“How Does Your Garden Grow?” – Sermon on July 17, 2011
July 17, 2011
Scripture: Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
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.’”
Then 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.”He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
Sermon: How Does Your Garden Grow?
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
My, my, my. What an intense passage of scripture to be asked to deal with on a hot and humid, perfectly lazy day of summer. The parable itself, about the landowner sowing good seed and having it sabotaged, is not so bad, with its message about the difficulty of discerning what is what, a message about leaving such judgment in the hands of God, a message about patience and letting go. But then they had to add in the explanation of it that Jesus supposedly gives. And here he talks about children of the evil one, the devil, fiery judgment that separates the righteous from the evildoers, punishment and reward, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Oh my. What are we to do with that?
Now the gospels are not historical documents, they are faith accounts, meant to help us know Jesus and follow him, reconciling us with the triune God. None of them were written by eye witnesses. Neither Matthew, Mark, Luke nor John were apostles, and all of them came to the faith after Jesus’ death. I believe these faith accounts are not only the transcendent word of God for all times, but also written at a particular time in history to a particular community facing particular issues. Even when different gospels tell the same stories of Jesus, they emphasize different things, and this gives a clue to the issues faced by the early church groups they were writing to at the time.
Now this parable and explanation appear only in the gospel of Matthew. Matthew is also the only one who has any talk about weeping and gnashing of teeth. He has several passages that concern judgment in his gospel, more than any other gospel. He’s the one who talks about the wise and foolish virgins, separating sheep from goats. He also issues lots of warnings against lawlessness, talks about betrayals – father against son, daughter against mother, brother against brother – and about procedures for resolving disputes. It is a good guess that Matthew is writing to a community that is divided and conflicted. He goes to great pains to connect the stories of Jesus’ life and ministry with the Hebrew scripture, so one group in the community is likely devout Jews. The other group might be less devout, or even Gentiles, reveling in the freedom from the rigid religious rules that Jesus challenged. There was a type of figurative weeding which racked many Jewish movements of the time, where the holy pounced on the unholy in their ranks and developed strict boundaries with which to define holiness. Its effect was alienation. It was like the execution of judgment, at least the passing of sentence, before the time. And so the parable itself is wonderful advice to a conflicted community, with each faction seeing itself as wheat and the other as weeds.
I must say things aren’t so different in Christian communities now. We split into new denominations and independent churches because of disputes over theology or money, whether to ordain women or gays, whether to use gender-inclusive language, whether to baptize infants or adults, who owns the property, how money is spent, who makes decisions, whether the scripture is literal or allegorical, how much authority the bible ought to have, and so on and so on. And whatever position we take, we are sure is the fruitful, wheat-like position, and the other side is weed-like – choking off the fruit of the kingdom, sown by the enemy, children of the devil. How wise Jesus is to caution us against taking action to get rid of the weeds, to remind us that we can do more damage to the kingdom, uprooting perfectly good plants, in our quest to purify. How wise Jesus is to preach that we ought never to cease to have compassion, never write people off.
And he didn’t just preach it, he practiced it. Look at how he responded when there was division in his own small community of disciples, when his followers argued about who would be greater, who would sit at his left and his right in heaven. He talked to them, he taught them, he led them to reconciliation. Look how he responded the night before he died, when he knew Judas would set out to turn him over to the authorities. He washed his feet along with all the others. He fed him, then declared himself glorified once Judas left to do what he had to do.
So I just can’t buy this explanation of the parable as coming from Jesus, with its eternal condemnation and punishment. Perhaps it was written by Matthew, perhaps it was a later addition by someone else, but it’s message seems so contradictory of the gist of Christ’s preaching and teaching and healing and sacrifice, so contrary to his commandment to love one another above all else. Because in the explanation, he doesn’t just say to be patient and leave the judging up to God, he also says that God’s judgment will be vengeful, with some -the righteous – shining like the sun, and others – the evildoers – burning in fire, weeping and gnashing teeth. In my mind this appeals to and feeds that base side of us, the side that remains convinced that we are the wheat, and the weeds need to be shown that in the end. This portrays a God who, in the end, is unforgiving and vengeful.
With such a picture, the love and compassion of God are only interim, only temporary, and ultimately God will write people off, will cease loving. It’s just a matter of timing. Jesus, in that case, is an exception to the nature of God, or just a tool for appeasing this vengeful God by paying the penalty for the sins of human-kind. I just can’t buy it. I’m in full agreement with Martin Luther King, Jr, and so many theologians, who said, “God’s purpose is not wrathful judgment. God’s purpose is redemption, and the road to redemption is by way of reconciliation. Only in that way will the world finally be saved.” That is the message that comes through in all the gospels, that God so loved the world that the son was sent to save it.
I don’t mean to say that there is never any judgment by God about the ways we mess up. I believe that there is on-going judgment, and that there very well may be an ultimate judgment day. But I see it as a means of redemption rather than punishment, an opportunity to understand more deeply and fully what God had intended for us, and the ways our choices, as individuals and societies, go off the mark. And in our understanding, we have a better chance to repent and submit to God’s desires for us. I liked the angle of this parable that we might better understand ourselves not as either wheat or weed, but as the field in which both grow. In the end, the reapers will separate the parts of ourselves that were fruitful and glorify them further, from the parts of ourselves that were not fruitful, or were destructive, and use them in a different way, fuel for baking the wheat into bread.
Whether it is about ourselves or others, Jesus is clear in this parable that we are not to do the weeding, but ought to leave it to God, whose wisdom is not our wisdom, whose vision is not our vision. So are we to do nothing when we see destructive forces at work? It’s hard to do nothing, and I’m not sure that it’s right to do nothing. We’ve probably all heard someone say, “Don’t just sit there, do something.” A friend cherishes the wisdom of his father, who cautioned him against inertia, saying, “when there’s a problem, do something, try something. Even if it’s the wrong thing at least there’s a chance of something opening up.” Felix Carrion, from the UCC national staff, says that there is an assumption here that within us lays the fight, the momentum to make something happen. We think that as long as we are moving, we are of some worth to ourselves and others.” And I think that is not necessarily a bad thing. We are beings who can make a difference. We have a responsibility to care and act in the world. But there is also wisdom in the saying, “don’t just do something, sit there.” Carrion points out that this saying assumes that that there are limits to our fight, our human usefulness, and implies that,if not checked, our industriousness will get us into trouble. He says our activity needs pause and observation, of the kind that demands stillness and humility. We need the chance to understand that the fight is not always ours, that the doing is not always ours, that the understanding is not always ours. There is such wisdom in these two truths, held in creative tension.
And if we don’t focus on weeding, perhaps we will focus instead on planting or harvesting or sharing the fruit. The Reverend Dr. James Somerville tells about a conversation he had with his congregation about where their energy would be spent, whether it ought to be spent rooting out evil as they understood it. Someone hypothesized that even if efforts were successful in getting rid of all the bad things in the community, if they were able to lock up all the gang members and thugs, close down the strip clubs and porn vendors and gambling venues and so forth, they might have a community characterized by the absence of evil. But this is not the same as a community characterized by the presence of good. Maybe Jesus was saying it is better to have a wheat field with weeds than to have a field with nothing in it at all.
Rev. Somerville goes on to tell the story of his congregation’s decision to begin a ministry to the children of a nearby trailer park. He says, “We 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 arrest child abusers. Instead, we chose to put up a basketball goal, to tell stories from the Bible, to put our arms around little children, and sing songs about Jesus. And two years after we started that ministry, two years of going out there Saturday after Saturday to do those things, I got a note in my box at church with five words on it: “Adrian wants to be baptized.” Adrian. The terror of the trailer park. That little girl who had made our work most difficult during the previous two years. Who would have guessed? Instead of pulling weeds in the field where she lived, we just tried hard to be wheat, and somehow Adrian saw that and fell in love with it and wanted it for herself. After she was baptized, there was a little more wheat in the field. And because she was there, soon, there was even more.” May this ministry shine like the sun in the kingdom, and may we likewise work for the kingdom with love, hope, and trust in the God who holds us all in the palm of his hand.
