9th Pentecost
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43; Romans 8:12-25; Isaiah 44:6
My neighbor was watering his flowers last Sunday afternoon in his front yard. I strolled over to make a few admiring comments about the new yard sculpture he had purchased at the Lincolnshire art show. I noted that his dianthus had just about all stopped blooming and suggested he might want to deadhead the plants to encourage them to bloom again. He appreciated the advice and continued to water each plant around the flowerbed. As we reached the corner of his house I noticed one plant rising above the others. Thriving in the blast of the heat and limited rain fall. We both stood admiring the plant for a few minutes and then he turned to me and said, "That's a weed, isn't it." "Yep," I replied. "Nothing I planted grows that good," he observed. "Where do you suppose it came from?" he asked more of himself then me. Then he turned off the hose and stepped up, grabbed the plant with two hands and pulled. I watched as the weed and three other plants all pulled free from the flowerbed, the roots of the weed tightly entwined among the roots of the desired flowering plants. "Where do you suppose it came from?"
Our lesson for today provides an answer to this question but it is not very satisfying to our modern minds. A parable of wheat and weeds. The good crop seeded and growing only to find that mixed among the desired wheat are weeds. This is no garden bed to be carefully weeded to allow the specimen plants to thrive. This is a wheat field. Plants growing tightly together. Roots meshed under the earth. To pull any one plant is to pull a multitude of plants both good and bad. Further complicating the situation, the weeds look amazingly like the wheat. The first time I preached a sermon on this text was the summer of 1975. I remember it so well probably because I was preaching to rural churches in southern Minnesota and I remember doing an extensive research project on the nature of the weeds (remember, this was before the internet and Google or yahoo search engines). To this day I remember that scholars identified the weed as most likely the "bearded darnel." A type of rye grass. which looks so much like wheat as to "be almost indistinguishable until fully grown. As soon as the ears are formed it is possible to recognize them, but both the wheat and the weeds are usually left intermixed until after reaping. They are separated by a fanning that blows away the lighter and smaller seeds of the weeds, and after threshing, all seeds are shaken in a sieve. Thus any darnel seeds still remaining will usually pass through and leave the larger wheat behind. The inner coats of the darnel seeds often harbor seriously poisonous fungus growths that, if eaten by humans or animals, will cause dizziness, vomiting and sometimes even death." (Source Winifred Walker's All the Plants of the Bible.)
Didn't you sow good seed? Where did these weeds come from? The answer comes quickly, "An enemy has done this." It was a sobering headline. "British terrorists home grown". The question in the British press was quickly picked up by the US media. How could this happen? The first explanation to the terrorist bombings in London had been Al-Qaeda. But then came the discovery that it appeared that all four bombers were British born. What should have been good seed. How could this happen? In our parable for today the manager of the field asks. "Do you want me to go and gather them?" Homeland security raises the alert. The Patriot Act gains more support. We want to preserve and protect the good seed. The good plants. It is a human instinct to want to pull the weeds. To preserve the purity of that which we know to be good. Our society has been designed to remove that which threatens the healthy and the good. We arrest the criminal. We hospitalize the sick. We deport the illegal alien. We move the behavior problem to a special class. Very early in the history of the church the removing of weeds became part of the Christian tradition, while forgiveness and acceptance have always been key to the faith. There has also been the discipline of the faith. Christianity is not a religion where you can believe anything you want as along as you believe in God. The early church battled a wide variety of heresies. False teachings about God, Jesus, Salvation and the Holy Spirit. Part of the challenge, of course was drawing the line. What exactly is a false teaching? At the church picnic again this year we played a game of softball. At least I call it softball. At one point we had 16 players on the field rather than the usual 10 and we had 5 outs rather than 3 each inning. We had a great time (even if we played only five innings). But was it softball? At what point in all our rule changes would the game no longer be softball? Such was the struggle for the early Christian church. How different can someone's ideas or actions be before they are no longer Christian? There were centuries when the church did a lot of weed yanking. And many of those years, like the Spanish Inquisition, were not good years even for the wheat. It is interesting that in our parable the landowner cautions the servants not to rush too quickly to pull the weeds. The fear was that good plants would be damaged or even destroyed in the pursuit of removing the weeds. The military term is collateral damage. The evil that must be removed does not, in our parable, justify harming the good plants. The Landowner says wait. Wait because the difference between wheat and darnel is not easy to discern. The conflicts in Northern Ireland and Palestine both remind us that people of great faith who claim to be seeking peace in the name of their religion and the good of their communities can be very hard to divide into wheat and weeds. In both countries hundreds have died and thousands live in fear and terror while attempts to pull the weeds only lead to greater and greater cycles of violence and death. The landowner knew that there would never be a weed free field in our world. Wait. Was the decision of the landowner? Wait and give the good room to grow. But we so quickly believe that we can use our powers to remove that which is not good. Only to discover that much good was lost in our haste to act. In a few weeks our national Lutheran church will meet in assembly. There will be much good to be celebrated. But the media will focus I am sure on the moments when the church is tempted to pull what it thinks are weeds. The challenge as always will be to identify the weeds. To be careful not to harm the wheat. It is an ancient problem-there was a time in the history of the Christian church that a great battle was fought over whether pipe organs should be allowed in worship. There were some who thought it a weed. That was before there was a bloom known as Bach. There was a time when the church struggled to discern whether slavery could flourish for the good of society. The weeding killed thousands in the Civil War. There was a time only a few decades ago when some left the Lutheran church rather then allow women to be ordained as pastors. Hundreds of congregations would not have pastors today if this wheat had not been allowed to flourish. The advice is clear. Do not be too hasty. But society and the church learn slowly. When the astronomer Galileo first presented his theory that the earth moved around the sun, the church declared him to be a heretic. The church believed the universe had to move around the earth. Galileo was seen as a weed infecting the church. A weed to be removed and silenced. It would take centuries for the church to discern and affirm that Galileo was right. We all have a tendency to want to pull the weeds out. We want to clean up the church. Government. The world. But Jesus said wait. This is a parable that appears to be so simple and yet it also captures the complexity of our world. Good seed is planted, so where did the evil come from? Here we discover the paradox of the good. The fact that in naming the good we create the possibility of its opposite. The struggle that Paul wrote about to the Romans. The good that we would do versus the evil that is too often done. The paradox of our world is that every work of goodness carries within or around it the potential of a dark side. Scientific and technological advances are notorious for each promising benefit also providing a new risk or potential terror. The promise of nuclear power also threatens incredible annihilation. The healing potential of genetic engineering raises greater fears of biological weapons. Try as we might to control or remove the threat, that which is evil persists. Cancer keeps coming back. The terrorist attacks take lives daily. Neuro-receptors attuned to alcohol or sugar or cocaine continue to cry out for satiation. Evil will not go away.
That is the first lesson of our parable. Try as we might to eradicate the other seed planted by an enemy, the best that we will achieve are moments of relief. And that will be at the risk of uprooting the good. But the second point of the parable is that the good also will. Must . Continue to grow. There are many steps that can strengthen the good in our homes and our society. Within our institutions we can strive to be and do that which advances the good. Supports the good. We strive to strengthen the whole person. The good in its many forms. To develop healthy habits physically, intellectually and spiritually. We teach our young people not only the importance of regular exercise and consistent schoolwork but also the importance of weekly worship, prayer, service to others and the power of doing good. What's right? When the church offers study sessions or premarital counseling. Youth programs or activities and projects that serve others and societies good. We are strengthening the good. At the same time we must remember that our church will never be pristine or perfect. There will be conflicts and struggles but we remember that we were planted as good. Last Sunday's gospel had a parable about seed where the seed was the word of God planted within us. This week the seed is each of us planted in the world. We are planted to grow. To thrive and to give that which is evil less space in the world. We are called to make the wise and careful choices that advance the good. We are cautioned against any action that destroys or presumes to know what God's final judgment will be. Remember how much the weeds look like the wheat. We must also remember how much the wheat looks like the weeds. One of the most common problems Christians face is the fact that we look so much like every one else in the world. We go about our business pretty much like everyone else. We eat and drink, work and play, have marriages and even divorces, families and friends much like everyone else. Some Christian groups have attempted to make the difference more apparent by means of a certain dress codes or a particular vocabulary or a frequency of obvious acts of piety. But none of these distinctions are all that significant when it comes to discerning wheat from darnel. And the weeds often take a special comfort in pointing out our similarities. But the landowner recognized this fact. The important point is the final judgment. Jesus assures us that while the good seed and the other seed grow together often with great similarity. In the end the good seed brings life. While the weeds are lost in the wind or simply burned. The wheat nourishes and brings forth new life. That is the ultimate destiny of the good seed. We have been planted with a purpose. Nourished by God's grace. Chosen by God. The wheat. The good. Planted by God to grow and thrive in the midst of evil. To grow and thrive until God's kingdom is restored. The good has been planted. Now we wait. And watch it grow. And Jesus said, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!"
Amen