Living in the Weeds

                       Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43, Romans 12: 17-19, 21

 

 

           

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a perfect neighborhood! In a perfect town? Wouldn’t it be nice to have perfect neighbors? Garrison Keillor talks about such a place in his weekly show on public radio: A Prairie Home Companion.  It’s called Lake Wobegon, “where all the men are strong, all the women are good looking and all the children are above average.”  When I was raising children, I think I would have moved if I could have found such a place.

Of course, the world doesn’t work like that, does it? There really is no such place. If people are there, it is an imperfect environment. That’s because people are masters of the imperfect. We have noble ambitions. We mean well. But mostly, we look just like the field that Jesus talks about in Matthew 13.

In the Parable of the Weeds, the enemy comes into our midst and surrounds us with seedy ideas, low thoughts, disloyalty. The enemy is the devil, and yes, he will come right into a field planted by Jesus himself. The world we live in is nothing like our fictional Lake Wobegon.  It is littered with weeds and thorns and thistles. It is an unsafe place, this world we live in.

We marry. We bear children. We shower them with love and affection. We dare to hope for them, to dream with them. We march them off to school with knapsacks full of paper and pencils and sandwiches, all packed with love. Before long, the world we have so carefully kept from them comes creeping, then galloping into view.   There is prejudice and deceit. There is incompetence. There are rules which seem to separate our children from the very beliefs that we have worked so hard to instill in them.

So we seek refuge in the church. Yet many churches, many church leaders, seem to lack direction, to sway in conviction. Churches worry about membership, about attendance. Church leaders debate about programming. How will they compete with other events? How will they compete with each other?

Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven with a man who sowed good seed in his field. In spite of all his preparation, the presence of evil could not be kept out of the field. Jesus says the weeds were so prevalent, so intermixed, that to try to deal with the weeds before the harvest would jeopardize the harvest itself. Jesus said that the field is the world and that the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. But there are also weeds. According to Jesus, they are sown just like the good seed is sown. Weeds in this parable are intentional. Our own sinful nature can account for quite a lot of weeds in the garden of life, but in this passage, the devil himself is the architect of the weeds with which the sons and daughters of God must co-exist.

This parable reminds us that as children of God, we will never be cultivated without the presence of weeds. Temptation and idleness and unbelief lie right in our midst and challenge us for the very ground in which we try to grow. The harvest to which Jesus refers is not until the end of the age. In other words, the harvest is not until the end of time. As long as there is life here on earth, there will be this integration of good and evil, of believers and unbelievers, sharing the same ground, the same neighborhoods, the same schools, even the same churches.

Yes, I did say churches. If the field in the Parable of the Weeds is the world, then the church is exposed just as much as any other institution. Only the harvest can separate the good seed and the harvest is on judgment day. Then, the angels of God will cull good from bad, weed from crop. But today, what do we have to keep us from choking?

One of the things we must learn from this parable is that there is no sanctuary from the world itself. It is sown with good and evil, pretty and ugly, sin and redemption. The question is not where or how to hide, but rather how to live with the sin which surrounds us without becoming part of it. It is no easy task. When we look at the analogy of the crop, we can see the difficulty. In Jesus’ time, wheat was sown in Palestine. There was a weed called bearded darnel. In its early stages, it was impossible to distinguish from the wheat. Only when the crop had headed could one see the difference. By that time, the roots had become so intertwined that the poisonous weed had to be separated by hand.

The church today is surrounded by the weeds of other belief systems, by the worship of idols of every sort, kind and description, by the lure of pleasure over duty, of selfishness over selflessness. Even within the church itself, we find ourselves dealing with budgets and programming rather than kingdom work. We tinker with worship services to make them more entertaining. We worry about time slots and staying contemporary. We debate style points like when to baptize and free will over predestination. Meanwhile, the weeds grow thick among us as we lose ground to the enemy. The bookshelves are full of new theories and so-called interpretations of Scripture and denominational meetings are making headlines for their liberal agendas.

We know from the Parable of the Weeds that such intermingling is part of life. We must also take note that while it is inevitable, it is also subject to judgment. Just as surely as we must live among the weeds of sin, we will be held accountable for the choices we make, both as individuals and as the church.

How do we live among the weeds? How do we grow until we are separated? The Word of God is full of answers and guidance to those questions. One such answer is found in the words of Paul to the Christians in Rome. He calls us to hold fast to what is good, to rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, constant in prayer, to live in harmony with one another, to associate with the lowly, never repay evil with evil, to leave vengeance to God (Rom 12: 9-19).

Even though we must live in the weeds, that is, even though the world in which we live is choking on the weeds of sin, we still have choices. We are called to live in the world, but not to be of the world. We do not have to do this alone. We are also called to community, to become part of the body of Christ. When we choose God, we become surrounded by that priesthood of believers, that holy nation that is the church. For all the impurity within its individual parts, the body of Christ is still pure. It is our community. It is our sanctuary. It is the star to which we can hitch our wagons and ride out the perils of life until God calls us to his harvest.

When I was looking up some information on Garrison Keillor, I ran across a quote he once said. I thought it profound. So let me share  his thoughts with you as a benediction to this examination of the Parable of the Weeds.

To know and to serve God, of course, is why we're here, a clear

truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily  discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard.

But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except

faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk

on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is

not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling,

making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places

where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a

time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far

to see the campfires of gentle people.”

And Jesus said: “He who has ears, let him hear.”