Preached by Michael Cheuk
July 20, 2008, Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-42
When Beth and I lived in Charlottesville, we had a yard about the size of a postage stamp. We had a push mower, and every other week or so, I’d go out to the yard and mow that sucker in about eight minutes flat. Then we moved to Farmville and bought a house with a pretty big yard. We thought it would be great to have a place for church parties and picnics and play dates with the kids. All that’s true, but it takes me a lot longer than eight minutes to mow the lawn! So we got a riding mower, and I experienced my first sense of manly pride in mowing. A few swipes of a push mower just doesn’t do the trick – but riding my Cub Cadet, feeling the power of the engine – now that’s pure masculinity! I remember finishing the job that first time, pleased with my accomplishment, wiping the sweat from my (manly) brow – when Thea came out of the house and said, “Daddy, what happened to my flowers?” “Flowers? What flowers?” I said. Beth came out and joined the conversation. “You know, the seeds she planted last month. The ones she’s been patiently waiting to blossom.” “You mean those gangly weed looking things were flowers?” I asked. Ooops. As a side note, you should probably know that Beth is now the one who mows our lawn. Talk about a blow to my masculinity!
Thea took it well – and if I remember correctly, the plants themselves somehow survived and sprouted forth a few days later. But the experience made me do some thinking. You see, Thea planted those seeds, and when she looked out in that corner of the yard, she saw young plants rapidly growing and on the verge of blossoming. I looked at that same corner of the lawn and mistakenly saw some leggy weeds – and I mowed those bad boys down. Frankly, my own vision probably wasn’t entirely wrong; I’m sure there were plenty of weeds mixed in with Thea’s flowers, but I didn’t have the vision or understanding to know the difference.
Our story today encourages us to have vision and understanding, as well. Jesus continues his series of parables using the commonplace example of farming to paint a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like. This parable is a sequel to the Parable of the Sower that I preached on last Sunday. And while Jesus talked about the four different types of soils in the last parable, in this parable, Jesus focuses on what happens to the seed on the good soil. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good wheat seeds in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. Most scholars think the weeds that were sown were most likely darnel or cockle. In some regions, darnel is referred to as “false wheat” because it looks so much like wheat. The way you can tell them apart is when the plants begin to bear fruit. The ears on the real wheat are so heavy that it makes the entire plant droop downward, but the “false wheat,” whose ears are light, stands straight.[1] That’s why it was only when the wheat began to sprout and form heads, that the owner’s servants noticed that there were weeds among the wheat. So the perplexed servants asked the owner, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?”
Where do the weeds come from? This question seems to be a metaphorical version of a perennial question that we often ask ourselves: where does evil come from? If God is a good creator God, why is there so much evil in the world mingled amongst the good? If the Christ is building God’s church in the world, why is there so much evil within the church? If the Holy Spirit is alive and living in me, why is there so much evil in me?
The parable does not give an exhaustive answer. The owner replies: “An enemy did this.” This answer seems to suggest that there is someone in the world who is actively working against the purposes of the owner, against the purposes of the Son of Man, a name that Jesus gave to himself. This answer also suggests that the owner, the Son of Man, is not the planter of the weeds. He is not the instigator of evil. But this answer is also tersely and vaguely answered, perhaps to teach us that a more detailed answer is not necessary right now, despite our human curiosity and desire to know more and to speculate on this mystery. For now, it is sufficient for the servants of the owner-and for us-to simply know that: “An enemy did this.”
But that leads us to another question: “So what do we do now?” The servants asked the owner, “Do you want us to go and pull the weeds up?” At this point, I fully expect the owner to reply: “Yeah, sure, pull up the weeds.” All good farmers and gardeners know the importance of careful vigilance against weeds if one wants a good crop. And nothing ruins a garden more than weeds overrunning and choking out the good plants and flowers. And that’s what the enemy is banking on. For you see, the enemy in Jesus’ parable is very sly. The enemy will do everything he can to prevent the people of God from bearing fruit. In last week’s parable, the enemy tries to prevent the seed of God’s word from taking root. But if that fails, the enemy will sow weeds in the good soil so that the workers will be obsessed with eliminating the weeds. But in the process of pulling up the weeds, those workers will also uproot the wheat, thereby accomplishing the enemy’s goal without him having to lift a hand![2]
We’ve seen that play out over and over again in the history of the world. We’ve seen inquisitions to rid the church of heretics, witch hunts to rid a community of undesirables, crusades to rid the world of Muslim infidels, jihads to rid the world of Christian infidels, final solutions to rid the world of Jews. In our country, we’ve had an on-going debate between and among both political parties about which groups of people are undesirable, which groups should be detained, disenfranchised or deported. Within Baptist circles, we’ve seen liberals, moderates, conservatives and fundamentalists exclude each other in fellowship, in missions and in appointments to denominational posts. And in these attempts to root out the “weeds” in our midst, there has been collateral damage where innocent people were hurt, where lives were wrecked, where wheat was rooted up along side the weeds. In our focus on weed-pulling, instead of bearing the fruit of love, joy, peace and goodness, we’ve produced hatred, bitterness, contentiousness and violence. In the history of the human race, we’ve seen that we are incapable of “doing good” by violence without also doing a great deal of evil.[3] When we “do good” by doing evil, ironically, we often become the very thing that we want to root out. As a result, we’ve turned a lot of people off against God, and helped the enemy accomplish his goal against the owner. That’s why the owner replied instead, “No, leave the weeds alone. Because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.”
Let both wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest. This is a challenging word for many of us, because it seems so passive, and it verges on the dangerous notion of permitting evil to exist with impunity in the world. We see God as a God of justice and are disappointed that God would not exercise judgment right now, this minute. Some of us have been deeply hurt by evil people and we want that judgment, that separation between the wheat and the weeds today. However, this parable challenges us with the notion that is not our job to execute final judgment on those whom we think are the weeds of this world. That is God’s job at the final judgment day, and only He knows who are the wheat and who are the weeds. We have to trust that, when God’s kingdom comes, His will for justice will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Let both wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest. This is an offensive word for others of us because we don’t like the notion of a final judgment and wish that Jesus had not mentioned it. We see God as a God of love and we would have been perfectly happy for the parable to end with the Master telling his servants to leave the weeds alone. Why go into the fiery details and the weeping and gnashing of teeth? But we cannot ignore the fact that when we experience real evil in the world, there is something deep within us that cries out for justice. Can we live in a world where truly evil people get away with doing horrendous things and yet still get away scot free?
But-what if there is also wheat and weeds growing together within each and every one of us? Yes, we affirm the good that is within us, what Abraham Lincoln described as the “better angels of our nature.”[4] But do we also confess our shadow side, what Joseph Conrad called our “heart of darkness”? It isn’t fashionable to say this in our culture, but the Bible tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.[5] If God were to weed out everyone today who disobeyed Him, I certainly wouldn’t be here preaching this sermon, and I doubt there would be anyone else on this earth left. So while we might be challenged and offended by this parable, perhaps we might also be comforted by the fact that during this time before the final harvest, God is refraining from rooting us up and pronouncing upon us final judgment. It means that there is still time to allow the good seed planted in us to bear good fruit. It implies that instead of obsessing over other people’s differences and faults, we can focus on nourishing the good that God wants to grow within us. It might also suggest that when the final harvest comes, God will root out and incinerate the weeds in our lives once and for all, while the good grain of our lives will be lovingly gathered into his storehouse for God’s enjoyment and glory.
Dr. Jim Sommerville, the new pastor of First Baptist, Richmond, tells a story that took place when he was the pastor of a church in Wingate, North Carolina (the town where our youth just visited for youth camp). He asked the people at his church to imagine what would happen if they adopted a policy of weed-pulling, if they drew a circle around the little town of Wingate, and made a vow that no evil would cross that line, that no weeds would grow within that border. Sommerville said, “You know, you and I could spend the rest of our lives protecting that boundary, standing shoulder to shoulder with pitchforks and clubs, making sure that we kept drugs and alcohol and pornography and gambling safely on the other side. I think it would take all of our energy and most of our time. But what if we did it? What if we succeeded? What would we have? We would have a town characterized by the absence of evil, which is not the same as a town characterized by the presence of good. And maybe this is what Jesus was talking about all along, that it’s better to have a wheat field with weeds in it than a field with nothing in it at all.”
When that church in Wingate began a ministry to the children of a nearby trailer park, they had to decide what kind of ministry it would be. They could have chosen to root out all the sources of evil in that place — to chase down the drug dealers and the deadbeat dads, to confiscate handguns and to pressure welfare moms to get a job. Instead, they chose to put up a basketball goal, to tell stories from the Bible, to put their arms around little children, and sing songs about Jesus. And two years after they started that ministry, two years of going out there Saturday after Saturday to do those things, Pastor Sommerville got a note in his box at church with five words on it: “Adrian wants to be baptized.” Adrian, the one-time terror of the trailer park. When they first started their Saturday ministry, nobody would have guessed that this little girl who couldn’t even follow directions would one day want to follow Jesus. But instead of pulling weeds in the field where she lived, they just tried hard to be wheat, and somehow Adrian saw that and fell in love with it and wanted it for herself. After Adrian was baptized, there was a little more wheat in the field, producing seeds for a greater harvest.[6]
This is a picture of what the kingdom of heaven is like. In a world still full of wheat and weeds together, may God give us the vision to see God’s kingdom and live it out faithfully and fruitfully. Amen.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darnel
[2] The ideas of the last two paragraphs are heavily indebted to Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary, Vol. 2, pp. 26-27.
[3] Frederick Dale Bruner, p. 30.
[4] http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html.
[5] Romans 3:23.
[6] Jim Sommerville, “A World Full of Weeds,” http://www.day1.net/index.php5?view=transcripts&tid=506.
