24He put before them another
parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed
in his field; 25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came
and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when
the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And
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?’ 28He
answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want
us to go and gather them?’ 29But he replied, ‘No; for in
gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let
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.’” 36Then 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.” 37He answered, “The one
who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the
world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the
children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the
devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.40Just
as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of
the age. 41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will
collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and
they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. 43Then the righteous will shine like the sun
in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
As I am a firm believer in
proper sermon preparation, I naturally spent much of last week repotting my
potted plants. I know roughly as much
about being a wheat farmer as I do about being a ballerina, so I felt like a
crash-course in botany would put me in the proper parable mindset.
So last week, while it was
cool and dry, I found my gardening gloves and my gardening shears and my
dried-out bag of potting soil and I got to work. I watered the begonias, brought in the
caladiums, moved a gardenia that wasn’t taking so well, that sort of thing. Nothing major—I’m more of a potted planter
than a farmer—but it was nice and calming, and we could all use more nice and
calming.
It’s true, you know, about
the roots. It’s not the leaves and the
stalk you have to worry with. They’ll
come back; just give them a little water and some sun, and they’ll come
back. But when the roots grow together,
well, you’re stuck. You can’t pull up one without pulling up the other, and it
makes for a big mess, a big dirt-under-your-fingernails mess. It means that some of the good plants will be
sucked dry by the bad, and that means some of the good plants will die.
It’s a big enough mess in
gardening, but imagine the implications for the church. Judgment is dangerous
business.
There is an upside, though, and
for all the nutrients sucked dry by the weeds, for all the time and energy we
spend on those who just love to suck up the church’s time and energy like weeds
in a field, the fact remains that judging is God’s job, and what a relief,
because it takes a lot of pressure off of us . . . because even when we squint,
we still can’t distinguish the weeds from the wheat 100% of the time. And sure, the church is a mess, but it’s a
holy mess, and we come to God with who we are and we accept everybody no matter
what because we’re all just people,
you know, just people who are all longing
after God.
It is one reason I am so
fond of this parable. I do not like judgment. It’s God’s job, not mine, and
I’ve seen so much foolishness happen in the name of maintaining holiness, of
judging others, that I just don’t have time for it. And this parable reminds us
that it is God’s job to judge, not mine, and thank goodness, because that’s a
lot of pressure.
It seems simple enough, but somewhere
down the line, the church missed this parable, got down on its hands and knees
and started weeding. And it stings, you
know, it stings for some of us, some more than others, because we’ve been
called weeds before; we’ve been told that because of who we are or what we’ve
done, we don’t belong in church.
You may have heard me tell the story
of the church that was booming back in the late 60’s, full of young people,
people who didn’t really fit anywhere else, but that was ok because it was the
church’s vibe, that it was a place where people who didn’t fit could go and feel
like it was ok not to fit.
And so those are the kind of
people who went to that church, girls with short hair and boys on motorcycles, and
it was great, great for everybody, until one Sunday, when it came to the
pastor’s attention that one of the girls with short hair had returned after
several months away, and she had brought her newborn child. If she had
been married, of course, the whole church would have cooed at the child,
would’ve told mom just how much the baby looked like her, but since she wasn’t
married, there was none of that.
Don’t you know that they
marched her right up the center aisle during worship that Sunday, they stood
her in the front of the church, and they had a vote right then and there as to
whether someone who gave such a bad name to the church, whether that kind of
person belonged there.
And who cares whether they
voted to keep her or to reject her, because no matter how they voted the
verdict was passed the moment they made her walk up the aisle. Of course,
they were just doing their job, she had upset the holiness of God’s church and
something just had to be done
about it!, but, you know, they broke right in two, the congregation and the
town and that poor young woman broke right in two.
You pull the weeds and the wheat comes
up with it, and soon, there’s nothing left for the bread.
We recently passed the 50th
anniviersaty of the Civil Rights Act, so this morning I am remembering the
Little Rock Nine, those nine brave African-American high school students braved
crowds, guns, and worse to enroll in and integrate Little Rock Central High
School. For days, the nine students
stared down an angry white mob, over a thousand strong. Brown vs. Board of Education had been decided
three years prior, but the law means little when you’ve got a thousand angry
faces growling at you.
And if the mob weren’t enough,
Governor Orval Faubus ordered the ten-thousand-strong Arkansas National Guard
to block the students’ entrance to the school.
Each day, for three weeks, the students watched armed men block their
entrance into the school. Nine teenagers
against ten thousand soldiers. It sounds
ludicrous now, and it should, but that’s how it was, nine against ten thousand!
Those nine ended up being awfully
successful, and I don’t know what happened to those ten thousand, but I do know
about Orval Faubus, the governor, who ordered the National Guard to block the
school. Now, part of me wishes that he’d
been despised for what he did; I wish he’d been seen as the sanctimonious
opportunist that he was, but he got reelected four times after the Little Rock
fiasco. In fact, Gallup did a poll in
1958, and it turns out that Orval Faubus was one of the ten people in the entire world who Americans
admired most. In the world.
And now, fifty years later, the
tables have turned; we can celebrate those brave nine. We know their names and their stories, know
that they were and are nine strong stalks of wheat in the face of ten thousand
who thought otherwise.
Thank goodness for time, because it
seems that in the heat of the moment, we jump right into judgmentalism, into
closedmindedness.
But there’s good news in Jesus’s
parable for those who just listen! The
celebrated preacher James Forbes calls this little parable “the best kept
secret in the Bible;” he says, “let’s don’t do any prejudging and start the
hellfire prematurely. Let’s leave it up
to the Lord!”
Now, I quite like that. That’s the kind of theology I want to
hear in the church. There’s no room for
judges who play God, because when the roots are tangled, pulling weeds is
Russian Roulette, and it’s only a matter of time before all the roots
come up and what used to be fertile ground falls to pieces, just falls to
pieces.
And that’s what Jesus is up to
here. The disciples are worried about
what to do with weeds in their midst, bad folks, maybe, or at least, people they
don’t know quite what to do with. The
tendency, you know, is to just get rid of them, not worry with them. The disciples figure—and it makes sense, you
know—that if Jesus brings a new way, you know, it must be out with the old and
in with the new.
But then Jesus tells a story. The kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who
sows good wheat in the field, but in the night, an enemy comes and sows weeds
among the wheat. You’d think he’d
notice, the farmer. But it takes a while
for things to grow. You can’t just sow
seed and wake up and it’s full-grown; you have to wait. And the enemy has sown a particularly mischievous
weed—it still grows in Jesus’s parts today, and they still call it “false wheat”
in some places because you can’t tell that it’s not wheat until it’s almost
full-grown. And by that point, you’re
stuck with the dirt-under-your-fingernails mess, because the roots have tangled,
and the weed holds on to the wheat like a vice.
You can’t pull the weeds without pulling the wheat, so you’re
stuck. And the farmer tells his
farmhands to leave the field be, and that come harvest time, he’ll call in the
professionals because the farmhands just aren’t cut out for the job.
Well, granted, it’s a complicated
story, so the disciples ask Jesus just what it means. Let me quote him because I don’t want to get
this wrong.
Jesus answers, “The one who sows the
good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the world, and the good
seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil
one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the
end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40Just as the weeds are
collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The
Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all
causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and they will throw them into the
furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43Then
the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let
anyone with ears listen!”
Normally, you know, I run away from
judgment stories, and I don’t really like talking about the devil. But I’m willing to make an exception for this
one, because it’s nobody’s job but God’s to handle the judgment. And though Jesus is bringing something
altogether new, the message is not so much out with the old and in with the new
as it is “don’t kick out the old, but prepare for the new,” because you never
know just who you’re kicking out.
It wasn’t easy for the disciples to
live into that story, and it’s not easy for us.
No matter how hard we try, and no matter how much we work for it, it
seems like judgmental people are so tangled with us, it is hard to tell where
the wheat ends and the weed begins.
Why, I heard once of a
church who had to deal with a person who was homeless and lived in the woods
outside the church. And because he didn’t have a place to shower, he came
smelling like he lived in the woods, and folks were polite enough, but it got
to be pretty significant, and some folks started to complain.
Well, this man went to the pastor
and announced his intention to join the church.
This is the place for me, he said.
I like the preaching, the choir sounds nice, the communion bread tastes
good, I want to join. And she said—the pastor said—I’d like to let you in,
really I would, but let me talk to the church, you know, because this is not
quite as easy as just saying the vows.
You know what? The pastor called a big meeting. The man who was homeless wasn’t there, of
course, because that would have just been awkward, and we don’t do so well with
awkward in the church. But everybody
else showed up and packed the sanctuary so full that someone brought cheese and
crackers for everybody and put them in the next room.
Oh, it was long and ugly. Its just not church business unless it’s long
and ugly; you know that. The pastor got
up to speak, and I wasn’t there but I imagine that she said something about it
being a difficult situation, and how people were going to disagree, and how it
was all right to have strong opinions, how they would make the proper concessions
in light of the situation, but it was the right thing to do. You’ve said this stuff before, maybe not in
such circumstances, but you know what she said.
She might’ve read the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds. It applies pretty well, I think.
And when the pastor was done, well,
preaching, really, she sat down and people came up to the microphone, one by
one, and you’ve never heard such hate come from people’s mouths. I mean, never. The people who wanted to accept the man were
called reckless. The people who didn’t
want to accept the man were called judgmental.
And so it went, and worse, for hours.
Well, after it all, after several
hours of side-ways glances and under-the-breath comments, and with the cheese
and crackers left untouched, they had a vote.
And you know what they voted, don’t you?
Naturally, they voted to let the homeless
man into the congregation, and they voted to kick all the judgmental folks
straight to the curb, out of the church, where they didn’t really have much to
be judgmental about. And the church was
happy, you see, because they were setting a model of a perfect, loving church for
all to see. And people came from miles
around just to see the happy, progressive, open-minded church that let in the
man who was homeless, that didn’t judge him one bit because all the judgmental
folks were gone, because, everybody knows, there is no room in God’s church for
judgmental folks.
All right, maybe that’s not quite
how it all ended, but do you feel as I do? They didn’t kick out all the
judgmental folks, but is there a small part of you, deep down in your tangled roots,
that wishes they had?
No comments:
Post a Comment