I love parables, don’t you? I know that I’m preaching to the choir with this, but Jesus really knew what he was doing by teaching with parables, didn’t he? By their nature, they invite us to enter into the story. Parables surprise us with the unexpected and cause us to think. They are open-ended, even though some have felt compelled to offer definitive meanings for them. The settings were very familiar to Jesus’ original listeners, but we too can relate to a field that is growing, awaiting harvest. Here in our country, in our town, we understand that we too live in a world consisting of both wheat and of weeds, or of good mixed with evil.
With the oral tradition of Jesus’ day, the stories he shared would have been a little bit different each time he told them. He might have changed a few details here and there and the individuals who made up the crowds listening would have heard things differently, depending on their personality or circumstances. So here we are, a diverse group of people in Redlands, CA in 2008, ready to enter Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds.
The farmer had sown good seed in his field, but an enemy came and planted weeds among the crop. The servants, quite logically, offer to pull up the weeds. Here comes the surprising part; the farmer tells them not to pluck up the weeds, but to wait until harvest for things to be sorted out. The weeds and the wheat will grow together, lest the good be taken up with the bad. The farmer’s patience in the story is surprising.
It would have seemed even more perplexing to the original hearers of the story. They would have been familiar with a poisonous weed, known today as “darnel” that looks so much like wheat; it is very difficult to tell them apart. Letting the two plants grow together risked infecting the whole crop with poison. You might expect the farmer to say, “By all means, yank the nasty stuff out right away!” But this is a story about God’s ways, not ours, and so we can expect the unexpected.
Another characteristic of darnel is that its roots would have quickly entangled the roots of the wheat. In attempting to pull up the weeds, good wheat could have been pulled up with it.
So, let me get this straight. We, the wheat of course, are supposed to stay tangled up with the weeds and trust God to sort out this mess? Well, the part about trusting God to bring forth what is good among us is right. The assumption that we’ll be harvested as the pure, golden wheat is not so clear. We all have elements of wheat and weeds within us. That makes me glad that God is willing to allow time for me to be transformed into a better person. I will always have weedy elements of myself and I trust that God will continue to love me towards a more wheat like nature.
This story is not about a single stalk of wheat though. We grow best in community, in the field with other folks, who like ourselves bear a mixture of good and evil. As human beings we can be quick to judge. Sometimes driving can bring out this tendency in me. I always cheer inwardly when big trucks block those weedy people from passing everyone on the shoulder of the road. It bothers me how quickly driving infractions cause thorny, prickly feelings in my heart.
Driving infractions is a relatively benign example of something that infects the field. There are far more dangerous elements among us, much harder to deal with, such as racism, hatred, violence, anti-Semitism, sexism, hetero-sexism, crime and poverty. What will set us apart in the field is what we choose to let grow within ourselves; good or evil.
Jesus understood this. So did Gandhi and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. They all applied the principle of non-violent resistance in the face of evil, trusting the grace of God with us to bring transformation. We human beings are enabled by the Divine Spirit, not only to forgive enemies, but to work for their transformation.
Some of the most poignant examples of this in our recent history took place during the Civil Rights movement. Walter Wink wrote of one evening, during this time, in his book, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. A group of black and white activists were standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Selma Alabama, singing to pass the time. Suddenly a funeral home operator from Montgomery took the microphone. He reported that a group of black students demonstrating near the capitol just that afternoon had been surrounded by police on horseback, with all escape routes barred. The students were beaten and ambulances were prevented from reaching the injured for two hours. One of the ambulance drivers was the person who informed the group at Ebenezer Church about the incident.
The crowd outside the church seethed with rage. Someone cried out, “Let’s march!” The situation was explosive. Behind the activists, across the street, stood the Alabama state troopers and the local police forces of Sheriff Jim Clark.
A young, black minister took the microphone and said, “It’s time we sang a song.” He opened with the line, “Do you love Martin King?” “Certainly Lord!” the crowd responded. “Do you love Martin King?” “Certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord!”
Without warning, the young minister sang out, “Do you love Jim Clark?” The sheriff?! “Cer-certainly Lord”, came the stunned, halting remark. “Do you love Jim Clark?” “Certainly Lord” It was stronger this time. Now the point had sunk in: “Certainly, certainly, certainly, Lord.”
The Reverend James Bevel then took the mike. “We are not fighting just for our rights”, he explained, “but for the good of the whole society. It’s not enough to defeat Jim Clark- do you hear me Jim? –we want you converted. We cannot win by hating our oppressors. We have to love them into changing.”
Those leaders in the Civil Rights movement, in that moment in time standing outside the Ebenezer Baptist Church, understood Jesus’ call to love one’s enemies. They dared to believe that with the help of the grace of God, love could overpower hate. Walter Wink says that Jim Clark did eventually change, later admitting that his bias against blacks was wrong. Weeds may sometimes be transformed into wheat.
You can’t force a change of heart with laws or violence, any more than God forces change on us. If God were to pluck out all the evil of the world today, we would each be in danger, for we all have parts of ourselves that are less than perfect. Only love can transform a person infected by evil. Rather than be overcome by it, or infected by it ourselves, we must choose to rise above it.
Each person with whom we disagree, who frustrates us with unkind words or actions, is an opportunity to love, rather than respond in kind. I’m not saying that this is simple or easy to do, but it is the way that the Kingdom of God spreads in the world. It is the little bit of leaven which causes the whole loaf to rise, or the tiny mustard seed that grows to amazing proportions due to God’s grace and our efforts, working together.
In the reading from Romans, which Karen read for us today, Paul says that the whole of creation; soil, wheat, weeds, people, birds, fish, water, trees- all are groaning as with birth pangs in anticipation of transformation.
Considering Paul’s words in our present context has a special poignancy in our day and time. We have not been good stewards of our beautiful and fragile earth home. It is not only people we need to be concerned about when it comes to transforming love. All of creation is groaning in labor pains for a new day when we repent and respectfully, lovingly care for the earth and all of her many life forms.
Paul tells us that the Christian stance is one of patient expectation. Our posture is one of hope, straining forward for what is not yet seen. We are tested, to be sure, as there have always been those who have taken it upon themselves to declare some of us as worthy of being in the field, while others should be plucked out. We can recall the Crusades, witch trials, the holocaust, slavery in this country and the Civil Rights movement, or the current struggle of gays and lesbians for the right to marry legally. I would guess that many of you have been made to feel weedlike, at one time or another, when truly, as Paul reminds us; you are a beautiful child of God.
This summer, as part of our own sabbatical journey here at Redlands United Church of Christ, we have been learning about Celtic Christianity. That is the final strand to be woven in with our scripture readings today, because it fits so beautifully. Throughout the books that I have read this season, by J.Philip Newell, he makes the point again and again that with Celtic spirituality the goodness of creation has always been emphasized. Celtic Christianity has always stressed that we were born in original goodness, not in original sin.
No matter how covered over this original goodness, this image of God at the core of each one of us may be, through sin, abuse or neglect, it remains waiting to be released through the grace of God. It is not only people the Celts see as shot through with Spirit, but all of creation. God is seen as present within all that has life, as close to us as our next breath. To quote J.Philip Newell, “The ministry of the Church is to liberate and free the goodness of God that is already seen at the very heart of all life, yearning, as St. Paul said, for its release.”
When Jesus tells the parable of the wheat and the weeds, in the first section of the gospel reading today, the patience of the farmer allows for the hope that that love might transform the weeds. The threat of being thrown to a fiery furnace might frighten us, but it has no power to truly transform our hearts. Only love can do that. One of the greatest teachers of the Celtic world, Aelred of Rievaulx , born in Northern England in the twelfth century, taught that God is not our judge but our lover.
Maybe as each one of us stands before God one day, we will be gathered in, cleaned and sorted out through a powerful force of mercy and compassion. Maybe this sort of cleansing could teach even those who have been farthest from God consciousness, to love again.
Celtic spirituality has something else to tell us about the field we find ourselves in, mixed as it is with good and evil. All of us, all of life is interconnected. Our well being is related to the well being of the entire earth community. We will not be truly healed or saved until all are healed. Celtic Christianity would ask, “How can we speak about wholeness in separation?”
Perhaps judgment and purification is an ongoing process, in our here and now as well. Each moment allows a chance for the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. With the grace of God to empower us, there is always the possibility that we might love the weeds within ourselves and others into beautiful wildflowers.
