The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, 2014 – Genesis 28:10-19a; Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
We long, do we not, for the kingdom come: that peace should reign in this world torn by war, where airplanes full of regular people can be randomly shot out of the sky while in the Holy Land the children of Isaac and Ishmael continue their unholy war. We long for truth, spoken especially in places of power, unhindered by interest groups and the political and financial demands of position. We long for charity, caritas, the love we know in Jesus and long to know in his followers. We long for a church whose people are both gentle and honest; where we know how to care for each other.
This is the prayer of our hearts. It is what we know we should be, what surely we could be in the grace given us in Christ; what we yearn for the world to be, this beautiful and embattled world that is God’s.
And sometimes we are the people of God, a moment of the kingdom, and sometimes the world is good; there are moments when we show forth the fullness of grace. But often — far too often for the peace of our hearts — neither we who are Christ’s people nor the world are places of beauty at all.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while the men were sleeping his enemy came and sowed tares in the midst of the grain.
This is the striking thing about the kingdom of heaven as Jesus describes it. It does not all come up roses. Between the sowing of the seed and its harvest, there is a gap. And into this gap creeps ho diabolos, the enemy of the Word, the power of the shadow to imitate and invert, to darken and to distort, even in the souls of human beings.
This is the gap in which we live.
It is the time of grace…and of the last shudder of the scorpion’s tale, lashing out against the light. Ho diabolos sows in this gap a shadow-kingdom, mirroring the seed, mirroring its growth, but producing no good fruit.
Note this: the plants are indistinguishable until they start to bear fruit.
And this is, in this time between, unexpectedly a piece of good news.
Wheat and weed grow up together: the weed is parasitic, borrowing from the good seed even its form. In the first place, this power of evil in the world is wholly secondary, a reaction of hostility to the action of God’s grace. In the beginning there is only the Word, and the good seed sown.
The weed must imitate the wheat; it must grow close by if it is to have any existence at all.
And in this proximity is the second aspect of the good news. For who knows which way the seed might go? Who knows but that the tare might change its mind and live? Who knows but that the wheat might in this play a role?
The householder has an odd response to the discovery of weeds in the field he has sown.
“Look at those awful weeds!” his servants say. “Want us to go out and pull them up right now?”
This sounds like a good idea to me. If my kids should offer to weed the garden… (well, that would be the kingdom come!) But if they should offer to weed the garden I would say, “Yes! Fantastic! Get rid of those weeds, the sooner the better. Pull them all out.”
But this is not what Jesus’ gardener says.
“No,” he says, “Leave it. Certainly do not pull up the weeds.”
Is this not in fact disappointing? Would it not be better to get rid of the bad eggs, to live right now in a world that is all good, so that people do not kill and destroy, or even cheat or lie or step on other people, on all God’s holy mountain? What would be wrong with pulling up the weeds?
In our garden we have some phlox. It is really lovely—it grows tall on slender stalks until finally it bursts into great pink blossoms at the top. This year we were thrilled to see it growing taller than ever, with thicker stalks; reaching toward the sky. We could hardly wait for the blooms.
But it didn’t bloom. It wasn’t phlox at all. It was a noxious weed masquerading as phlox, growing up right beside it, so close, looking so much like it, that we couldn’t tell them apart.
We couldn’t tear them apart—because the roots were intertwined. The stalks had grown together at the bottom. To uproot the weed would have destroyed the flower too.
Wheat and weed are intertwined, in the world where the Word is sown. And rather than lose a single good plant, the gardener in the field of God lets all the weeds grow.
In our contemporary zeal for justice we would do well to remember this: wheat and weed grow close together, in the field of God’s planting. It is not always easy to tell which is which. Justice is a large word. It invokes the harvest. To the people who think they know, who think indeed to serve the judgement of God, to all the good people who want to rush out and pull all the weeds, the gardener says, “No.”
Wait. It is not your job, and it is not the time.
The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are the angels.
So Jesus says to his followers, who perhaps are over-eager. So Jesus says to us all, in the time between.
When we were in Oxford some years ago we saw the great old doors of Balliol, now hanging by the gardens. They are singed and blackened by the flames of the fire in which Ridley and Latimer and then Cranmer burnt.
Our task is not to destroy the weed, because we might destroy the wheat with it. Our task is not to destroy the weed, because it might be the wheat we destroy. We cannot see and we do not know, and when we are most certain, most zealous in our urge to silence and to root out, then we are most dangerous.
“Once has God spoken; twice have I heard it: power belongs to God.”
Seek to bear good fruit, and leave judgement to God.
The harvester is not worried by the news of the weeds. Note his grand insouciance, his patience, and his care. Do not uproot the weeds, because you might destroy the good seed too. For they grow close together, the good seed and the bad, in the world and in a human life. This is also what the gardener knows. Wheat and weed do not look so very different much of the time, and it is only in view of the whole of a life that one knows.
Think of Lord of the Rings.
There is Gollum, tormented and lost—deep in the grip of the Ring, tortured by Mordor, despised by all. There is Gollum whose heart is distorted; bad seed if ever there was one. Yet in the warmth of Frodo’s compassion his heart begins to change. Even Gollum almost turns again, and is saved.
He does not, in the end. The moment passes, that moment of grace, when he may turn and grow and live. The moment passes, and he leads Frodo instead into the lair of Shelob.
And then there is Boromir, heroic and fallen, Boromir the representative Man.
What is he: wheat or weed? Can you tell?
What is he when he eyes the sword of Gondor with such longing, the sword that is not his to bear? What is he when he desires the Ring? To save the world, he wants it; to save his people and the city of men. Is he wheat, or a weed? Until the very end, we do not know; we cannot tell. He does great damage in the devices and desires of his heart; he the heroic betrays Frodo the small, Frodo who is his friend.
And yet Boromir bears fruit in the end. In the end he chooses well. For other small friends, he dies. And when he dies for Merry and Pippin’s sake Boromir can be seen as he is: now the true wheat rising in the garden of God.
The gardener is patient with this world that is his field. In spite of the harm we do, he is patient. He waits for the full fruit, the sum of a life—or a church, or a world—and its flowering. He waits for a time that he knows, and asks us to practice a similar patience.
Because who knows? Even the one with evil in his heart may turn from his evil and live. “I say this to the tares,” St. Augustine says, “for they are in the field. And it may be that they who today are tares, may tomorrow be wheat.”
This is where the wheat comes in, the final aspect of this parable’s good news.
Wheat and weed grow close together in the Providence of God. In this proximity, the wheat may play a role.
Sister let me be your servant;
Let me be as Christ to you, the hymn says.
Pray that I may have the grace
To let you be my servant too.
Let me hold the Christ-light for you,
in the night-time of your fear….
In the night-time of your failing, and of mine; in each choice to hurt and to destroy.
Let us be a Christ-light, for each other and for the world, in this time between.
If the world is full of tears, we can still shine. We can weep with the world’s weeping and pray for its new life. We can cry with the Spirit in our hearts: cry “Abba, Father”; cry for the sorrow of the people, cry for the evil that we do. Cry with Christ in that other garden, that night in Gethsemane.
That our heart may be for this world; that for this people we may spend and be spent.
Frodo carried Gollum with him, as he carried the Ring. And in this he lightened Gollum’s poor heart. This is the path of salvation; this is the way of hope.
This is the good news in the story of the weeds and the wheat: This world is the arena of redemption, and we may be pointers to the light.
When we sing to God in heaven
We shall find such harmony,
Born of all we’ve known together
Of Christ’s love and agony.
AMEN.
