EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

Isaiah 44:6-8

Psalm 86:11-17

Romans 8:12-25

Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

Prayer of the Day: Faithful God, most merciful judge, you care for your children with firmness and compassion. By your Spirit nurture us who live in your kingdom, that we may be rooted in the way of your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

“….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.’” Matthew 12:29-30.

True, ripping out the weeds is likely to uproot the wheat. Yet there is a downside to letting them grow together until the harvest. The weeds use up moisture and nutrients in the soil that would otherwise nurture the wheat. They will grow up to block the lifegiving rays of the sun. Weeds can become havens for unwanted insect pests. There is no getting around the fact that the weeds are a problem and will continue to be such until the time of harvest. Even then, they are bound to make the harvest a good deal more labor intensive than it would otherwise be. I can understand why the slaves of the householder would prefer to deal with them sooner rather than later.

I think this might be the attraction pre-millennial (“Left Behind”) religion holds for so many. At first blush, the idea of God intervening to rapture the pure in heart out of this evil world, cleansing the earth by means of the “great tribulation,” and bringing back the faithful to rule over a purified planet sounds attractive. The problem, however, is that even the true believers, the pure in heart, those who have “accepted Jesus as personal Lord and Savior” are still sinners. The tendency toward selfishness, suspicion toward God and one another and all the other characteristics that always seem to get us into trouble in this age will be present among those who return in the next to reign over the new world-which will not stay new for long. The line between good and evil does not run neatly along international borders, cultural divides, religious communities or political party membership. It runs right through the middle of every human heart. The weeds are rooted, along with the wheat, in the depths of our souls. Uprooting them cannot help but damage the harvest.  

This parable has often been interpreted to mean that we are powerless to deal with evil. Poverty, injustice, racism, war and all the menial day to day evils like road rage, unhelpful telephone menus and double parked vehicles are grim realities of life in this world, the resolution of which must await the final judgment. You can’t eradicate evil, so you just have to learn to live with it. But given this parable’s context within Matthew’s gospel, we know that cannot be the case. Jesus makes clear that his disciples are not called merely to endure evil passively. They are to be “light to the world” and “salt to the earth.” Matthew 5:13-14. Their good works are to “give glory” to God. Matthew 5:16. Jesus sends his disciples to make disciples of all nations so that they may teach the world all that he has taught them. Matthew 28:19-20. Evil is not to be tolerated. Evildoers are to be exposed, denounced and resisted by faithful witness to the truth in word and deed. Judgement of evildoers, however, belongs to God alone. It is not for disciples of Jesus to attempt the separation of wheat from weeds, sheep from goats, righteous from unrighteous. When the church oversteps its authority and usurps this dread responsibility, it never ends well.

Sometimes separation of wheat from weeds is undertaken with the best of intentions and supported by sound moral logic. By way of illustration, allow me a brief hypothetical. You are in command of an elite force of commandos trained in executing rescue missions. You learn that an angry mob of religious fanatics is about to stone a man for expressing his differing religious beliefs. The man is a community leader with a proven record of public service, including the provision of relief for widows and their children. With careful planning, you are convinced that you can rescue the soon to be victim with a minimal loss of human life. By employing the best strategy and state of the art military technology, you succeed in disbursing the mob and rescuing the man destined for death. A terrible act of mob violence against an innocent victim has been prevented. In the process, a few of the perpetrators are killed, including a young man who, though not actually involved in the violence, was actively encouraging it and holding the coats of those preparing to throw stones. All in all, from a military and humanitarian point of view, the mission is successful.

Those of you familiar with the Book of Acts will recognize immediately that this successful military exercise prevented the death of Saint Stephen by killing Saint Paul. The point I am trying to make is that one never knows what one is doing when, for whatever noble reason, a person takes one life in order to save another. What looks to my eye like a weed could well be the seed of God’s future harvest. Good and evil are so inextricably bound together among nations, between individuals and within each human heart that we cannot extricate the latter without mortally wounding the former. No human life can be judged until it has finally come to the end God determines and no one other than God is capable of judging it. There is nothing for it but to live faithfully and bear fruit in the weeds.

Living in the weeds calls for patience. I think there is no greater temptation afflicting good and well meaning people than impatience, a desire to root out evil and injustice by whatever means necessary. The temptation is particularly strong where evil actions threaten the lives and wellbeing of other people, as in my hypothetical. Faithful witness, peaceful resistance and love in the face of hatred are too slow and too ineffective. We prefer measures that get results and get them quickly. What is war, after all, but an attempted short cut to peace? Violence, coercion and intimidation always promise swift resolution to complex problems, but they never deliver. Jesus understands that there are no shortcuts to God’s gentle reign of justice and peace. There is no way to peace but peace itself. Who are the wheat stalks and who are the weeds? I strongly suspect we are all a mixture of both. There is no quick and easy way to cleanse the weeds from the field, from our world or from our hearts. Cleansing comes only through the slow burning fire of repentance that is God’s life giving judgement.

Here is a poem by William Carlos Williams that speaks of a burning that is both painful and redemptive.

Burning the Christmas Greens

Their time past, pulled down
cracked and flung to the fire
—go up in a roar

All recognition lost, burnt clean
clean in the flame, the green
dispersed, a living red,
flame red, red as blood wakes
on the ash—

and ebbs to a steady burning
the rekindled bed become
a landscape of flame

At the winter’s midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the balsam and
the hemlock for their green

At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold’s
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees

to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons

we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the

mantle we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they

were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us. Their time past,
relief! The room bare. We

stuffed the dead grate
with them upon the half burnt out
log’s smouldering eye, opening
red and closing under them

and we stood there looking down.
Green is a solace
a promise of peace, a fort
against the cold (though we

did not say so) a challenge
above the snow’s
hard shell. Green (we might
have said) that, where

small birds hide and dodge
and lift their plaintive
rallying cries, blocks for them
and knocks down

the unseeing bullets of
the storm. Green spruce boughs
pulled down by a weight of
snow—Transformed!

Violence leaped and appeared.
Recreant! roared to life
as the flame rose through and
our eyes recoiled from it.

In the jagged flames green
to red, instant and alive. Green!
those sure abutments . . . Gone!
lost to mind

and quick in the contracting
tunnel of the grate
appeared a world! Black
mountains, black and red—as

yet uncolored—and ash white,
an infant landscape of shimmering
ash and flame and we, in
that instant, lost,

breathless to be witnesses,
as if we stood
ourselves refreshed among
the shining fauna of that fire.

Source: American Religious Poems, Edited by Harold Bloom & Jesse Ruba (c. 2006 by Library Classics of the United States, New York, NY) pp. 195-198. William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician. He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His father was born in England but raised from the age of 5 in the Dominican Republic and his mother came from Puerto Rico. The Caribbean culture of his family had an important influence on Williams. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician. He practiced pediatrics and general medicine at Passaic General Hospital. He served as chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. You can read more about William Carlos Williams and sample more of his poetry at the Poetry Foundation website.