Sermon: Not Rushing to Judgement
When
Jesus says God’s kingdom is like a field of good wheat into which an enemy sows
weeds, he’s not telling us anything we don’t already know.
A
generation ago typical Sunday worship across the country in United Church congregations
would have opened with a prayer like this – maybe even this prayer exactly,
from the old Green Service Book:
Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too
much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy
holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we
have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health
in us.
In
other words:
Almighty and most merciful God, as
much as we are part of your sowing of good wheat in the world, both you and we
know that we still act and look a lot lke weeds.
The
question is not whether we are wheat and weeds together. The question is what to do about it.
Which
is why from time to time we get serious about doing some weeding. It’s a natural response – especially in a
culture like ours that puts so much stock in self-help, self-improvement, home
renovation and personal make-over. In our
souls and in our homes, in our church and in our community, with self-help
books and programs in hand, spiritual practices and physical disciplines,
selective activities and relationships to focus on, and a whole range of living
and lifestyle choices, we try to weed out of our lives and out of our world
what (and even sometimes who) is bad and ungodly, so what is good and godly can stand out and flourish.
Except Jesus says it’s not that simple. We’re mistaken, he says, in our confidence
that we can really get a handle on the weeds and clean the field up. And we do real damage, he says, to God’s
whole harvest, when we get too aggressive in weeding out what and who we think
doesn’t belong.
Because the weeds he’s concerned about are
not just any old weeds. They are
tares. That’s what they’re called in the
older translations of this parable, and tares – also called darnel, are a very
special and very nasty kind of weed.
For one thing they are quite toxic. Mixed in with wheat, they can ruin a whole
harvest – make it bitter and unpalatable.
No farmer would ever want tares to be growing in his field. But which of us has not known some Christians
and some churches to be just like that?
Some years ago I filled in for a minister for
one week in the summer at a church in the city and it was one of the worst –
one of the most depressing experiences of worship I can remember. I felt like I was in a big barn of a
sanctuary with what seemed to be only a few handfuls of people scattered around
it. But it wasn’t the size of the place
and the smallness of the number that struck me.
Nor was it we were doing anything wrong.
We were doing, saying singing all the right stuff. But there was a spirit of discouragement and
tiredness, of closedness and judgement that seemed to fill the place – that
seemed to be there like weeds poking up their heads between the good words we
were saying and the good songs we were singing. It was like toxic tares in the midst of the
wheat. It left a bitter taste in my
mouth. I was glad not to have been asked
to do a second week.
All of us have probably also known individual
Christians like that – people who on one
level do things right and all the right things, but in whom there’s also
something not so right at work – maybe cynicism or anger, or judgement and
self-righteousness, or pride and a kind of know-it-all-ness that just makes you
not want to be with them a lot, not want to work with them or be part of the
same group as them. Sometimes in the
midst of all the good we do, there’s also something toxic, Jesus says.
It can be hard to deal with because a second
thing about tares is they actually look a lot like wheat. They’re so similar to wheat in appearance
that most times you can’t really separate the two or tell what’s good and
what’s bad with any real precision.
It makes me think of how our greatest gifts at
times can become our greatest weakness.
How we may have the best of intentions, but we’re blind to our hidden
motivations. How our actions may be
perfectly good on one level – usually in the short-term, and turn out not so
good on another, usually more long-term.
Even Jesus, when someone calls him Good
Teacher, says, “Why do you call me good?
Only God is good.” Was maybe even
he aware that sometimes he rubbed people the wrong way? That he sometimes gave offence in ways he
didn’t intend? That being human he had
his own mixture of good and bad to deal with?
That it’s impossible to live in this world without being involved
somehow in its sin?
Which leads to a third thing about tares –
that they have roots that go deep and become so entangled with those of the
wheat, that if you try to pull out a handful of tares you’ll also be pulling
out good wheat with it. Try ridding the
field of tares, try un-mixing the field, and you’ll end up with nothing at all
– no tares, no wheat and no harvest.
I like the way Pam Laing, a minister of the
United Presbyterian Church in the States, puts it in a sermon she writes about this
parable:
Sadly, God's friends are also God's
worst enemies! … The Pharisees who had Jesus killed are perfect examples of
this. They were seeking to be good
weeders on God's behalf, and wound up killing the very God they sought to
serve.
Jesus, on the other hand, worked
with the weeds in his midst. He did not
weed out Judas from the twelve disciples, even though he knew Judas would
betray him. Jesus did not weed out Peter
even when he knew that Peter would deny him.
In fact, Jesus knew that all twelve of his disciples would run away when
he needed them most, but he still did not remove them from the fellowship. Let's face it; if Jesus had weeded out all
the imperfect people around him, he would have been standing alone!
It seems we’re all in this together, or we’re
not really in it at all. The way Jesus
sees it, tares are simply a fact of life in God’s field of wheat and God is
able and willing to work with it.
So maybe the best we can do is not be as sure
as we sometimes are of our blamelessness and goodness, give other people a
little more leeway of grace and openness in the ways we judge and treat them, and
every time we gather for worship do as people have done for millennia by offering
the fullness – both the good and the bad of who we are in a prayer like the one
we used to say from the old Green Service Book:
Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too
much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy
holy laws, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we
have done those things which we ought not to have done, and there is no health
in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon
us. Spare thou, them, O God, who confess
their faults. Restore thou them that are
penitent, according to thy promises declared unto humankind in Christ Jesus our
Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father,
for his sake, that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, to
the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.
The
language is old and a bit hard to understand.
So how can we express this prayer in meaningful ways today? And when we do, does it lead us a little more
deeply into the fullness and the mystery of God’s kingdom?
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