Sermon Text: Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
July 20, 2014
First Congregational UCC
– Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
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.'"
********
Just
like last week, we have a parable from Jesus about a farmer sowing seed. Last
week we talked about how the sower was pretty weird and didn’t seem to know too
much about farming. He sowed seed all over the place….and a lot of it never
amounted to much. We gave thanks for a God who sows seeds recklessly,
wastefully, extravagantly. A God who is prone to reaching out again and again
in love to share his abundance. A God who is not much concerned with the return
on investment as she sows seeds far and wide.
And,
like last week, we have a similar structure to today’s passage from Matthew.
Jesus teaches his disciples and other onlookers with the parable, the
lectionary committee chooses to skip a few verses, and then the disciples ask
for an explanation of the parable and Matthew’s Jesus kindly provides a
step-by-step breakdown of the parable, easily digestible by his hearers.
Last
week we didn’t read the explanation part and I talked a bit about my decision
to leave it out of the discussion. Jesus did not often explain parables and
most Biblical scholars doubt that he ever explained them in this way. If you
were to read the explanation portion in this week’s passage, you’d learn quite
a lot about the author of Matthew’s historical situation. Matthew’s Jesus is
often an all-powerful, fire-and-brimstone kind of guy and this passage is no
exception. Matthew’s Jesus is quick to explain this parable in eschatological
terms. Eschatalogical is just a $10 word for things that are concerned with the
end times. It’s a pretty fun word. I like to use it just because it’s fun to
say. Want to give it a try? Eschatalogical. Good times, right?
Only
not good times in Matthew’s passage. Well, I guess it could be good times
depending on if you’re the wheat or the weeds. Because in the author of
Matthew’s mind this is another one of the stories that’s like the sheep and the
goats. The basic message is make the right choices now or burn in the great
fire for all eternity. Outer darkness. Weeping and gnashing of teeth. Etc.
For
the early followers of Jesus, who were convinced that the end of the world was
rapidly approaching, this explanation made sense. Do we know what Jesus’s
original intent was when he told the story? No, we don’t. And we never will.
But we are free to explore the story from our own time and place. We are free
to bring our own concerns and challenges of our day-to-day living to the story
and see what new life it breathes into our lives in the 21st
century.
When
I read a passage, I like to think of myself as a sort of “Good News Hunter.” I
go off on an expedition with my favorite Biblical research tools, my pen and
paper, my heart, my lived experiences, my mind and I go in search of the
Gospel. Sometimes I don’t find it, but usually I do and that’s a big part of
why I love the Bible so much. There’s nothing quite as good as going on a Good
News Hunt and finding it.
This
week, I tried my best to set aside Matthew’s interpretation of the parable and
really just tried to enter it from our time and place. I had always thought of
this as a hellfire-and-brimstone passage (how appropriate for the day when the
folks from Westboro Baptist decided to play us a visit!) and I had kind of
written it off.
Imagine,
then, the wonderful surprise of discovering that this passage has all kinds of
Good News to offer us. If I were to sum up the Good News I found in this
parable it would go something like this, “Weeds happen. Perfection is
unattainable. You can’t fix everything…and that’s okay. Looks can be
deceiving….sometimes you can’t tell the weeds from the wheat. Life is messy.
Don’t make things harder than they need to be. Chill out.”
There’s
a lot there. Notice, for starters, that Jesus says “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.” There it is: morsel
of Good News #1….Perfection is unattainable. Even in the Kingdom of Heaven,
there are weeds among the wheat. Weeds happen. There’s no way to avoid it.
And
does the landowner flip out over the weeds because the field is no longer
perfect? Nope. The servants do flip out a little. They say, “Hey! Farmer! There
are weeds in your wheat field! What should we do about it? Want us to go in and
fix it up for you?”
Now,
my answer to that question would be “yes, of course!” because I am a fixer by
nature and if there is some kind of problem I want to fix it. Quickly.
But
the landowner says, “No.” He says, “Wait.” He is concerned that if they uproot
the weeds they will also uproot the wheat. He is confident that it will all
turn out okay in the end.
This
is where I have to admit that I am terrible at weeding. I have rarely done it,
in fact, without close supervision because I have some kind of nature disorder
where I can barely tell different kinds of plants apart. Seriously. It’s
terrible. I cant’ tell what is a weed and what is the good stuff.
Interestingly,
it’s not so clear-cut in this parable that these weeds are weeds after all. The
Greek that is used is for a specific kind of plant that looks a lot like wheat
but yields a different color of grain. So it’s a wheat-imposter. Not useful.
Not edible. But looks a lot like wheat.
Does
it need to come out? Well, it’s not clear. Most of us would assume that all
weeds are bad and should be culled immediately, but experienced gardeners will
tell you that some weeds can actually be useful. They can help with soil
erosion, shelter your plants, protect them from pests, and even provide useful
nutrients. For example, dandelions have incredibly long roots and can bring up
worthwhile nutrients from the deeper parts of the soil.[1]
And speaking of our friend the dandelion, it’s a funny little weed that won’t
quite stay in its box as a weed, right? Dandelions are classified by most
people as weeds but any five-year-old will tell you they are a beautiful
flower, excellent for making yellow blush and necklaces. Plus, you can find
dandelion weeds on the menu at fancy restaurants and for sale in the organic
produce section at Whole Foods.
Sometimes
it’s hard to tell what’s a weed and what’s the good stuff. Sometimes the weeds
masquerade as the crop. Sometimes the good stuff actually needs the weeds. Life
is messy. Evil is evil…except when it’s not. Good is good….except when it’s
not. Sometimes there are no clear answers….do you do this thing or that? Look
no further than the conflict that once-again is reaching a fever pitch between
Palestine and Israel to see evidence of this. Good and evil all mixed together.
No clear answers for anyone. Sometimes the weeds and the wheat are all mixed up
together and you can’t tell them apart. Life is messy.
And
into this messy, messed-up field, the landowner offers words of assurance. He
says, “Let it be. Stop running around trying to label everything as good and
bad and put it into these little boxes to make yourself feel better. In the end
it won’t matter too much. It’ll be easier if you just wait a bit.”
I
am reminded of that wonderful short story by Flannery O’Connor, Revelation. O’Connor tells the story of
a day in the life of Mrs. Turpin, a “respectable” Christian woman. We get to
hear her inner dialogue and all the judgmental, hateful things she thinks about
the people she encounters. Mrs. Turpin is convinced she is one of the stalks of
wheat in the world and she has no warmth or love for those who she deems to be
weeds. And at the end of the story, she is given a vision of all of these
people that she has judged lacking marching up into heaven…ahead of her and her
kind. And as she watches this vision, she sees that not only have the
weedy-ones become wheat-like but that in the refiner’s fire even the folks she
thought of as the “good ones” have had their virtues burned away. The refiner’s
fire does not discriminate….everyone has their bad and good parts burned away.
And everyone is marching up to heaven.
So
the landowner says, in essence, “Chill out. If you just wait, you’ll be able to
tell the wheat from the weeds. The wheat will be grown and ready to harvest and
it will be much easier to separate the two at that point. Just wait. Live in
the in-between. Don’t freak out right now. Stop making things harder than they
need to be.”
Please
don’t come away from today hearing me say, “Don’t worry, be happy. God will fix
everything.” I wish that were the case but I don’t think it’s quite that
simple. Life is hard. Weeds happen. Living in the in-between time is sometimes
excruciating. Not being able to tell the difference between the weeds and the
wheat is infuriating and exhausting. We don’t just sit back and wait for life
to consume us.
We
actively work on tending the fields, caring for both the weeds and the wheat.
We trust that, though life may be hard, if we open ourselves to new
possibilities and cultivate patience we may find ways that are a tiny bit
easier. We do our best to calm down, realizing that it’s not actually a great
use of our time and energy to spend our days categorizing people into wheat or
weeds. After all, we are, every one of us, a bit of both.
It’s
work to stay calm in the face of evil. It’s work to trust that even when the
evil and good are all mixed up, things can still turn out okay in time. It’s
incredibly difficult to live in the in-between, to live in the ambiguity, to
stand still instead of frantically attacking the weeds. But sometimes it’s
worth it.
Jesus
holds up to us in today’s parable the Good News that sometimes the best thing
to do is not much at all. Sometimes the best thing to do is wait and watch.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just calm down, breathe deep, and remember
that weeds happen. And that it’s not the end of the world. Thanks be to God for
that.
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