Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
July 23, 2017
11 Proper A
My
grandmother’s favorite flower was Queen Anne’s Lace. Whenever
we were out and about and saw a field of Queen Anne’s Lace, we had to stop, no
matter where we were, so she could pick the flowers. She might spot the plants in a cemetery, a
park, or even someone’s yard. Regardless
of the location, she thought nothing of hopping out of the car, scissors in
hand, to score a beautiful bunch of her favorite flower. When she got home, she pressed the flowers
between the pages of an ancient, enormous encyclopedia. From what I could tell, flowers only went
into the pages of the book. Nothing ever
came out. But the joy my grandmother had
in finding and saving the most perfect specimens of Queen Anne’s lace was
perfect and complete.
So,
imagine my surprise when I found out that Queen Anne’s lace is actually a
weed! No wonder we never got arrested for
trespassing and cutting other people’s flowers.
What my grandmother saw as utterly beautiful and worthy of preserving
was actually something most people pull from their gardens. If beautiful Queen Anne’s lace is actually a
weed, how on earth are we supposed to tell weeds from flowers? Gardening is so complicated!
Jesus
poses a similar dilemma this morning, but of course Jesus is not talking about
actual weeds. Jesus is comparing the
Kingdom of Heaven with someone who sowed good seed in his field, expecting good
wheat to grow, but got weeds as well. When
the slaves want to destroy the weeds so that the wheat can grow, Jesus says
“no.” In pulling the weeds, the wheat
would be uprooted and die as well. The
slaves want to make sure that the weeds are destroyed. Jesus wants to make sure the wheat will
flourish.
Any
good gardener knows that for the good plants to flourish, the weeds must
go. Otherwise, the good plants will not
get enough sunshine or enough nutrients from the soil to grow. So, the slaves are right in their desire to
pull the weeds. But Jesus is not at all
concerned with good gardening practices.
Jesus is concerned with the gospel.
But
what is the gospel message that Jesus is trying to convey? After explaining the parable to the disciples,
Jesus says “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of
his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into
the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then
the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let
anyone with ears listen!”
Matthew is the only
gospel writer to be quite so concerned about the end of the world, the final
judgement, and weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. All of the great weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth stories are in Matthew’s gospel. Matthew is the one who tells us about the
wise and foolish virgins, and the separation of sheep from the goats. The Christians to whom Matthew wrote were
quite concerned to divide the world into insiders and outsiders, the righteous
and the unrighteous, the clean and the unclean, those who will survive the
fiery judgement and those who will not.
Sometimes our world seems a lot like Matthew’s, with much press being
given to who is in and who is out, whose behavior is acceptable and whose is
not, who is righteous and who is not, who is saved, and who is not. Some things never change. Is the gospel message simply that at the end
of time, those of us who are weed, whoever we are, will burn and those of us
who are wheat, whoever we are, will shine like the sun?
The
problem with that version of the gospel is that it does not fit with the rest
of Jesus’ ministry and teachings. Jesus spent most of his time eating with
sinners, curing lepers, inviting the outcasts, and otherwise engaging people
considered by the religious authorities to be weeds. Jesus spent much of the rest of his time
challenging those religious authorities and confronting the people who were
considered righteous, or the wheat. So,
in the same Kingdom of Heaven where the outsiders are insiders and the last are
first, might it be the case that those who appear to be weeds are actually
wheat and those who appear to be wheat might actually be weeds? And how are we to tell which is which?
I
believe that this is Jesus’ point. We
humans cannot always tell the weeds from the wheat, so we are not to be about
the business of pronouncing final judgement about who is in the Kingdom of God
and who is not. Weeding is not our
job. This does not mean that we are to
ignore violence, condone evil, or endorse oppression. It simply means that ultimate judgement about
who is in the Kingdom of God and who is not, is God’s call not ours. The reading from Genesis and the reading from
Romans remind us of this fact. In Genesis,
we hear God say to Jacob in a dream “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your
father and the God of Isaac.” God, in
effect, says to Jacob “I am the one who chose the chosen people.” Paul reminds the Christians in Rome, and all
Christians, that we are chosen by God as God’s adopted children. Then, the Psalmist describes the trust he has
in the God who makes these choices with these words: “Lord, you have searched
me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my
thoughts from afar....Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know
my restless thoughts.” This is the God
who will separate the wheat from the weeds on the last day.
When the slaves ask the master if he would like
them to gather the weeds from the fields, the householder replies “No, for in
gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat along with them.” The workers want to make their calling the
destruction of the weeds. Ironically, in
destroying the weeds, the wheat will be destroyed also, and the mission of the
weeds will be fulfilled. Only God can
separate the weeds from the wheat without damage. The gospel calls us to let go of our need to
weed, and live our lives sowing the good seed of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Amen.
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