Romans 8.12-25, Matthew 13.24-30,36-43
The Sixth Sunday after Trinity, 23 July 2017
Sparkford ‘Together at Ten’, West Camel Methodist Church
“Let the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest.”
I love the way that Jesus teaches - in parables and through prophetic actions which use the familiar stories and situations of the day, but injecting into these conventional stories little twists and turns, making very subtle adjustments to the old, old stories, which turn them inside out or upside down and create new worlds of understanding for those with ears to hear.
So he takes his disciples to the Temple to watch the people making their cash offerings; points out the flamboyant giving of a celebrated religious establishment figure; contrasts this with the tiny coin furtively offered by an old widow. At this point his listeners knew with certainty what the end of the story would be - praise for the generous respected wealthy giver, criticism for the widow who takes so much from society but gives so little back. But we know how Jesus turned that on its head.
Or think of that episode over the Roman coin - a test of Jesus’ allegiance to his people in their Roman-occupied land. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what belongs to God,” he said, making the very subtle point that as everything belongs to God, therefore God eclipses Caesar and is not harmed if we give the state its due. But it is quite probable that many of the people listening would have missed this point altogether and gone away thinking that what Jesus said supported their own point of view - either accommodating Roman rule, or fighting it.
So this is a risky way of teaching - for such teaching can be so easily misheard and misunderstood; those who do not hear the nuances, or who do not understand the twists in Jesus’ tales, will go away inspired: thinking that what he has brilliantly done is reinforced their prejudices and not changed their minds about anything at all.
The gospel writers were aware of this problem and dealt with it in different ways. Mark opts to portray the disciples as being consistently dimwitted, always slow in understanding, loved by Jesus but ever frustrating him in their inability to ‘get’ what he was telling them about the Kingdom of God. By contrast, Matthew punctuates Jesus’ teachings with lengthy explanations of his parables, which may sometimes be Jesus’ actual words but are often quite likely Matthew’s own embellishments - because painting Jesus like a comedian needing to stop all the time to explain his jokes, rather ruins the effect of his stories.
It was certainly a risky strategy of Jesus, the way he taught, and it did not always succeed. For instance, if everyone had really ‘got’ the teaching about the widow’s mite then followers of Jesus today would not still be condemning the poor and idolising the wealthy.
And none of his risky teaching has been more misunderstood than the passage we are focussed on today. The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, as we now call it.
For here Jesus is re-telling the oldest story ever told among humankind, the story which from time immemorial has gone like this: “We are the wheat and these others, over there, they are the weeds - and for being weeds, we’re condemning them to hell.” It’s the oldest story ever told, and we hear it and re-tell it ourselves every single day. Every religion, every culture, always has. It is what holds groups of people together - we identify ourselves in opposition to others. In Jesus’ context the wheat were the Jewish people, to whom Jesus belonged; the weeds the Samaritans, sometimes, or the Romans, other times. Or the traitors, like Zacchaeus who collected taxes for the enemy - each of them judged by the self-righteous ‘wheat’ and condemned to hell.
Jesus told this familiar story to do what he always does - to inject into it something which subverts it and introduces a whole new perspective on life in the Kingdom of God. But in this story particularly the subversion is so subtle that throughout history it has been overlooked - with terrible consequences. Though not at all what Jesus was trying to say, Christians have embraced this oldest story ever told as ‘gospel’.
So throughout history the violent agenda of ‘turn or burn’ has been pursued by followers of Christ. We, the wheat, have identified the weeds of our world, plucked them out and sent to hell, often quite literally, such as in the Crusades and the death camps of WW2. It has never stopped.
In our context, on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, whilst celebrating the many good things which that movement has brought, sadly we acknowledge that it also led to Protestants identifying ourselves as wheat with the weeds being the Catholics; in contemporary church politics we see the moral conservatives self-identifying as wheat in condemning the weedy gays for their sexual licence; or alternatively the gay Christian lobby are the self-righteous wheat telling the weed-like conservatives their intolerance is paving their path to hell. In wider society today some wheat-like Christians will condemn to hell all weed-like Muslims. Or in everyday life sometimes we see ourselves as the wheat, with the weeds being our messy neighbours we wish would go to hell with their overflowing dustbins and loud weekend parties. And so on.
This is the violent theology of every single society ever. But it is not the way of Christ, as he so subtly taught it. This is not life in the kingdom of God, which is a far more freeing and loving way altogether. So, can you see how Jesus subverted this story?
He did so by pretending to be a really terrible gardener, a rubbish farmer. Because he said, “Let the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest”.
Now, as anyone who has seen my garden will understand, I’m quite encouraged by this… But as Jesus surely knew, it is terrible advice for good horticulture.
So here Jesus presents this violent theology which separates wheat from weeds, where those who are wheat keenly anticipate an end-time of fiery hell for the weeds we condemn. And into this, Jesus injects a line which sounds absurd to all the gardeners and farmers listening, saying, “don’t bother separating the weeds from the wheat. Let them grow together until the harvest.”
In a camel-through-the-eye-of-a-needle sort-of way this statement of Jesus is memorably nonsensical. That’s no way to garden. And that’s an impossible task to perform at harvest-time. Jesus is painting the whole idea of wheat and weeds and hellfire as an absurdity.
Do you get what this must mean? It must mean an end to our separating ourselves from others and in judgment condemning those others to hell. It must mean a beginning of our growing together with others towards the bright fulfilment of God’s good purposes for us all.
It’s another way of saying, “Love God - and love your neighbour as yourself.” [1]
It’s another way of saying, “Judge not - and be not judged.” [2]
Jesus didn’t just teach this, of course. He fleshed it out in the profoundest way, in the crucifixion and the resurrection.
For Jesus was crucified because the self-righteous and possessive leaders judged him to be a weed to their wheat, and condemned him to hell. He became the ultimate victim of the oldest story ever told. And he didn’t avoid hell. Our creeds say, he descended into it. Descended to it to harrow it - “to destroy death, and triumph over the enemy, to bind ‘the strong man’ Satan, to release all the captives there and bear them off to the heavenly heights.” [3]
“The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” writes Paul. [4]
“Death is swallowed up in victory,” he says. [5]
For all those who follow Jesus, history pivots on the point of resurrection. For at the moment the Father raised Jesus from the dead the new creation begins. It’s the start of the decline of the old story of history being written by the wheat and condemning the weeds to fire at the end of time.
That old, old story belongs to the era of the end - an age which looks to a future of damnation for those we deem ‘wrong’. But when the Father raised Jesus from the dead, a new era begins, an age of beginnings. A new creation. The outworking of the hope which Paul described in his epistle to the Romans: “hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
As Paul rightly suggests, this new beginning is a work in progress. While Presidents’ fingers hover over the nuclear button the world remains in the grip of the era of the end - but the era of the beginning is now also underway.
The veteran German theologian Jürgen Moltmann recently summarised this, saying,
The Christian message in this situation can be reduced to a simple formula: by virtue of his resurrection, Christ’s end in the catastrophe on Golgotha became the true beginning of his new life for us. His raising from the dead shows the divine power of beginning in the end. That is the rebirth of life and the force of freedom. [6]
So in his gentle subversion in the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds Jesus is calling us to do away with all that divides us from others, to put away all attempts to judge and dreams of annihilation. And to embrace others in love in the power of the resurrection, for this is the way of the kingdom of God. Paul saw it early and wrote it so beautifully for us: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [Galatians 3.28]
So for us today we might add that in Christ there is no Protestant or Catholic - and we rejoice in the great ecumenical movements of the Twentieth Century - Taize, The Iona Community - which demonstrated this, continue to demonstrate this, so well.
We might say today that in Christ there is no Liberal or Conservative - and we are impressed by the recent Church of England ‘Shared Conversations’ between people on all sides of the human sexuality discussion, platforms away from the media spotlight where people were able to be open, frank, and vulnerable, and listen and learn from each other’s perspectives.
Do I dare to say it - well I will - that if we are being true to this teaching, then today, in Christ there is no Christian or Muslim, or Christian and Jew - and how do we see this sign of God’s kingdom at work - surely in the many examples of relief work, social work, where people of all cultures share together to help those in need - after the Manchester bombing, at Grenfell Tower, on the Somerset Levels after the floods; in Justice and Peace groups working together for reconciliation in Israel and Palestine. And - in a wonderful sign that the story of the widow's mite has had its effect - interfaith work for the relief of poverty and advocacy for the concerns of the poor.
The God of Jesus Christ is universal, because the raising of Jesus from the dead does away with the frontier dividing Jews from Gentiles, masters from servants, men from women, indeed even the living from the dead. The risen Christ is no longer just a Jew either. He is also the beginner and leader of the new humanity… ‘the new Adam’. [7]
In these challenging days for the Church of Christ I think this parable invites us to be humble enough to acknowledge that the people trying to prop up an old failing religious system were the ones who sent the innovator Jesus to hell. I think he wants us to be excited in the same way as the first disciples; as in the Spirit generated by the resurrection they set about a radical reformation of religious life.
I think Jesus is teaching us that we are resurrection people - not bound by the old, old story which leads to death, but inspired to look for, and bring about new beginnings. We worry about our dwindling congregations and regret the decline of respect for old Christianity. Is it our fault? Will we be judged for that? No - for the parable points us away from judgement into joy. It just needs a change of understanding; a change of direction, an openness to the reality that God is doing a new thing, and wants us to be part of it. As wise old Jürgen Moltmann joyfully says, “the future of Christianity is the Church, and the future of the Church is the Kingdom of God.” [8]
“Let the wheat and the weeds grow together.” It is awful gardening advice. But it is the joyful way of the new life which God in Christ, every day, invites us into.
Notes
Thanks to Paul Nuechterlein for pointing me in the direction of this interpretation of The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds with his expansive notes on the reading in Girardian Lectionary, Notes, Proper 11A.
[1] Matthew 22.38-39
[2] Matthew 7.1-3
[3] After Melito of Sardis, On Pascha 102, quoted in Joel J. Miller, The harrowing of hell and the victory of Christ, Pantheos blog, 30 March 2013.
[6] Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise!: God's Future for Humanity and the Earth, p.38-39
[7] Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise!, p.40-41
[8] Jürgen Moltmann, Sun of Righteousness, Arise!, p.7
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