Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 23, 2023
Isaiah 44:6-8+Psalm 86:11-17+Romans 8:12-25+Matthew 13:24-30. 36-43
A couple of news headlines caught my eye this week:
Exclusive: Texas troopers told to push children into the Rio Grande, deny water to migrants, records say.[1]
and
Texas border agents allegedly laid traps that ensnared miscarrying pregnant teen.[2]
The slaves said to [the master], “Then do you want us to go and gather [the weeds]?” 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...(Matthew 13:28-30).
Let them grow together.
The very first time I ever clambered up into a pulpit to preach, long before I was ordained or even in the pipeline to enter ordained ministry, this Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat was the text assigned for that day. At the time, the evil weed we confronted had a name and a face - Osama bin Laden.
Given that we operate on a 3-year lectionary cycle, I have preached on this text many times, and it never gets any easier.
Some scholars believe that the explanations Jesus gives to the disciples about some of the parables were later additions. Parables are not supposed to be tied up neatly with a bow, and some of the explanations are harder to take than having a little wiggle-room to find an ending that makes sense or is at least palatable.
If those weeds are "the children of the evil one," as Jesus explains, then how are we to just allow it to flourish?
Well, let's talk about this weed for a minute.
Those who know about such things will tell you that the weed in question is something called bearded darnel. As it grows, its roots spread underground, get all mixed up with the other roots, and siphon off the water and nutrients that the wheat needs. Above ground, it looks like wheat, at least until it is mature, and the heads appear. And if you try to pull it up then, everything is coming up - wheat, weeds, roots - all of it.
So, Jesus says we are to leave it until the harvest when the good will be separated from the bad.
But what are we to do when that evil weed is killing poor migrant children? When the razor-wire submerged beneath the Rio Grande is hindering efforts of the border control agents to rescue those trapped in it, like the young woman who ultimately lost her pregnancy?
I absolutely believe that such evil must be confronted, opposed, and stopped. Period. We promise to "persevere in resisting evil" every time we renew our baptism, so clearly there are times when those weeds have to be plucked up. Right?
Let's back up to the parable once more. These parables in Matthew 13 are Parables of the Kingdom, and Jesus prefaces this one with, "the kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field" (13:24). We are already out of Chronos time - chronological time - and into Kairos time - God's time. And we know that wheat and darnel grow together and look pretty much the same. So, I don't think these weeds - this evil - is the kind that is out there somewhere. This is the evil that we wouldn't even suspect because it looks a lot like us. In fact, maybe it is us.
We often ask in our confession to be forgiven for "the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf," an admission not only that we participate in sin but that we are often complicit in the sin of others. Twenty years from now when Russian people are being maimed and killed by stepping on US-provided cluster bombs dropped by Ukraine, we participated in that, whether we like it or not.
In explaining this parable, Jesus says that 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" (13:41-42). It isn't just evildoers, it is "all causes of sin," or skandala in the Greek. You also find this word when he is talking about those who put a stumbling block (skandalon) in front of "little ones" who should have a millstone put around their neck and warns that if your hand or your eye cause you to sin (skandalizo), you should cut it off or pluck it out. He is talking in hyperbolic language. These are not weeds we are able to pluck out.
There is one more place where Jesus uses skandalon, when he says to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling-block (skandalon) to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things' (16:23). But Jesus did not give up on Peter. He did not pluck him up. He let him grow and ultimately promised him the keys to the kingdom. What looks like sin or evil may not actually be sin or evil.
Maybe this doesn't fit in with a literal interpretation of this parable, but parables don't operate by rules of logic. We have a God who extravagantly scatters seed all over the place completely ignoring the science of agriculture. We have a mustard seed that turns into a tree (they don't) or a merchant who sells everything he has to get that one pearl of great price. Parables aren't intended to follow some straight line from point A to point B. They do not give us pat answers. They require us to wrestle with them. And in the end, what they tell us is that God's ways are not our ways. We do not know who is in or who is out. That's way beyond our pay grade.
Here's what I can tell you: if we are so concerned about plucking out the weeds among us - and I'm not talking about the obvious cases of true evil afoot in the land, but in those who may believe differently or practice their faith differently - if we are so concerned about that, then we aren't planting good wheat so that the weeds can't gain a foothold. Just as there are types of grass that inhibit the growth of weeds, we can sow love in the world that overwhelms the evil. If we are doing that, we don't have time to worry about who is in and who is out. What we need to do is to just keep sowing seeds and leave the rest to God, to, as Madeline L'Engle wrote, "draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”
[1] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/border-trooper-migrants-wire-18205076.php?utm_campaign=CMS%20Sharing%20Tools%20(Premium)&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral
[2] https://jezebel.com/texas-border-agents-allegedly-laid-traps-that-ensnared-1850652162