Pentecost 6A/Lectionary 16
July 20, 2014
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Last week I
told you about my garden, about how I knew nothing about gardening, so I
invited a friend to help me plant, and about how we prepared the soil before we
were able to plant anything. Remember? Well today I’ll tell you another part of
that story – and that is what a terrible state the garden was in before, due to
my total lack of knowledge on the topic. My greatest weakness, garden-wise, is
simply not knowing anything about plants. So, we moved into the house last
July, and when springtime came around, all kinds of things started growing that
I didn’t even know were there. Did someone plant those? Are they supposed to be
there? Will that turn into a beautiful flower, or will it
turn into something
that will take over my garden and won’t be tamed? Because of my ignorance, I
just didn’t touch anything, and so soon enough it was a lush, green, overgrown
mess.
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| My garden, before it was weeded, but after my husband mowed down some weeds. |
Until I
began studying this parable this week, I had counted my gardening ignorance as
a fault, but now I’m starting to see my inability to discern weeds from flowers
more as a boon (at least theologically, if not as a homeowner!). Let me explain
by first asking you a question. When you first hear or read this parable about
the wheat and the weeds, without thinking too much about it, what would you say
it is about? [judgment, heaven/hell…] It is considered one of the judgment
parables, isn’t it, and with good reason, I suppose. It seems pretty clear that
Jesus is saying some people are good seeds (wheat), some are bad seeds
(weeds),
and at the end of time, at what the parable calls the harvest, the good seeds
will go to heaven and the bad seeds will burn in eternity. (It’s one of those
happy, feel-good parables, you know.)
But there is
a danger in interpreting this parable this way. If some people are wheat and
some are weeds, then the next logical step we humans want to take is to decide
who is what. That’s what the workers wanted to do in the parable, after all.
“Do you want us to go and gather [the weeds]?” they ask. Do you want us to go
decide what is good and what is bad, and what belongs and what doesn’t, and
take care to only leave what is good in the land? It’s a natural tendency, one
that taps into a question that has consumed Christians for generations: who is
going to heaven, and who is not? Are you? Am I? Should I feel sorry for you if
you’re not? Should I be depressed if I am not? Should I act any differently to
ensure I will go to heaven?
But you see,
while this is the step we humans want to take, I think the parable is saying
the opposite – because you see the sower’s response about gathering the weeds?
“No, don’t go and try to determine that for yourself, because it will do more
harm than good. Just leave it be, and in the end, God will take care of sorting
everything out. Meanwhile, you just live your life and do your job the best you
can under the circumstances.”
To me, this
is great news. Because whatever assumptions I may want to make about certain
kinds of people, or whatever feelings I may have about how someone has treated
me, it is not my job to
judge. Furthermore, try though I might to make accurate
judgments of people, in the end I cannot tell the difference between weed and
wheat, any more than I can tell the difference between weeds and flowers in my
own garden. None of us are equipped to judge other people, because none of us
know the whole story.
Maybe you have seen the hit TV show, Breaking Bad. It is about a high school
chemistry teacher named Walt who is, on the surface, a well-loved, upstanding,
pretty decent guy. But in his secret life, circumstances drive him to become a
murderer and a drug kingpin. No one, not even his own wife, has any idea that
this quiet family man, this “wheat,” is capable of such heinous acts. On the
other hand, his partner, Jesse, seems in every way to be a “weed”: a punk and a
druggie who is up to no good and will never amount to anything. But while he does
struggle and make poor choices, we also learn that he cared for his aunt as she
died of cancer; that he has limitless compassion for those close to him,
especially children; that he has integrity and is loyal and caring even to
people who have hurt him. At the start of season one of Breaking Bad, it is easy to feel sympathy for Walt, who has just
been
diagnosed with cancer, and to hate Jesse. Wheat and weed, clearly. As
their stories unfold, however, Jesse quickly becomes admirable and easy to
love, while Walt becomes one of the most loathsome characters on television.
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| Jesse and Walt |
Of course, Breaking Bad is dramatized, but is the
basic character development really so far off? Everyone has a story, a
struggle, that we don’t know anything about. Everybody has a reason for why
they act or talk or look the way they do. Who are we to be the judge?
We all have
people in our lives whom we would like to label as weeds, don’t we. We may
label as “weeds” those people who live a lifestyle we don’t approve of, or,
those people who won’t let personal lives be personal. They are those people
who are holding back women’s ability to care for their own reproductive health,
or, those people who are allowing abortions to occur. They are those people who
think they can just sneak into America and take our valuable jobs, or, they are
those people who would refuse help to vulnerable children in need of refuge
from drugs, poverty and violence. They are those people who are a drain on our
national budget by taking advantage of welfare programs, or, they are those
people who hoard all the world’s wealth for themselves.
This world –
it is a garden full of weeds. No matter what you do or what you believe, you
are a weed to someone. But thanks be to God, we are also a garden full of wheat.
Each one of us, and every beloved child of God: we are all weeds to someone,
but we are also, each one of us, claimed and loved by God. Christ died for
every last one of us weeds, so that, like grains of wheat scattered on the hill
that have come together to become one bread, we might all come together to
serve God and feed the world. In the end, that is all we really can to do: love
God with mind, heart, body, and soul, and our neighbors as ourselves. And the
judgment piece? We will have to leave it up to God to sort that out.
As a closing
prayer today, I’d like to invite each of you to take a moment to think about
who you might consider a weed. It could be a person or group of people I
already mentioned, or someone else in your life whom you find it difficult not
to judge because of their beliefs, their behavior, or the way they treat other
people. All these weeds in our lives – we will pray for them, and we will pray for
ourselves. I will leave some silence, during which you can offer your own
silent prayer.
Let us pray…
Gracious and merciful God, we try to live
the best lives we can, but sometimes it is hard for us not to judge others
because they look, act, or believe differently from us. We sometimes think of
these people as weeds that get in the way of the good work we try to do. We
pray for these people today, Lord, and for their well-being…. We also pray for
ourselves, that we might see all your beloved children not as weeds, but as
wheat, and as your beloved children. Help us to have compassion for those who
are different from us, remembering that they, too, have a story we know nothing
about. Grant us the courage to hear their stories, and to love them as you have
loved us…. This we pray in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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