Weeds and Wheat
Delivered on July 23, 2017 to the two services of Stone Village Church in the Short North of Columbus, OH. More info on Stone Village can be found here. This sermon, and others, can be listened to following the link below or on the Stone Village Church podcast through iTunes.
The Word: Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43
He 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!’
The words
Good morning Stone Village Church! It feels a little bit like home, stepping behind this music stand and being given the chance to speak with you once again. As you may or may not recall, I preached my last sermon as Pastor’s Apprentice here on April 30. In the time since I haven’t been idle. I graduated from Ohio Wesleyan, moved back to Bryan, served as a counselor for a High School theological institute, got engaged to my best friend, finalized plans for my move to Boston, and began working at the Williams County Public Library. I’ve been busy enough to stay out of trouble.
During my first week working at the library, I and my two coworkers were tasked with re-doing the landscaping at a satellite branch. My job was to clear a long-neglected garden of all plant life so that everything could be entirely redone. A scorched earth campaign so that the whole thing could start again from square one. I thought it would be an easy task. I thought I could have it done before lunch. One sore back, two broken garden tools, three painful blisters, and four work days later, I stared at the carnage wrought by my own two hands. I’m not sure if I felt pride brought on by the completion of the task, or sorrow that I had vanquished such a worthy adversary.
The garden had to be redone because it had become overrun with weeds. These weeds came in the form of grasses, in the form of woody plants, in the form of vines, including poison ivy. They had choked the life out of everything beautiful and fought back against me until I thought my back would snap like the shovel and garden hoe before. The garden was no longer safe for the children and adults who would visit the library because of the growth of weeds. A place that was meant to be peaceful and nourishing for the mind and spirits of all people free of charge had become useless because of the unchecked growth of noxious foliage. Over the course of a week, I came to develop a strong distaste for weeds.
This is not a sermon about the destruction of weeds. After all, in the gospel text for this day, we are not the gardener. This is a sermon about what it means to be wheat. Wheat does not decide what is wheat and what is a weed, nor does it destroy that which is other. It simply bears fruit.
In today’s parable, Jesus speaks of a particular kind of weed called darnel. Some translations call this the parable of the tares and wheat, so yes, for those keeping score, this is a tare-ible parable. Darnel is sometimes referred to as false wheat because up until wheat begins to bear fruit, the two plants are almost identical. By the time wheat and darnel can be distinguished from one another, their roots are already intertwined, making it impossible to uproot the darnel without also destroying the wheat. Another major difference is that, whereas wheat serves as a key ingredient in the diet of many people, and even more so when this text was written, darnel is poisonous to humans. Wheat feeds and nourishes, darnel poisons.
Through this story Jesus is asking us a simple question — are you going to be a weed or wheat? To be a weed is to be deadly to your human family. It is to take that which is by nature good and seek to destroy it. When we ignore and neglect those who are vulnerable, when we exploit or oppress others to lift ourselves up, when we speak words reeking of death to people in order to tear them down, we act as darnel. We do not reflect the purpose of the One who planted the field. We do not live into who we were created to be.
Yet we don’t have to be weeds. We can be wheat, we can bear fruit and nourish and sustain those around us. We are able to organize and speak out against injustice. We are called to humble ourselves and serve others in their need. Proverb 16 tells us that “pleasant words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health the body.” We can use our words to uplift and encourage those who are down trodden.
Particularly in the U.S., where 70% of people identify as Christian, it can be difficult to remember that faithfulness extends beyond our religious identification. To claim Christianity while continuing to ignore the hurting, support the oppressive, and enable domination is to be darnel. Christianity that chokes the life out of others is not of Jesus. To simply be called Christian is not a holistic response to Jesus’s call. We are called beyond our default, called beyond coasting, called beyond identifiers that are nothing more than identifiers, to be life-affirming and fruitful. We are moved into the same mission of Jesus, to bring good news to the poor and freedom to the captive. Jesus calls us to move our faith from a transcendent thought into practical action.
Bearing this in mind, it may seem that to be Christian is to do things to earn God’s love. That we must earn the sacrifice of Jesus. But this is a danger that lies on the other side of the pendulum swing from cultural Christianity. Christianity is neither about having nor doing. It is about being. It is not about having the right identifier or having the right prayer or having the proper qualifications. It’s not about doing good works so that we will be uplifted. It’s not about doing the right things to earn God’s love. If we allow ourselves to be transformed into who God has created us to be, we will bear fruit. God’s love will be reflected in us for the people around us, transforming them and the very world. If we allow our hearts to be softened both to the hurt of our brothers and sisters and to the movement of the Holy Spirit in and around us, fruit will follow. We must simply and actively be who we were created to be, to be life-affirming. Wheat does not decide to provide nourishment, this is simply the culmination of it being what it is. While we must make the decision to be darnel or wheat, to be toxic or nourishing, we must ultimately trust that, through this decision, God will show us our next steps. When our efforts inevitably fall short, we lean into God’s grace that bridges the gulf between our shortcomings and God’s perfection. From there, we live into who we were created to be.
Last summer, I traveled to Northern Ireland as part of a research team to study the role of personal narrative in the process of conflict transformation. In other words, we were trying to figure out how people’s personal stories could help heal deep division and soothe pain. Northern Ireland, although located on the Irish island, is a part of the United Kingdom. This has led to years of bloody conflict between British Protestants and Irish Catholics. In 1999, the Good Friday Agreement came into effect, officially ending the Troubles.
Yet the conflict has not yet ended, with sectarian violence occasionally bursting the surface of tense peace. I met people who had lost their brothers, mothers, sisters, fathers, children, and friends in the violence. I met men who had been in the Irish Republican Army. I met a man who had been paralyzed by a bullet by Protestant terrorists. That level of division, that depth of pain, is so very difficult to reconcile.
While we were there, we met two members of the clergy who were trying to make a difference, to heal division. Their names were Rev. Steve Stockman, a Presbyterian pastor, and Fr. Martin Magill, a Catholic priest. They looked around their neighborhoods and congregations in different corners of Belfast and realized that things were not right. Many people never spent time with folks from the other side. Homogeny breeds hostility.
Steve was the pastor of a Church that had been very active during the peace process, so Martin sent him a simple email, a request to get coffee. Nothing huge, no soaring rhetoric or grand promises, a simple invitation to get coffee. This in itself, as simple as it was, was radical. There is significant power in the act of showing up.
Out of that meeting was born the Four Corners Festival, an annual week of sermons, music, performances, lectures, and other expressions of British and Irish culture designed to motivate people to move through the four corners of Belfast, the four corners of a city divided. They brought, and continue to bring every year, Protestants and Catholics together into the same space. They cause people to ask difficult questions, such as how do you love someone who killed someone you love? How does a city reunite after war?
There is nothing remarkable about Steve and Martin outside of their dedication to be life-affirming. A simple cup of coffee, a simple stepping out in response to the call of Jesus, has been a crucial part of a process towards healing. They were wheat in a place filled with weeds. They simply were who God created them to be, and the fruit has been abundant.
When Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, he wasn’t referencing a long distant future event. He was discussing a Kingdom caught in the tension of the already here and not yet. The Kingdom of God is already among us, yet it is not here in fullness. Christ tells us that the Kingdom of God will be wherever there is wheat that is ready for harvest, wherever there are people who bear the fruit of living into who they were created to be. The Kingdom of God is wherever life is affirmed. The Kingdom of God is wherever people are providing nourishment. When people reject toxicity and death in order to breathe life, the Kingdom of God is there. The Kingdom of God was present when Steve and Martin welcomed each other into their sacred spaces. It was there when they readied fields where teenagers from Protestant and Catholic families could meet each other, where seeds of anti-sectarianism could be planted. It was present as they listened attentively to the pain that their congregations had felt and affirmed the life and humanity of each person. The Kingdom of God is present whenever you act as a generous and loving friend to those for whom love is a stranger. The Kingdom of Heaven is found in small, and large, acts of affirming life.
Can you imagine what this Kingdom looks like? Imagine how this would transform our relationships with other people. Imagine how this would change our imaginings of God. Imagine how this would transform our religion, if Christians everywhere practiced their faith as wheat. Imagine how this would transform our politics, if what we cared for and about affirmed the life of all those around us. The promise of the Kingdom of God is that a new way of doing things is coming, a way of doing things that is only found in glimpses and glimmers of the kingdoms of the world. The Kingdom of God is a promise of what things will look like when hearts and minds are transformed by Jesus. When our hearts and our minds are oriented towards one another and God.
You don’t need me to tell you that we’re not there yet. As long as money is more valuable than human life, as long as power is more important than integrity, as long as personal ambition is more lauded than the common good, there will be work to be done. Yet the power of parable transcending simple ethical statements is that it takes the form of a promise. We were created to be wheat. We were created to be nourishing and life affirming. It is your choice if you will be wheat. Therefore go, affirm life and be a light in the world. Go and be who you were created to be. Go and reject the very powers of death within yourself and allow God to breathe life into the world and its inhabitants through you. Go and be wheat.
I pray it is so,
Amen
“For I can see in your eyes
That you are exquisitely woven
With the finest silk and wool
And that Pattern upon your soul
Has the signature of God.”
-Hafiz
