Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Queen Camel*, Corton Denham, Weston Bampfylde, Sunday 20 July 2014, Trinity 5
The teachings of Jesus are vitally alive in speaking to our situation today, and to demonstrate this I put before you a new parable, based closely on the one that he told:
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to Birmingham Education Authority, tasked with sowing good seed among the children of the city; but while everybody went about their business, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat; their scheme - to spread extremist Islamic views in the city’s schools - they called Operation Trojan Horse. One day the alleged scheme came to light. And the people of Birmingham protested, saying, ‘We expect our schools to promote ‘British values’ of tolerance and fairness; how, then, did these extremists infiltrate them?’ The government answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The Prime Minister reinforced his commitment to assert ‘British values’ with a ‘muscular’ approach against ‘preachers of hate’. But others warned of the dangers of a witch-hunt, of upsetting the delicate balance of Birmingham’s racial ecology, of the dangers of trying to get rid of extremism by adopting extremist ways oneself. And if anyone had asked him Jesus would have repeated what he first said all those years before, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest’ [1]
One of the most pressing questions facing the world today is, How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves? [2] This is the question provoked by the parable of the weeds and the wheat.
There is always a twist in Jesus’ parables; and the twist in this one, is that a field of wheat is different from many other crops when it comes to weeding. Wheat grows with no open spaces, with no orderly rows, like tall grass blanketing a field. And many of the weeds that may grow up within it might not look all that different from the wheat. So Jesus is showing us a situation in which it is very difficult and unrealistic to pull weeds without plucking up some wheat also.
And in so doing, the point of this parable might be similar to what Paul says in Romans 3: ‘For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. [3] In other words, matters of sin and evil are not as distinct for us as we might think. Since the foundation of our human worlds, since the temptation of Adam and Eve, we are always thinking that we know the keys to recognizing good and evil. But it's not that simple. It's like trying to pick weeds out from a field blanketed in wheat. We always think we can pick out the culprits and eliminate them. But can we? In the wider scheme of things, who are the culprits? [4]
The forthcoming centenary of World War One brings this issue into sharp focus for us, as we ask with critical hindsight, how could a diplomatic crisis between the European powers justify the 37 million casualties of that war? How could supposedly advanced, civilised nations perpetrate the use of chemical weapons, engage in genocide and ethnic cleansing, create the horrors of the trenches and the ‘Rape of Belgium’?
How can we oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves? In our lifetime humanity has faced this question in the nuclear nightmare of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, of the disproportionate destruction rained on the civilians of Iraq after the Twin Towers attack. Humanity has faced this question since the foundation of the world. Indeed, what ends up making us human is the way we respond to the presence of evil in our midst. And so often what saves us from the evil in our midst is an accusation that binds us together to weed out the evil among us. Thinking ourselves righteous and good, we actually use a righteous, sacred violence to rid ourselves of the unholy, profane violence of our enemy.
But ‘How can Satan cast out Satan?’ as Jesus himself once asked. [5] Think of the Birmingham example - what binds us together is an accusation of an Islamist plot, triggering an investigation to weed out the evil among us. Think of the language used in this situation, which is quasi-religious in its tone and effect, ‘British values’ versus alien ‘extremism’. Think of the effects of this reactionary project - of years of community-building in a multi-racial city giving way now to a hardening of attitudes, a splintering of groups, a crisis in teacher and governor recruitment.
Only the Gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit, have eventually taught us that both these forms of violence are violence, and in many ways the same evil. Only since religious people crucified Jesus have we begun to see our righteous violence as evil. It was hidden from us since the foundation of the world until Jesus was sacrificed by people attempting to weed out the evil among them; only through that sacrifice has he, the Lamb of God, begun to take away this Sin of the world. [6]
Now, when Jesus said, ‘Let [the weeds and the wheat] grow together until the harvest’, he was saying, leave the judgement to God. Let God decide who are the righteous, who the just, what should be done about us all.
He was saying, recognise that sometimes you wheat act like weeds and sometimes those weeds act like wheat, and ‘there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; [Paul says. But] they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.’ [7]
Now Jesus’ parable of the weeds and the wheat does not directly tell us how we can oppose evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves. But he does not say, ‘do nothing’.
‘You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But now I tell you: do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too. And if someone takes you to court to sue you for your shirt, let him have your coat as well. And if one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack one mile, carry it two miles.’ [8]
Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. But don’t do nothing. Do react, do resist evil, just ‘don'tmirror the evil that you're attacking. Don't become the very thing you hate.' Do not react violently against the one who is evil - 'If we had followed that bible translation through the centuries, think of what a difference it would have made in Christian history.' [9]
There is a whole other series of sermons in the three strategies Jesus suggests to nonviolently resist evildoers: turning the other cheek, giving your cloak as well as your coat, and going the second mile. In the culture of the day these were all twists which went against convention and embarrassed and challenged the wrongdoer without actually harming them. These strategies suggest that there are ways of opposing evil without creating new evils and being made evil ourselves.
Think also of the stories of Jesus’ journey through Holy Week - when Jesus didn’t fight, but nor did he take flight. He deliberately handed himself over into the hands of evil men, the Lamb of God to the slaughter. He said very little to state his case or make his defence, but what little he said and did struck the hearts of the hearers - those doing evil towards him, who found themselves transformed by the power of his witness: think of Peter’s self-revelation as the cock crowed, Pilate forced to ponder the meaning of truth, the criminal hanging beside Christ at Calvary being promised paradise, the centurion breaking all the codes of his culture and profession by looking up at the crucified Jesus and exclaiming, in a phrase usually reserved for the Emperor, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God’.
Jesus’ parables and passion demonstrate a new way of being human, in which all who have sinned and fall short of the glory of God are now justified by his grace as a gift, through his redemption.
His story suggests to us another way of reading human history; his story invites us to revisit the last century to unearth other stories - of those who he has helped to find ways to oppose evil without being made evil themselves. The nonviolent resistance of Mahatma Ghandi which in turn influenced Martin Luther King; the struggles against apartheid in south Africa as captured in the life of Nelson Mandela in a move away from solving evil by violence to resisting it by just governance and treating its criminals with restorative justice. [10] The lesser-known stories of Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, a pioneering mutual-aid fellowship [11], Oscar Romero, ‘a Latin American archbishop, who embodied God’s love for the poor and was martyred while celebrating the eucharist’, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, ‘a German Lutheran theologian, who argued for ‘costly grace’ and was executed by the Nazis’ [12].
In all of this we might see the truth of Paul’s reflection to the Romans, when he said that
We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. ... if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. [13]
We are wheat and weeds together, in this world, a world which is still in the making, just as we are still in the making. How can we oppose evil without being made evil ourselves? By living in Christ, who models this way for us; by living in hope as we wait in labour for our redemption.
Notes
* I preached an abridged version for the Queen Camel 8.00am service.
[1] Wikipedia: Operation Trojan Horse
[2] The question with which Walter Wink opens Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. This seminal book has underpinned my theology for the past 20 years or more; I was redirected to it again by Paul Neuchterlein’s Reflections and Questions on today’s reading in his Girardian Lectionary, Year A, Proper 11a.
[3] Romans 3:22b-25a
[4] Neuchterlein, paragraph (5) in Reflections and Questions, Girardian Lectionary, Year A, Proper 11a.
[5] Mark 3:23-30
[6] Neuchterlein, paragraph (2) in Reflections and Questions, Girardian Lectionary, Year A, Proper 11a.
[7] Romans 3:22b-25a
[8] Matthew 5.38-41, Good News Translation. The Jubilee Bible, 2000, also agrees with Wink’s interpretation of the original Aramaic: ‘but I say unto you, That ye resist not with evil’
[9] From my sermon Loving your enemies - by turning cheeky, preached in Devon in 2011, which borrows heavily from Walter Wink’s Nonviolence for the violent, a talk given at the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship GA Peace Breakfast, Louisville, Kentucky, June 13, 2001. Here Wink expounds his ideas on Jesus' radical teachings in Matthew 5. Other essential Walter Wink writings include Naming the Powers; Language of Power in the New Testament, Unmasking the Powers; The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, and Engaging the Powers; Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Go to www.walterwink.com for more from the man himself.
[10] Wikipedia: Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa).
[11] Wikipedia: Alcoholics Anonymous
[12] Diana Butler Bass, A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story, p.293
[13] Romans 8.22-25
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