Weeds, Bread and Dragnets

Mimi Walker

July 24, 2005

Oakhurst Baptist Church, Decatur

I'm so glad we are having this on-line discussion about using the Bible more, cause that's what you're getting today.  What I originally had in mind, when I agreed to preach, was that I would be working away on my dissertation and I would just turn a chunk of that into a sermon, no sweat. 

But then I went and looked at the lectionary passage for today and I was hooked.    I love the parables.  It just seems to me that we get as close as we can to the experience of being in the presence of Jesus in the parables.

But those parables are tricky.  Why didn't Jesus come right out and say what he meant?  Why did he leave behind all these cryptic sayings, loaded with innuendo?  Why not leave behind a clear code of laws, or a list of instructions entitled, "How to Be a Good Disciple?"

If you think Jesus would have gotten his points across better with hard and fast rules, try remembering the last time you sat down and really enjoyed reading Leviticus or Numbers.

Robert Farrar Capon suggests that much of what Jesus is offering us in the parables is our old ways of thinking about things turned inside-out or upside-down.  With Jesus parables are used not to explain things to people's satisfaction but to call attention to the unsatifactoriness of all their previous explanations.

Jesus is trying to communicate his vision of the kingdom of God.  Jesus taught us to pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  He had a vision of a time and place in which God's gracious love permeates everything. 

For those of us who find kings and kingdoms to be uncomfortable images that smack of domination and subjugation you might try leaving off the "g."   I can pray more enthusiastically for God's "kin-dom" to come - That family that includes us all equally and incorporates the needs of all members in the household of God.

I have always loved the parable of the wheat and tares.  In all my years of living and working among fundamentalists this parable has been my rock.    I have never believed that we had the ability to know who is in and who is out; who is good and who is bad, who is saved and who is lost.

So, “Jesus told them another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed into his field.  But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” 

The particular weed that is mentioned, that we sometimes call tares, is an annual grass that is long and slender and looks a lot like wheat.  These weeds would be particularly difficult to distinguish from wheat as they were growing together.

But, we human beings divide ourselves up and pit ourselves against those whom we think are bad.    We think we know wheat from weeds and that we are in the wheat category, qualified to get rid of the weeds.    Robert Farrar Capon states the problem clearly, so I'll quote him:

 “Since good and evil in this world commonly inhabit not only the same field but even the same individual human beings- since, that is, there are no unqualified good guys any more than there are any unqualified bad guys – the only result of a truly dedicated campaign to get rid of evil will be the abolition of literally everybody.”

So what then are we to do about evil?    The Parable of the Wheat and Weeds can be read as a subversion of our usual way to respond to evil.  We think an enemy of God has sown evil into this world and that we are commissioned to root it out.   Jesus says no.     We aren't as expert as we think in knowing good from evil.  

 We are counseled to patiently wait for the harvest.

This parable seem to suggest that evil is to be suffered not resisted.   Doesn’t that just make the hair stand up on the back of your neck!  That’s just wrong!  I’ve got my rights!    Each person can immediately think of a situation that would prove that proposition wrong.   And as a feminist I know we have to be careful about taking the role of a victim.

But dang that ol’ Jesus if that isn’t just the word he used.    "Allow" the two to grow together.  Allow, permit, suffer.  Another version of the same word, forgive.  That sounds familiar.  “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Jesus’ sayings are so impractical.

How you read this parable depends on how you read God's acting in this world.      Capon contrasts direct intervening power with what Luther called left handed power.   Direct, intervening power is how we function in the world most of the time.  You figure out what needs to be done then you do what it takes to get it done.  You see the trash and you say "Joey, take out the trash or you can't go out tonight." 

Someone jumps in front of you in line and you say, "get out of my way or else."  You remove a spot on your carpet with some detergent and a scrub brush.  You remove your enemy with a shot gun.  It is straightforward and it gets the job done.

"Left-handed power is paradoxical power; it is power that looks like weakness.

 It is a kind of intervention that looks a lot like non-intervention."  It sounds a lot like something “that ol' Jesus” said somewhere else.   Back in chapter 5, right after he says “blessed are the meek, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the peacemakers,” he comes right out and says, “do not resist an evil person.  If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also…”

If this left-handed power changes people at all it does it awfully slowly.   A parent couldn't possibly use that kind of power on the children, nothing would ever get done.  Think of the loss in productivity if a business tried to run that way.

 Direct intervening power is quick and effective.

Unless of course if your primary objective is to stay in loving relationships with people over time.    If God's primary objective was the efficient production of a commodity God would have to take back the rainbow and return to direct intervention.   The parables seem to be opening up the possibility that God is really concerned with maintaining loving relationships, whatever the cost.  

So the parable of the weeds sounds kind of Dharma like.  Accept the fact that evil and suffering exist. Don’t worry, the good seed will not be overcome by the weeds.  It’s not your job to weed the garden.  Accept the garden as it is.

 Now, we usually treat the parable of the mustard seed as if Jesus had suddenly changed subject.  We all agree that that one is about how the kingdom of God starts out sooo little and ends up sooo big.  Actually we are still talking about weeds.

The Roman naturalist, Pliny the Elder, who died in 79AD writes: Mustard grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted: But on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once. 

    It is significant that Jesus chooses a seed that when easily germinated tends to take over where it is not wanted, that can quickly get out of control and that attracts birds into a cultivated area, where they are least desired.

So the parable of the mustard seed is about weeds, but this time the weed is the good stuff.  And the point is more like when the kingdom of God's left-handed love gets started somewhere you can't stop it.    You may not want this impractical love in your life, your field, your business or your family, but it's growing and changing the landscape and attracting pesky birds that might poop on your car and eat your grass seed.    And as much as we might try to groom the world to look the way we want it the weeds are going to take over in the end, because God is in control.

And what about the leaven in the bread?  What's cool about that is… well the first thing that is cool about that parable is that God is a woman.    But the other thing that is cool about this parable is that first you have this yeast and this flour and some water,  - and then you have this dough - and now you can never separate those ingredients or take them apart.   So if the four and the water are the world of human relating to one another the way we do, then, once God slips that left-handed love into the world it can never be taken out.   It will only grow stronger and more pervasive and eventually take over the whole thing.

I like the way Capon puts it, "Just as the yeast, once it is in the dough is so intimate a part of the lump as to be indistinguishable from it, undiscoverable  in it, and irretrievable out of it, so is the kingdom in this world."

The kingdom or kin-dom or household of God is occurring wherever God's will is done -, and what is that “will” but that we love one another as God has loved us.   The kingdom of heaven is not just a place we can look forward to but a state of being we can co-construct with God here and now if we are willing to try out some left-handed power.    If we suffer with and forgive the evil that exists within us and around us.

Now we come to that tricky question that has divided the church for centuries.  When do the bad guys get what's coming to them.  Or, the more respectable way to ask the question, "What about justice?"  What's going to happen in the end?

Well if we still believe in direct intervening, coercive power then we are sure we have found our justification in the parable of the net.  It says so right there in verse 49, “…at the end of the age the angels will come and take out the wicked from the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire: in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.   Whoo-hoo!

This one brings us back to that question of what God are you looking for when you read the scriptures. 

If you’re looking for vengeance you got it, right here in black and white.  But what if you are looking for Grace?    If you’re looking for Grace you might actually understand what Jesus was trying to say.

I have always found it fascinating and perplexing that evangelicals claim to live by Ephesians 2:8&9, ”For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”  Yet we live as if we believed in Karma.  Those who have done more harm than good are surly going to get it in the end.

There’s no grace in Karma.  It’s a pretty straight forward adding up of good actions thoughts and words versus bad actions thought and words.  There’s no one saying, “…but I love my wayward child so much that I would just die to save him from what he is doing to himself, and when he comes home I’ll throw the biggest party and forgive whatever he has done.

Ok so what’s up with the net if we really believe in Grace?  Let’s remember who is telling this story:  The one who told the parable of the prodigal’s son, the one who liked to hang out with the regular guys, the dangerous women and, the street folks.  The one who thought the religious people were a royal pain in the neck.

So this is how it will be at the end of the age, when the weeds and the leaven have had time to pervade every inch of creation.  The kin-dom of God will be like a great dragnet that will gather absolutely everything together;  - all resurrected in the loving memory of a God who would just die to get the chance to hug every wayward child.   If you’ ever had a wayward child you know that feeling right here..

And then the angel will separate the good from the evil.  Now remember that good, like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.    And the beholder is this loving parent who sees the good in every mixed up kid; who knows that forgiving and reconciling and starting over is all that matters.

So where is the evil that needs to be separated out?  Only in those who still won’t agree to join the banquet sitting next to the one who hurt them in the past.  Only the one who refuses to pass the mashed potatoes to that convict who got away scott free, but now has been grasped by grace and gets it.    If you have any questions about that read Matthew 22.

I don’t know about you but these parables make me want to be down right evangelical.  No four spiritual laws, just “hey look at this.”    In the midst of power mongering and terrorist bombings; in the midst of a justice system bogged down in piles of petty lawsuits; in the midst of families torn apart by hurts and disappointments, the kin-dom of God still exists. Growing underground, slipping in like weeds, bubbling up in the dough that will one day be the bread at the banquet table. 

There is hope that love and grace and joy really are at work in this world.  And the God of every nation will redeem the "whole" creation - whether we like it or not.     So the evangelical invitation is not to accept the factual truth of our faith system or face eternal damnation. 

The invitation is to join in dispensing grace where grace is not deserved, using that slow and frustrating left-handed power to reconcile relationships.  The invitation is to get slapped in the face and then wait for the opportunity to hug the wayward child.  The invitation is to be willing to sit at the table and pass the mashed potatoes or find yourself outside grinding your own teeth. 

 What do you say we invite the world to share some bread and sip on some Grace.

** Robert Farrar Capon, “Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus.” Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2002