"The Future's Vantage Point"
A Sunday Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Thomas C. Leinbach
July 20, 2008 - Harwich, Massachusetts

Preaching Text: "The slaves said to [the Sower], 'Then do you want us to go and gather [the weeds]?' 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…'" (Matthew 13:28b-30a)

I have a small problem. And it has to do with my ongoing, rather wistful dream of creating and maintaining a beautiful lawn and garden. I often think of this when driving around, mocked by the many beautifully landscaped homes all over the Cape.

The problem, as most of you know, is that I'm already on record as having little or no interest in yard work! I despise it, in fact. To make matters worse, I'm almost totally lacking in the skill and know-how required to make things grow! (Just ask Kathleen, who's been forced to replace plant after plant in my office after its predecessor's inevitable and untimely demise.)

So it was with great joy - and no small amount of relief - that I re-read this morning's gospel reading from Matthew, the so-called parable of the "wheat and tares" (or weeds). For in it Jesus tells his disciples that it is unwise for the field workers to pluck out the surrounding weeds before harvest time! To do so would unnecessarily damage the wheat crop!

Duly enlightened, I decided I now was free, nay, required even, to go home, grab a glass of iced-cold lemonade, put my feet up and gaze happily out over a lawn otherwise strewn with crabgrass, dandelions and whatever else is growing there. After all, who was I to question the wisdom of our Lord and Savior?

Unfortunately, as it turns out, the situation is a bit more complicated than this. Common sense alone suggests that not weeding a garden (or lawn for that matter) only encourages weeds to spread, necessarily choking off the desired growth of healthy plants. No serious gardener just sits back and allows weeds to overtake their garden. Without proper tending, a garden soon will become unmanageable (as will human lives, for that matter).

This obvious truth is underscored, in fact, in the parable Jesus offers immediately prior to today's - the one about the Sower. There he had talked about how some of the Sower's (God's) good seed, having fallen among thorns, had failed to produce, because the thorns had "choked" them.

Explaining the meaning of this later to his disciples in private he says that the thorns are those things in life - "the cares of the world" and "the lure of wealth" - that prevent a person, having received God's word, from making good on their spiritual quest. A promising religious life thus is crowded out and overtaken by these other pursuits, ultimately producing little in the way of spiritual fruits.

So why then does Jesus turn around, seemingly in the next breath, and caution the faithful against pulling up the weeds for fear of harming the wheat?

For one thing, Jesus here is referring to a particular kind of weed. It is the bearded darnel, a weed that would have been familiar to anyone living in Palestine in Jesus' day.

One of the intriguing characteristics of the darnel is that that when it is young its appearance is indistinguishable from a young wheat plant. Even an experienced farmer cannot tell the difference.

In time, though, as the plants mature, the darnel distinguishes itself clearly from the wheat plant. But by the time the farmer figures out which plant is wheat and which is a weed, the darnel's root system has intertwined itself inextricably around the root system of the wheat plant. Any attempt to pull up the weed risks pulling up the healthy wheat plant as well!

Thus the wise farmer waits, allowing both the wheat and the weed to grow together, until harvest time, at which point it becomes a simple matter of separating out the one from the other.

Though Jesus' original hearers no doubt understood this simple agricultural truth, they probably had as many questions as to how this applies to faithful living as do we.

Like us, they would have understood the parable's descriptive and realistic acknowledgement that this life is marked by both good and evil, and that the great struggles in life often have to do with the soul's desire for good and its attempts to overcome evil. The symbolism, therefore, of the wheat and the weeds is obvious.

What isn't so obvious is why Jesus would employ the known symbiotic relationship between the wheat and the bearded darnel as a means of discussing this spiritual struggle. For while we generally seek to do what is right and avoid that which is wrong, this parable almost seems to imply that we needn't do anything!

See a problem? Forget about it. God will handle it, in the end, at the harvest. You are witness to acts of un-charity and/or unethical behavior? Don't worry. God'll fix it, in his own time. Judge not, the parable seems to say, for only God can judge, for only God can discern what truly resides in the inner recesses of the human heart.

Then again, as I said earlier, Jesus already seems to have rejected this just moments earlier, when he points out the tragic effects of the thorns choking the good seed. In chapter 18 of Matthew's gospel, in fact, Jesus tells us, referring in this case to the church, that we are not to excuse evil or ignore destructive behavior. We are not to let evil and good "grow up together." If another church person, he tells us, sins against us and does not repent after repeated attempts at reconciliation, that person is "to be to you as a Gentile and tax collector."

Elsewhere Jesus gives the "keys of the kingdom of heaven" to Peter and bestows similar authority to the whole church when he says, "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

It generally is believed that throughout Matthew's gospel Jesus is speaking mostly about the church, to those called out from the world to be a light to the world. As such, the ethics presented in Matthew are thought to relate mostly to in-house matters, to the way the church functions with and amongst itself.

In this particular case, Matthew's church was a congregation of Jewish converts who had experienced a large influx of Gentiles converts into their midst. It is not hard to imagine the challenges they must have faced, what with two ethnically and historically opposed groups learning how to live with one another.

Perhaps this parable stands then as an important guide in how we are to get along with those we are closest to, those we are most intimately intertwined with. Here is divine wisdom about life lived in close proximity to others. And one of the impediments to getting along is the all-too human tendency to judge too quickly those we love, and to lose patience with those we know best.

We would do well, in other words, to appreciate just how much our impatience and premature rush to judgment can adversely affect those around us. Just as the field workers are cautioned against ripping up the weeds for fear of destroying the good crop along with them, we, too, are cautioned to use great care and discretion in our relationships, particularly among those closest to us. In our often well-meaning attempt to rid our church, our families, our world and even ourselves of all evil, we just may end up doing far more harm than good. Why? Because we lack proper discernment in determining who or what is good or bad. After all, wheat and darnel plants can look uncannily identical.

Another danger, it seems, is that when we focus on the sins of others, we run the very real risk of becoming bound to them, just as the roots of the wheat and darnel plants remain stubbornly intertwined.

"Choose you enemies carefully," the great sage Johnny Carson once reportedly said, "because you become like them." It 's easy, in other words, to become intolerant with intolerant people, or angry at people who are angry at us, or bigoted toward bigoted people. By seeking to destroy our enemies, we usually condemn ourselves precisely because we have become just like them; having become enmeshed with them.

Ultimately, Jesus' parable offers a way out of this very human dilemma. It teaches us that one day in the future everything will be sorted out and that it is God who will do the sorting. Any final judgment will be God's, not ours. The proper response to this truth, then, is for us to wait patiently…and trust that God will insure that the good ultimately triumphs. It's simply not our job!

This parable reminds us that the life is much like reading a book with all kinds of twists and turns. All throughout, the reader is challenged to figure out just how the story will end, how it will resolve itself. What this parable and the gospel in general reveals is just how the story ends. Goodness shall triumph and evil shall be defeated. With this inviolable, ironclad truth, we are freed in the present to trust in God's future, no matter how bleak or difficult things in the here and now may be.

There are indeed times when we must stand up against evil and wrongdoing, when we must make judgments and act upon them. But there are other times, most of the time, even, when the better part of valor is discretion, patience and a spacious trust in God's loving and providential care.

I would close by drawing your attention to something I once read about proper lawn care. And that is that the best defense against weeds, simply put, is healthy grass.

If we spent most of our time feeding and strengthening the spiritual roots of goodness, in ourselves and others, seeking to honor God in our work, in our worship, in our prayer life, in our devotion to scripture, in our reaching out to those who are hurting, and in our loving even those we consider our enemies, then we strengthen the spiritual roots of godliness within us and in so doing create the absolute best defense against evil, against the weeds of life. And that you can pretty much take to the bank, even from this self-professed "black thumb!"

Amen.