Genesis 28:10 – 19a
Psalm 139:1 – 12, 23 – 24
Romans 8:12 – 25
Matthew 13:24 – 30, 36 – 43
“God was in this place, and I, I did not know,” Jacob tells us.
We have another place this morning: a field of wheat and weeds. I wonder if we, like Jacob, may not recognize that God is in that place?
When most of us look at that field we see – well, wheat. And weeds.
We make judgments.
We see what “belongs” – and what “doesn’t belong.”
It’s an important parable for us, for it addresses two salient questions at the heart of our Christian living:
- One: What is the appropriate Christian response to evil? We all do recognize that evil exists – even if we sometimes disagree on the nature of that evil. Are we just to do nothing?
- And two: if we believe, as we say, that good overcomes evil – why do we so fear what the weeds will do to the wheat? Why isn’t it the wheat that overcomes the weeds?
What is the appropriate Christian response to evil?
It’s an issue I – and I think all of us – struggle with.
Our tendency, of course is to react – do something! Get rid of it! How can we ignore it, just do nothing?
First – we are never told to do nothing. We are told not to destroy the weeds – and to allow them to grow. Allowing them to grow means that they are on the receiving end of our love and care and nurture, as is the wheat. Uncomfortable as that thought may be, we allow the weeds to thrive.
Why? We might ask. Why, when it’s so clear they’re there – and we can eliminate them! And they’re so – well, evil!
The first reason, I think, is that we don’t have a good track record when it comes to identifying weeds – or wheat!
We in the church have been quick to label and exclude. Weeds or wheat, sheep or goats, saved or damned – people on both sides have been strident in their convictions and sure of their hold on “truth.”
History provides us with many examples of the truth of our inability to identify weeds and our fallibility as judges:
- We can look at the many people – including Thomas Crammer, who was responsible for much of our Prayer Book, and William Tyndale, who made one of the first translations of the Bible into English – who were burned at the stake for their “heresies.” Weeds, surely!
- We can look at the resistance of the church in the 16th and 17th centuries to the science of Copernicus and Galileo – or, in some places today, to Darwin and evolution. Weeds, surely!
- We can look at racism and segregation – until recently, a reality in the church as well as in the greater society. Weeds, surely!
- Or, misogyny when it comes to the inclusion of women at all levels of church life. Indeed, the Church of England is still embroiled in contentious discussions about how to ordain women as bishops without offending those for whom submitting themselves to the authority of a woman would be an anathema… And, of course, some, like the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists, won’t ordain women at all. Weeds, surely!
- Or, again, at this country’s historic and current response to the immigrants who have enriched our culture and made us who we are: beginning with the Irish, and continuing with the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Mexicans… Weeds, surely!
Equally important, I think, is that Jesus recognizes how vulnerable we are to become exactly like that which we seek to eradicate, destroying life in the name of preserving it. It reminds me of that long-ago comic strip from my youth, Pogo, in which he says, “We have met the enemy – and it is us!” And it is not only we, as individuals, who are in danger from this kind of response; it evokes toxicity which affects the community as well.
Albert Einstein, that great scientist of the 20th century, said,
A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe (the field in Jesus’ parable), a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.
It is incumbent upon us to recognize that if there are those whose actions are a trial to us, we still have no right to exclude them from our fellowship. To do so harms the fabric of the community.
We resist evil most effectively, not by uprooting it, but by being fully who we are: members of the body of Christ, followers of Jesus who himself opposed the evils of Rome, not with a sword, but with love. In becoming a weed brigade, we lose sight of what it is that we’re really about, what it is that truly matters. Certainly it’s easier to focus on the other guys’ sins than on our own lives, but as Christians we define ourselves, not against “other,” but in relationship to God in Christ. Being a Christian isn’t about enforcing purity; it is about growing in God.
The second issue raised by this parable is intrinsically related to the first: If good overcomes evil, if love overcomes all, why then doesn’t the wheat overcome the weeds?
Why are we so quick to think it won’t?
Indeed, isn’t that exactly what we, as Christians, believe? That in Jesus not only we, but the world, have been redeemed?
I think that sometimes we get impatient – we want “victory” to happen on our time table – this harvest, please! – and not in God’s time. We get lost in our zeal and begin to think that we have sole responsibility for creating that kingdom of God, and we know what it will look like, and, of course, it will be full of “people like us…”
Jesus teaches us a love that includes waiting, - the patience that St. Paul talks about in this morning’s lesson – sustained by a belief that evil and justice will somehow be reckoned with.
Jesus teaches us of a kingdom of God that includes love for weeds as well as wheat, a kingdom realized through care and nurture rather than death and destruction.
Jesus teaches us of a kingdom of God that is a reality, now, if we participate in it. It is a kingdom come to us through the Word of Christ, and we must only discover ourselves – and one another! – in it, already here, for he was here first…
There is a wonderful midrash on the lesson from Genesis that we heard this morning. It suggests that when Jacob says “God was in this place, and I – I did not know,” what really happened was that Jacob came upon God, because God is the place of the world, and not the other way around. “God, the Holy One of Being,” the midrash continues, “is more than everywhere; God is the bosom in which creation happens day after day, the ground and the source of everything that exists, the very Place of Being itself.”
God is the place of the world, the very place of Being.
Imagine how that understanding might change our reading of this morning’s Gospel.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a field…” Jesus tells us.
Imagine the field as the Place of God, the very place of Being.
Might that change our response to the weeds?
Might that make us a little more patient, a little less judgmental?
Yes, consider: the kingdom of heaven is like a field…
…the kingdom of heaven is a place where God is.
The kingdom of heaven is where WE are.
Amen.
