Notes from the Wayside: Sermon: Let God Sort It Out

Delivered at Northside United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on July 23, 2023

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Let God Sort It Out

Audio Version

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[Jesus] 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!”

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (NRSV)

I make you uncomfortable
When I'm around
You always find a reason
To shut me out
You don't understand me
So you push me away
And you claim
Jesus lets you live that way

From “Unlovable” by Plumb

On the wall of the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain, there is a fresco that was painted by Elías García Martínez around 1930. The painting, which is titled Ecce Homo or Behold the Man, depicts Christ crowned with thorns. Though this work of art has undoubtedly meant a lot to the congregation of Sanctuary of Mercy, it was never really considered noteworthy outside the community until almost eleven years ago. The fresco was in need of restoration due to moisture damage, and, in 2012, an elderly parishioner who surely had the best of intentions and who mistakenly thought she had the permission of the church's priest, took it upon herself to restore it.¹ The restoration did not go well. One news correspondent compared the “restored” painting to “a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic.”²

I tell this sad yet humorous story today, because it serves as a reminder that sometimes, despite our best intentions, our attempts to fix things can actually do more harm than good.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we read that one day Jesus is met by so many people on the lakeshore that He has to board a boat so that He can teach them. On this particular day, He starts teaching the crowd about the Kingdom of Heaven by using parables. These short, mysterious stories obscure truth from people who aren't really seeking it, but they reveal truth to people who continue to ponder them. From the parables Jesus tells on this day, we learn that God's Kingdom is somehow like a farmer who scatters seeds on different kinds of soil, a tiny mustard seed that is planted, yeast that is mixed into flour, a treasure that has been hidden in a field, a jeweler who seeks fine pearls, and a net that is used to catch all kinds of fish.³

In one parable, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a farmer who plants wheat in his field. One night, under the cover of darkness, someone who is evidently not very fond of the farmer plants bad seed in the same field, so that, as the wheat grows, weeds grow with it. One day, the household servants discover that weeds are growing in the field, so they alert the farmer. The farmer can immediately tell that someone has deliberately planted the weeds. Eager to solve the problem, the servants offer to pull them up, but the farmer tells them that their proposed solution would do more harm than good. He says, “In gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat with them.” The farmer is not willing to sacrifice the good wheat he planted just to be rid of the weeds.⁴

The farmer decides that the best course of action is to allow the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest. At that time, the harvesters will gather the wheat into the barn and bundle up the weeds to be burned.⁵

In our neck of the woods, when we think of weeds, we typically think of dandelions and wild onions. The Greek word zizanion, which appears in Jesus' parable and is translated into English as either weeds or tares, refers specifically to lolium temulentum, which is more commonly known as poison darnel.⁶ Darnel tends to grow in the same places where wheat is grown. Wheat and darnel look so similar before they reach maturity that darnel is sometimes called “false wheat.” The two plants are not easily distinguishable until the seed heads appear.⁷ Even if wheat and darnel could be more easily differentiated, the roots of the two plants tend to become so entangled that pulling up darnel would likely uproot wheat as well.⁸ Consuming poison darnel is potentially deadly, as its name implies, so it must eventually be separated from the wheat.⁹ The dilemma Jesus describes in His parable is a very real problem faced by farmers who plant wheat.

The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is one of the few parables for which Jesus actually provides an explanation. After Jesus leaves the crowds, His disciples approach Him and ask Him what the parable means, so He explains it to them. The field represents the world, as one might expect. The farmer who plants wheat in the field represents the Son of Man – Jesus himself – and the seed he plants represent “the children of the kingdom.” The enemy who plants the weeds represents the devil, and the weeds represent his children. The harvest represents a coming judgment, and the harvesters who separate the wheat from the weeds represent the angels who will separate the righteous from the wicked.¹⁰

There are some basic truths we can glean from this parable. The world in it's current state is not as it was created to be. Among all the good things God planted in this world, bad things that God never intended have sprung up. Sometimes, when we take it upon ourselves to set right what we perceive to be wrong with the world, we end up doing more harm than good, especially when we think we need to deal with the people we deem to be part of the problem. Sometimes, in our attempts to weed out the bad, we end up uprooting the good along with it. Ultimately we will have to be patient and to trust God to make all things right in the world in God's own time.

In the Gospels, a lot of the people who are drawn to Jesus are not the kinds of people who are welcome among the “good, upstanding religious folk” of the day. Scholar William Barclay suggests that not only people like the Pharisees but also some of Jesus' own disciples might expect Jesus to, at some point, start weeding out the sinners from His followers.¹¹ Jesus' forerunner John the Baptist once said, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” John then added, employing a wheat metaphor of his own, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”¹² Evidently Jesus is being a bit more patient and tolerant than people expected.

It seems to me that nowadays there are far too many Christians who, mistakenly thinking that they are serving God, have taken it upon themselves to pull up the weeds they see in the world around them and in the Church. When I speak of weed pulling, I mean judging, labeling, dismissing, excluding, and condemning people who don't meet certain expectations. On a large scale, weed pulling might take the form of a “culture war,” a campaign supposedly intended to take back society for Jesus. On a small scale, weed pulling might take the form of a sideways glance or an uncharitable attitude. In our eagerness to rid the world around us of weeds, we end up uprooting perfectly good wheat, as Jesus points out in His parable.

Weed pulling on the part of Christians does more harm than good because it effectively uproots the faith of would-be disciples of Jesus. The weeds in Jesus' parable are not easily distinguished from stalks of wheat before they reach maturity, so someone could easily pull up a stalk of wheat, mistakenly thinking it is a weed. Similarly, there are people whose faith has been uprooted because they were misjudged and excluded by Christians. Furthermore, the roots of the weeds in Jesus' parable become so entangled with the roots of the wheat that someone who pulls up an actual weed might uproot stalks of wheat with it. Similarly, there are people whose faith has been uprooted, not because they were judged and excluded themselves but because they were disgusted by the judgmental and exclusionary behavior of Christians.

As Methodists, we believe that the right way to transform the field that is this world is not to pull up the weeds but rather to nurture the wheat by making disciples of Jesus Christ, as our mission statement suggests.¹³ Jesus will later say to His followers, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”¹⁴ As Christians, if we are going to serve Christ effectively in the way He has called us, then the weed pulling must stop. We are not serving Christ if we are uprooting what He has planted.

I think that, despite our temptation to categorize people as either wheat or weeds, we all understand that, in the same way that there are both wheat and weeds in the world, there are both wheat and weeds in ourselves. In other words, just as there things that are not right in the world, there are things that are not right in us. God planted each of us in this world, yet each of us has become entangled with things God did not plant. In the words of writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?¹⁵

For a number of years, the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds has had a very personal meaning for me. I have a tendency to worry a little too much about what other people think of me. I fear that, if I let people see a bit too much of me, particularly what I perceive to be my personal flaws, then they might reject me. In other words, I struggle with shame. My preoccupation with what people think of me has given me a rather perfectionistic streak. That said, I should note that, for me, perfectionism has been less about correcting my flaws and more about hiding them from people. The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds has helped me to see that, if I worry too much that people might see the parts of me that are less than ideal – the weeds – then they might not get to enjoy the good parts of me – the wheat.

Perfectionism is just a form of weed pulling we inflict on ourselves. In our attempts to weed out what we think is wrong with us, we uproot what is right about us. According to researcher Brené Brown, who has written at length about things like perfectionism and shame,

Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be your best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth. Perfectionism is the belief that if we live perfect, look perfect, and act perfect, we can minimize or avoid the pain of blame, judgment, and shame. It's a shield. Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it's the thing that's really preventing us from taking flight.¹⁶

The imperfection that is perfectionism shows us that our efforts to fix ourselves are often just as ineffective and shortsighted as our attempts to fix the world around us. In the same way that we need to trust in God to set things right in the world, we need to trust in God's sanctifying grace to set things right in us. If we are going to grow into what we were created to be, we will need the mercy, patience, wisdom, and grace of the One who planted us.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns His followers to not judge other people because they will be judged in the same way that they judge others.¹⁷ He issues this warning, having already announced that “blessed are the merciful” because “they will receive mercy.”¹⁸ Perhaps one lesson we are meant to glean from the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is that we need to leave the judging to God, because we just might not be as adept at distinguishing the wheat from the weeds as we think we are. God just might see wheat where we think we see weeds.

In the Gospel of John, we read that one day some religious leaders bring to Jesus a woman who has been caught in an adulterous affair. They point out that the Law of their religion states that people who do what she did are to be stoned to death.¹⁹ They're absolutely right: the Book of Leviticus clearly states that “if a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”²⁰ Basically, some self-righteous religious folk are going to rid the world of an unsightly weed, and they have the Bible to justify their actions. Pay no mind to the fact that they have evidently overlooked another weed, specifically the man with whom the woman had her affair.

At first, Jesus doesn't say anything. He simply kneels down and starts writing in the dirt. Finally, Jesus says, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”²¹ Jesus is essentially saying to the weed pullers, “If you can't even remove the weeds from your own life, what business do you have trying to rid the world around you of weeds?” One by one, the religious leaders put down their stones and walk away. When Jesus is left alone with the woman, He asks her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She replies, “No one, sir.” Jesus then says to her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”²² Jesus just might be saying to the woman, “You are not a weed. Now go and be the wheat I know you are.”

One thing that I think is especially noteworthy about the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is the priority of the farmer. Though he is doubtlessly unhappy that weeds have sprung up in his wheat field, what matters most to him is not that his field is free of weeds but that the wheat he planted has the opportunity to reach maturity and bear fruit. Obviously the weeds will eventually have to be separated from the wheat, since they're poisonous, but, if the wheat is uprooted, then all of the farmer's work will have been for naught. For the farmer, ridding the field of weeds is not worth sacrificing the wheat, but preserving the wheat is worth putting up with the weeds for a while. If the farmer's priorities reflect God's own priorities, then, as much as Christians tend to emphasize how much God hates sin, what really matters to God is the flourishing of God's good creation.

In the scenario Jesus describes in His parable, the wheat will only be distinguishable from the weeds when it reaches maturity and its fruit appears. The seed head of a mature stalk of wheat looks very different from that of poison darnel.²³ Jesus previously said in the Sermon on the Mount that, in the same way that a tree can be identified by it's fruit, a person's character can be identified by what is produced in the person's life.²⁴ Later on, Jesus will remind His disciples that, in the final judgment, people will be judged by the fruit they produce.²⁵ To those who produced good fruit with their lives, the Son of Man will say,

Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me... Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.²⁶

God planted all of us in this world to bear good fruit with our lives, but we will never bear fruit unless we give each other the opportunity to grow. As Christians we need to stop judging, condemning, and excluding people and to start showing people the patience and kindness God has shown us. To uproot what God has planted before it has the opportunity to bear fruit would truly be tragic. We must leave the judgment to God, because God is infinitely wiser than we are. God can see in us what we often fail to see in ourselves and in each other.

Thanks be to God.

Notes:

Wikipedia: “Ecce Homo (Martínez and Giménez)”
“Spanish fresco restoration botched by amateur.” BBC, 08/23/2012
Matthew 13:1-50
Matthew 13:24-29 (NRSV)
Matthew 13:30
Blue Letter Bible: “zizanion”
Wikipedia: “Lolium temulentum”
William Barclay. The New Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of Matthew, Volume Two. 2001, Saint Andrew Press. p. 85
Wikipedia: “Lolium temulentum”
Matthew 13:36-43
William Barclay. The Parables of Jesus. 1990, Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 39-41
Matthew 3:11-12 (NRSV)
See the mission statement of the United Methodist Church.
Matthew 28:18-20 (NRSV)
Wikiquote: “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn”
Brené Brown. The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are. 2010, Hazelden Publishing. p. 56
Matthew 7:1-2
Matthew 5:7 (NRSV)
John 8:3-5
Leviticus 20:10 (NRSV)
John 8:6-8 (NRSV)
John 8:9-11 (NRSV)
Wikipedia: “Lolium temulentum”
Matthew 7:15-20
Matthew 25:31-46
Matthew 25:34-36, 40 (NRSV)