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July 20, 2008- RCL Year A, Proper 11
About Weeds
The Rev. Mark H. Byers
Jesus put before the crowd 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!"
I don’t drink coffee very often. I’m afraid it doesn’t really agree with me: I’m more of a tea drinker. Terribly un-American, I suppose. I’m fascinated, though, by the coffee craze of the last few years. Not just all the different coffee drinks; the frappaccinos, cappuccinos, espressos, mochas… I’m fascinated, too, by all the exotic blends and roasts, the extraordinary array of different beans.
My favorite one, just for the back-story, is civet coffee. This is produced in Indonesia and other parts of southeast Asia. A palm civet, a kind of raccoon-like animal, eats the raw beans. They pass through the animal’s digestive tract and then, at the far end, they are collected, hopefully washed, and then roasted and brewed. I read online that this particular type of coffee goes for anywhere from $120 to 600 dollars a pound. I can only guess why the variation in the price: maybe it has something to do with the pedigree of the animal.
Most cultures have odd things they eat that others wouldn’t dream of consuming. Crickets, jellied eels, insect larvae, animal brains. I’m not trying to gross you out. I’m just saying that what counts as edible, what counts as “harvest” as opposed to “inedible,” varies from place to place and person to person. There are plants that some cultures eat that others consider weeds, too. I talked about gardening last week, and how to distinguish weeds from desirable, food-bearing plants. The analogy depends upon the judgment of the person who’s growing the garden, whether it’s an actual garden or our own faith life.
Judgment, of course, is a word that we have trouble with. We’re very willing now to say “It’s not my place to judge,” whether it’s about what’s edible, or about life choices. And there is a scriptural basis for that type of thinking: Jesus commends it to us. Yet at the same time, we judge all the time, or we’d be dead. Judgment is simply making a critical assessment of information. We do it with people: “I don’t want you spending time with that person. She uses drugs.” “I sentence you to 20 years in prison for the crime of Armed Robbery.” “I don’t think that So-and-So is really the best candidate for president.”
So no one goes through life without judging. Not to do so is dangerous: we’d be a culture of drug-abusing, bank-robbing, civet-coffee drinking, immoral people. Perhaps not those precise things, but hopefully you take the point: the fact that we are willing to make judgments allows us to know better when we are doing right, and when we are doing wrong. We are not called by the Gospel to suspend all judgment, or we’d be forced to conclude that there really is no reason to judge Judas so harshly, for instance. Give him a break. A guy’s got to make a living, and what’s wrong with cooperating with the authorities?
Of course, God judges, too. We say it in our Creeds, the ancient confession of faith. “…he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead…” And we hear about judgment in this parable today. A parable, by the way, is a story with two meanings: first, there is the surface meaning. Today’s is about “weeds in the field.” But it’s not just about weeds, obviously. It’s also a metaphor; a way of conveying a deep insight into how judgment works. And perhaps it allows us to better meditate upon Jesus, the Kingdom of God, evil, good, judgment, than a more forensic description would. Jesus might have said, “If you do this, then this will happen.” And then catalogue all the different “If/Thens.” “If adultery/Then condemnation.” “If idolatry/Then condemnation.”
But Jesus is trying to do more than just catalogue sins and punishments, because God is trying to do more than that. God is trying to get us to exercise better judgment, and also trying to tell us, through Jesus, that he loves us too much to allow us NOT to be accountable for our actions. In other words, how each of us lives, and how we all live together, MATTERS to God, and so God tells us how this whole judgment thing works, and who we need to watch out for, and why. God is simply telling us the truth: “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!”
I believe certain things about how God loves us. I believe that judgment doesn’t occur only at the end, but that it is all through our stories, and that that is not a bad thing. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ itself is a judgment upon all people in all times, and it is the greatest, but not the only way that God speaks a word of correction, of concern, in the midst of our lives. Judgment is many things. It is the prodding of conscience. It is the gentle or not so gentle message delivered through a person we know, or even a stranger. I believe that God is always moving our story forward in a way that respects his own design. In other words, God obeys certain rules that God made: we are able to make meaningful choices. We are able to guide the course of human affairs. Sometimes, and more often than we realize, our choices affect more people than we realize. This is more the case now than ever before. One teacher I had suggested that normal human beings such as you and me were now capable, mostly because of technological advances, of causing greater harm than they could conceive of atoning for. That used to be a problem only nobles and monarchs had, people who were capable of launching a nation off to war. Now, an air traffic controller could, through negligence, cause hundreds of deaths. A driver off to work on the freeway can cause a chain reaction collision that kills many others and ties up traffic for an entire city, costing millions of dollars. A financial planner can make a bad investment and lose the life savings of dozens or hundreds of clients. All of these things can be healed, even though they can’t be undone, through Jesus Christ.
Part of how Christians read scripture has to be with an eye not just on the self, but also with a great deal of attention to how our life intersects with other lives. And in those intersections, how God is made manifest, or is denied or defied. I think that God is love. I think that God is merciful. I think that we are dealing, too, with God who is faithful and consistent throughout scripture. A great sin that humankind is prone to is constricting the limitless grace and providence of the almighty, through deliberate disobedience or even more often through thoughtlessness or selfishness.
Jesus’ resurrection, to me, does not simply represent my deliverance. It represents a channel of love directly between the reality of humanity and the reality of God. All that we are and all that God is are bound together through Jesus Christ. It is the healing of what happened to Jesus, which is representative of humanity’s sinfulness more broadly. It is an open-hearted invitation to new life. If judgment leads to condemnation and suffering for a person, and I believe that it can, it is not, in the end, what God has done to us, but God’s final recognition that we, in the end, make our own choices, and sometimes do not choose rightly. Sometimes people reject God’s invitation. God says not “Go to hell,” but rather, says “So be it” after we’ve packed our own bags.
Which makes it critically important to listen to God along the way, so that we are aware of how we are in our faith. We all face challenges, joys, and sorrows. What we should expect from ourselves and one another is good judgment in reading and applying scripture. In other words, that we should be open to what the bible and the Holy Spirit say to us individually and as a community even, and especially, when they convict us personally. And that is both a deep comfort and a great challenge. It is also the catalyst for life transformation.
Being in a place like this can change the way you hear God’s voice. We make judgments all the time. God makes judgments all the time. What God also does is empower us to change our lives. And here’s some good news: often, and especially when we are most compassionate, most prayerful, most attuned to Jesus, God’s judgment is “Well done” or “Be at peace: Your sins are forgiven.” A really faithful church is a blessing, and is pleasing to God. I am here with you living in this community of Christ-following people because of the way that Jesus transformed my life. And he did it largely through people whose lives he had already changed for the better; gracious, wise people; Joyful people, mostly. People like you.
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