patience isn't blind indifference. Patience never forgets that there
is an ultimate difference between wheat and weeds. Patience is not
interested in pretending there's no right or wrong. And yet it finds the
Christ-like ability to put up in love with weeds of all kinds. Do you
want to know what patience looks like? Look at how Jesus treated sinners
and strugglers and stragglers.
Where in your life do you need to be growing patience? Who are the
"weeds" in your life God is calling you to patiently live with? Don't
ignore those questions. Patience isn't being passive because we can't do
anything else anyway. Patience is grace at work. Nor is patience a coy
dodge that lets us avoid confronting something we need to confront in
love. Patience isn't an excuse. It's the gospel at work, giving God's
Spirit room to change lives, while seeking to protect the faithful from
becoming collateral damage and perhaps having their faith uprooted.
Jesus said that one day the righteous will shine like the sun in the
kingdom of God. God willing that will be so. But the only reason we'll
shine like that is because, just as the moon shines only with the
reflected light of the sun, so we will shine only because we're
reflecting the light of God's grace. One day we will be bathed in that
merciful light. But we're not there yet. So, as we wait for that day,
this parable reminds us that our job right now is to reflect as best we
can the patient light of his love. This little light of mine…
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