Weeds and Wheat
The Rev. Amy Morehous
Church of the Ascension
July 17, 2011
Proper 11, Year A
In each family there are stories that are told and retold, that weave themselves into the fabric of family life. I have spoken about my grandfather before as a person larger than life - a high school football coach and principal who never met a stranger. He was himself a terrific story-teller, and jokester, so a lot of our stories involve him. After his second heart-attack, he retired from Lenoir City High School. Then his pride and joy every year became his garden, which spanned about an acre. I grew up on fresh, homegrown corn, green beans, okra, tomatoes, watermelon, grapes, strawberries, peaches, apples.... You get the picture.
Each summer, my sister and I would go stay for a week or two with my grandparents on their farm. My sister loved anything involving dirt, so she would go spend time in the garden with my grandfather. I loathed anything to do with dirt, so I stayed in the kitchen with my grandmother, and helped her as she boiled and canned tomatoes, and strung and canned green beans for the winter. When I say “helped”, that usually meant “stringing green beans while reading a book.” And, yes, you can do both at the same time. I had a whole system worked out.
In the garden one morning, my still-very-young sister saw something green creeping along the ground. To be helpful, she pulled it up, and dangled it before my grandfather. “I got a weed, Pa! It was creeping all over everything, and it has these funny little green hairy things on it! Yuck! What kind of weed is it?” Now my grandfather was a large man - to me he always seemed like a giant. He sighed, and took the ‘weed’ from her patiently, cradled it gently in his big hands, and said, “Well, baby girl, it was a watermelon.”
My sister, realizing her mistake, began to get upset. “Oh, Pa. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Let’s put it back.”
My grandfather shook his head and held it out to her. “Baby, it doesn’t work like that. You’ve stripped it from its roots. It can’t get water anymore. We can’t put it back.”
My sister ran inside to find me, clutching the limp vine to her heart with grubby fingers. She told me the story, sniffled, and swiped at the tear streaks on her face angrily, smearing dirt on her cheek in the process. With all the passion in her small body, she thrust it out to me and said “You have to help me! We have to fix it!”
With all my ‘two-years-older than thou’ wisdom, I looked up from my book, saw how upset she was, and said, with great sisterly compassion, “You’ve got some dirt on your face.” (I’m still apologizing for that one.)
Do you worry about the weeds, about the things that grow in the church, in the world...in ourselves? The same things troubled the earliest Christians, including the community Matthew speaks to in his Gospel. Matthew is full of language of judgment, decision and division, and does not stint on the terrifying scenes of condemnation - like the one described here.
In response to our ancestors' struggle, Matthew’s gospel is meant to provide pictures and promises to help the faithful endure and persist, even if their little church, and the big world beyond it, seemed infected and flawed by "bad seed.”
Barbara Brown Taylor cautions us against reading parables as a direct answer to a direct question. She asserts that parables are almost never meant to be read that way. Instead, she reminds us that they deliver "their meaning in images that talk more to our hearts than to our heads. Parables are mysterious.... Left alone, they teach us something different every time we hear them, speaking across great distances of time and place and understanding." As soon as we’re sure that we know EXACTLY what a parable means, we're almost certain to be wrong. But if we're uncomfortable by the challenge we hear in a parable, we're probably getting a little closer to the true mystery.
Once again, as in last week’s Gospel, we hear a parable of the sowing of seeds. Last week's sower spread seeds in willful abundance on every kind of ground, with mixed results. This week's sower seems to use good ground, because the harvest is plentiful, but gets a mixed crop, with weeds co-mingled in with the good wheat.
And what is the workers’ reaction to discovering the weeds twined among the wheat? They first question the Sower. “Well, are you sure you used good seed? Because there is clearly a problem here. You must have used the wrong kind of seed, Sower.” After being assured that the weeds did not come from the Sower’s hand, the workers are immediately on alert. “Well, what should we do? Let’s go rip those weeds up, so they aren’t contaminating our wheat!”
And the Boss - the Sower - says “No.”
“No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until the harvest.”
“No, you can’t pull the weeds, because you cannot tell the difference between what is good grain, and what is rank weeds.”
Because there’s nothing we love more as human beings than being able to classify everyone appropriately. I’ve been doing some reading lately about the Crusades - three centuries of a Church attempting to sort out the weeds from the wheat. In the process, anywhere from 3 to 9 million people were killed, depending on which historian you find credible. During the Albigensian Crusade during the 13th century, one of the popular battle cries was "Kill them all and let God sort them out!" Of course, in the parable Jesus tells us today, we hear the complete reverse -- the Sower tells the workers to give them time, to let them all grow together, and let God sort them out at the end of the age.
Is it possible that the mystery of this parable has more to do with God's timing, and our own unwillingness to wait for it, with hope? Our inability to trust in the certainty of God's own judgment? Why should we wait to let God be the judge, when we are all too ready to do the job for him?
I don’t know about you, but I thank God that God will judge us, and that we will not be busy with the judging of one another’s souls. I know that the vision of judgement here is fearful - it has been used to terrify through the ages. But I prefer to see that fire as purifying, rather than terrifying. Thomas Long writes that God will burn in the fire of judgement all that "deadens humanity or corrupts God's world. Whatever is in the world, or in us, that poisons our humanity and breaks our relationship with God will, thank the Lord, be burned up in the fires of God's everlasting love."
It is a fact that there is evil and wrongdoing in this world. There are weeds in our garden. There were then. There are now. Surely we are not expected to sit by and watch as they flourish, as they consume all the resources, and grow to overcome the wheat! Barbara Brown Taylor says that "what the Boss seems to know is that the best and only real solution to evil is to bear good fruit. Our job, in a mixed field, is not to give ourselves to the enemy by devoting all our energy to the destruction of the weeds, but to mind our own business...--our business being the reconciliation of the world through the practice of unshielded and unending love. If we will give ourselves to that, God will take care of the rest...." (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven)
So, I will ask you today...are you worried about plucking out and destroying the weeds, or are you occupied with nurturing the wheat? Because our call today is not to judgement, but to love. We are here to encourage all that is good about us, all that works to reconcile this world of ours to Christ. We are not here to root out and destroy, to separate God’s people from their nurturing roots as my sister unwittingly did, so many years ago. (As I purposefully did when she asked for help, and I gave her criticism.)
Our God is a God of love AND of judgement. We are promised that God will, in God’s own time, burn away that which corrupts, that which destroys, that which separates and divides us. In the meanwhile, we are here to love unreservedly, without regard for weed or wheat, without regard for station or situation. We are called to love as Christ loved - to learn, to teach, to grow - to water the garden, to tend the plants - ALL the plants - with care and encouragement and with love, as we ourselves are loved with a great love. Our hope is in the love of Christ, which will overcome all weeds, will heal all divisions, will call all to him, even when we cannot. We have only to look forward, and to hope.
Amen.
Church of the Ascension
July 17, 2011
Proper 11, Year A
Wisdom of Solomon 12:13-19
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
Psalm 86:11-17
In each family there are stories that are told and retold, that weave themselves into the fabric of family life. I have spoken about my grandfather before as a person larger than life - a high school football coach and principal who never met a stranger. He was himself a terrific story-teller, and jokester, so a lot of our stories involve him. After his second heart-attack, he retired from Lenoir City High School. Then his pride and joy every year became his garden, which spanned about an acre. I grew up on fresh, homegrown corn, green beans, okra, tomatoes, watermelon, grapes, strawberries, peaches, apples.... You get the picture.
Each summer, my sister and I would go stay for a week or two with my grandparents on their farm. My sister loved anything involving dirt, so she would go spend time in the garden with my grandfather. I loathed anything to do with dirt, so I stayed in the kitchen with my grandmother, and helped her as she boiled and canned tomatoes, and strung and canned green beans for the winter. When I say “helped”, that usually meant “stringing green beans while reading a book.” And, yes, you can do both at the same time. I had a whole system worked out.
In the garden one morning, my still-very-young sister saw something green creeping along the ground. To be helpful, she pulled it up, and dangled it before my grandfather. “I got a weed, Pa! It was creeping all over everything, and it has these funny little green hairy things on it! Yuck! What kind of weed is it?” Now my grandfather was a large man - to me he always seemed like a giant. He sighed, and took the ‘weed’ from her patiently, cradled it gently in his big hands, and said, “Well, baby girl, it was a watermelon.”
My sister, realizing her mistake, began to get upset. “Oh, Pa. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Let’s put it back.”
My grandfather shook his head and held it out to her. “Baby, it doesn’t work like that. You’ve stripped it from its roots. It can’t get water anymore. We can’t put it back.”
My sister ran inside to find me, clutching the limp vine to her heart with grubby fingers. She told me the story, sniffled, and swiped at the tear streaks on her face angrily, smearing dirt on her cheek in the process. With all the passion in her small body, she thrust it out to me and said “You have to help me! We have to fix it!”
With all my ‘two-years-older than thou’ wisdom, I looked up from my book, saw how upset she was, and said, with great sisterly compassion, “You’ve got some dirt on your face.” (I’m still apologizing for that one.)
Do you worry about the weeds, about the things that grow in the church, in the world...in ourselves? The same things troubled the earliest Christians, including the community Matthew speaks to in his Gospel. Matthew is full of language of judgment, decision and division, and does not stint on the terrifying scenes of condemnation - like the one described here.
In response to our ancestors' struggle, Matthew’s gospel is meant to provide pictures and promises to help the faithful endure and persist, even if their little church, and the big world beyond it, seemed infected and flawed by "bad seed.”
Barbara Brown Taylor cautions us against reading parables as a direct answer to a direct question. She asserts that parables are almost never meant to be read that way. Instead, she reminds us that they deliver "their meaning in images that talk more to our hearts than to our heads. Parables are mysterious.... Left alone, they teach us something different every time we hear them, speaking across great distances of time and place and understanding." As soon as we’re sure that we know EXACTLY what a parable means, we're almost certain to be wrong. But if we're uncomfortable by the challenge we hear in a parable, we're probably getting a little closer to the true mystery.
Once again, as in last week’s Gospel, we hear a parable of the sowing of seeds. Last week's sower spread seeds in willful abundance on every kind of ground, with mixed results. This week's sower seems to use good ground, because the harvest is plentiful, but gets a mixed crop, with weeds co-mingled in with the good wheat.
And what is the workers’ reaction to discovering the weeds twined among the wheat? They first question the Sower. “Well, are you sure you used good seed? Because there is clearly a problem here. You must have used the wrong kind of seed, Sower.” After being assured that the weeds did not come from the Sower’s hand, the workers are immediately on alert. “Well, what should we do? Let’s go rip those weeds up, so they aren’t contaminating our wheat!”
And the Boss - the Sower - says “No.”
“No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until the harvest.”
“No, you can’t pull the weeds, because you cannot tell the difference between what is good grain, and what is rank weeds.”
Because there’s nothing we love more as human beings than being able to classify everyone appropriately. I’ve been doing some reading lately about the Crusades - three centuries of a Church attempting to sort out the weeds from the wheat. In the process, anywhere from 3 to 9 million people were killed, depending on which historian you find credible. During the Albigensian Crusade during the 13th century, one of the popular battle cries was "Kill them all and let God sort them out!" Of course, in the parable Jesus tells us today, we hear the complete reverse -- the Sower tells the workers to give them time, to let them all grow together, and let God sort them out at the end of the age.
Is it possible that the mystery of this parable has more to do with God's timing, and our own unwillingness to wait for it, with hope? Our inability to trust in the certainty of God's own judgment? Why should we wait to let God be the judge, when we are all too ready to do the job for him?
I don’t know about you, but I thank God that God will judge us, and that we will not be busy with the judging of one another’s souls. I know that the vision of judgement here is fearful - it has been used to terrify through the ages. But I prefer to see that fire as purifying, rather than terrifying. Thomas Long writes that God will burn in the fire of judgement all that "deadens humanity or corrupts God's world. Whatever is in the world, or in us, that poisons our humanity and breaks our relationship with God will, thank the Lord, be burned up in the fires of God's everlasting love."
It is a fact that there is evil and wrongdoing in this world. There are weeds in our garden. There were then. There are now. Surely we are not expected to sit by and watch as they flourish, as they consume all the resources, and grow to overcome the wheat! Barbara Brown Taylor says that "what the Boss seems to know is that the best and only real solution to evil is to bear good fruit. Our job, in a mixed field, is not to give ourselves to the enemy by devoting all our energy to the destruction of the weeds, but to mind our own business...--our business being the reconciliation of the world through the practice of unshielded and unending love. If we will give ourselves to that, God will take care of the rest...." (Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven)
So, I will ask you today...are you worried about plucking out and destroying the weeds, or are you occupied with nurturing the wheat? Because our call today is not to judgement, but to love. We are here to encourage all that is good about us, all that works to reconcile this world of ours to Christ. We are not here to root out and destroy, to separate God’s people from their nurturing roots as my sister unwittingly did, so many years ago. (As I purposefully did when she asked for help, and I gave her criticism.)
Our God is a God of love AND of judgement. We are promised that God will, in God’s own time, burn away that which corrupts, that which destroys, that which separates and divides us. In the meanwhile, we are here to love unreservedly, without regard for weed or wheat, without regard for station or situation. We are called to love as Christ loved - to learn, to teach, to grow - to water the garden, to tend the plants - ALL the plants - with care and encouragement and with love, as we ourselves are loved with a great love. Our hope is in the love of Christ, which will overcome all weeds, will heal all divisions, will call all to him, even when we cannot. We have only to look forward, and to hope.
Amen.
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