“METHOD AND MEANING IN THE MESSES”
A year ago last spring I lost part of my lawn to a work crew getting rid of fallen trees. I planted and mulched a circle the size of our bandstand. But I planted too late and the heat withered the grass shoots. The space filled with crabgrass and I had to start over again this spring, cleaning out vestiges of that insidious weed.
Two days back from being in
Now, take my little domestic tale and overlay Jesus’ parable right on top of it. And marvel with me how contemporary his parables are even after 2,000 years. Both within and without, the same stories and questions still play themselves out.
When the same thing happens to Jesus’ wheat as to my fescue, the farmer’s hired hand comes into the master’s home and says, “Master, there are lots of weeds growing in that wheat field? Do you want us to go and clean them out?” The first response of the farmer is, “An enemy has done this!” That seems improbable to me. I mean, could you imagine a vengeful neighbor coming at night and putting crab grass seed where I was working so hard? I’m not seeing it.
To be honest, trying repeatedly, working hard, and getting nowhere fast, it can feel like someone somewhere has it in for you, like an evil being must enjoy this. But then my higher nature kicks in, “Isn’t the obvious answer that weeds simply happen? Isn’t it a law of life that if we throw a few seeds out there, the seeds may or may not sprout? But we can count on lots of thick, lush weeds to fill that void?”
Jesus’ parables were likely stories told to answer the questions people had about the texture of life and the fabric of living. What do you think was the question that occasioned Jesus telling the parable of the wheat and the weeds? What kind of animated discussion or outright argument prompted Jesus to come up with this?
Will Willimon has ideas about that. “All my life, I’ve tried to be good and do what’s right. Yet look at this horrible illness that threatens to end my life. Why would something like this happen to me?” Another one: “Lord, you created the human race. You gave us freedom and good minds. Why then are there terrorist bombers among us who kill so many innocent people?” Then Willimon’s third hypothetical question: “Lord, we’ve got so many good people in our congregation. Why do we also have those who spread dissension, criticize and complain?”
And then Jesus went on to tell a story about worthless, troublesome weeds thriving right alongside the good wheat. And the picture of our health, our world, and our Church becomes clearer. But having set forth the terms of life with which we are all familiar, that is not enough. We must press on and ask, “Why not just root out those worthless weeds?” “No,” the master responds, “just leave it to me to sort out come harvest time.” Then finally Jesus comments that God is like that.
What was that?! we ask. God is like what? God prefers not to sort things out yet. You know, the good from the bad, the evil from the righteous, this side of the harvest, before what we tend to call the final judgment. Why? Maybe it would put too much of the good wheat at risk, like the surgeons who refuse to go after the whole tumor because such an invasion threatens the person’s greater well-being.
Or maybe God thinks the wheat will grow up, mature, and crowd out the weeds. Or maybe God thinks such sorting is best done at the harvest when the useful kernels of wheat are more easily separated from the useless produce of weeds.
For whatever reason, God’s action, or rather, God’s inaction--God’s patience to the extreme--endows the whole process with the gift of time. Time remains for both wheat and weeds to grow and develop. God wants to see what will happen.
And do you know what? We don’t much like that aspect of God’s master plan. We don’t like it for the reason that this approach puts good wheat at risk. What if the weeds choke out the weeds and take over the entire field? we protest. Doesn’t the wholesome wheat deserve better? What’s interesting is how we always see ourselves as the kernel of wheat and others as the pernicious weeds.
Or maybe such a question doesn’t rise within us. Maybe we hear another, a cynic or a detractor of the faith decry this divine plan, saying, “Why doesn’t God do something?” If a part of us wants to ask that question, God only knows we hear it all of the time. As N. T. Wright explains, “Tragedies happen. Horrific accidents devastate lives and families. Tyrants and bullies force their plans on people and crush opposition and seem to get away with it. And sensitive souls ask, again and again, why is God apparently silent? Why doesn’t (God) step in and stop it?”
A wise friend of mine keeps reminding me to notice in any message not only what is said. But also especially what isn’t said as we listen closely to another. Often, she insists, what isn’t said is even more important that what is said. Now apply this now to the parable of the wheat and the weeds. What isn’t said here? Not one word is uttered in the parable or Jesus’ explication afterward about ‘why’. And that’s one of the first questions we want to ask in such times. Why did this have to happen to us? Why does God do nothing in the face of it? But here nothing is said to defend God’s action or inaction. No reflection is offered on the origins or causes of evil. And if Jesus doesn’t discuss that maybe it’s not our role.
Through what the parable says and doesn’t say, it is reaffirming what we already know: the good thrives right alongside the bad in this world. And if you want to grow in those fields that are of the Lord, you’d better get used to the presence of evil around you. You’d better get used to weeds scattered liberally among wheat.
The parable also reaffirms the importance and difficulty of waiting for the harvest of good in its own time. The farmer may look sloppy or inept. But just maybe the farmer is dumb like a fox. And trusting him with the harvest is what faith is about. As technology deepens its hold on us, you and I are not getting better at waiting. Wait for the bread to rise or the corn to ripen? No, we want what we want and we want it now. And we can have it with the touch of a button or swipe of a card.
So today Jesus tells us a story about people who must wait patiently as vexing and destructive weeds invade and conquer the fields where life plays out. Faithful people believe God is faithful. And God will keep God’s promises. But then that little voice rises within us and augurs a hole through our soul: but why not now?
The more you read the Bible, the more you notice that about a third of Scripture involves the pain of the faithful waiting for God to come in God’s glory. We tend to hope for a quick, conquering, definitive, triumphalistic glory. But instead it is a slow, vulnerable, mysterious, understated glory of the cross of Jesus Christ. This is not the God we were looking for. This is not the God we wanted. But this is the true and living God whose designs are reliable and whose victory is assured.
The God we want is the one for whom being God means God can do anything he wants. But maybe the true and living God chooses not to do things that would contradict and violate earlier decisions this God has made. Decisions like giving us freedom to choose right and not interrupting and intruding upon us every time we get it wrong. Maybe being the true and living God means God works on God’s timetable, not ours. And for reasons best understood by God, for reasons that remain mysterious to us, we are not supposed to aggressively root out, punish and condemn others now, even those we deem “weeds in the wheat”. This much is clear: God waits. God takes God’s time. And God expects us to do the same.
I close with this image. Do any of you recall the first word you heard your first-born child utter? I remember my Greta’s. It was a weekday. It was summer. She had on a blue seersucker summer suit with straps over her suntan. I was feeding her dinner in her high chair. She was happy. She had a red ring of fruit juice and tomato sauce around her mouth that gave her joy a clownish aspect. Why was she so glad? As usual she had finished eating and was playing in the plastic tray with the bits of food and drink. She would whip her arm back and forth on the tray with a frenzy spraying mush in all directions. She was working for all she was worth what I called a “food slick”. That pleased her more than I can say.
In my suit, headed back to church for a meeting that night, I was trying to keep a distance and just let her behavior self-extinguish. As I was waiting, she looked up at me with those big brown eyes, between the vigorous swipes of that coated forearm, and with no small glee she uttered, “Mess…mess!” It was her first word.
It’s not a bad first word if we would learn to cope in this world we are born into. Mess. Mess. I don’t know that we will ever learn to be so content that someone bigger will eventually come after us to take care of life’s messes, like weeds growing in the wheat. But if we could just put up with them, we would find ourselves closer to the garden of
“METHOD AND MEANING IN THE MESSES”
Text: Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43
Rev. Dale B. Rosenberger
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Lord, we admit that you have given us a good and glorious world, a world that impresses us with its beauty. Yet we also confess that it is a world that baffles us in many ways. Why, in such a good world, is there so much heartache and pain and maliciousness? Why is there such vast evil among us, so much undeserved suffering and so made bad and harm done to the most innocent in your creation?
We do not hear quick and ready answers from you to such questions. We do not get the simple accounts we yearn for. But maybe, just maybe, what we truly want even more than answers and explanations, rationalizations and justifications, is you. Come to us, Lord, speak to us, stand beside us, and be with us in worship. Do not forsake us because of our impertinent questions. Give us something far better than answers. Give us the experience of your presence. Give us yourself.
As we picture those in need of you, Lord, we commend to you Elaine Simoneau, at the loss of her father, Earl Daggett, last week. We pray for leaders as we gather plans for the confirmation of faith ready to begin for this autumn. We pray for larger spiritual discernments around money and support of our DUC ministries as we anticipate our meeting between services next week. We pray in larger deliberations within Dennis and
