Pastor Dismer’s sermon from Sunday, July 20, 2008

“Exploring Jesus' parable, we can ask ourselves if we are growing like weeds or wheat.”

Matthew 13:24-43

Our gospel lesson today invites us to use our ears again as we encounter another of Jesus’ parables.

Let me begin with a few reminders as we listen:

• Parables are stories – little, short stories, about ordinary, earthly things: straightforward stories on the surface, but underneath, if we “have ears to hear” there are challenging ideas, hidden questions, deeper truths.
• Jesus taught in parables. He told stories about the Kingdom of God. He didn’t lecture on the nature of God or God’s kingdom, he simply told stories.
• And Jesus rarely explained what his stories were “supposed” to mean. He invited his hearers to understand with their hearts.

That said, today’s parable, like last week’s, has an “explanation” attached. And as I did last week, I am going to urge you to listen with your heart, because this is a parable. Understanding it may seem, on the surface, to be straightforward, but there is always something hidden in a parable that as a listener you are expected to find for yourself.

For example, if you think about it, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that Jesus would suggest

an enemy would creep into someone’s field and sow weeds? No one needs to sow weeds. They arrive quite easily without any help at all.

If we “blame” the weeds on “the evil one”, we take no responsibility ourselves for our farming practices.

And looking beyond the agricultural interpretation, this parable suggests that life is full of both good and bad. However, if we blame the “weeds” on the devil, then we can easily blame all the bad in this world on the devil, and excuse ourselves from any part we play in it.

Never mind that we recently had an epistle lesson from the apostle Paul, where he confessed that the very things he knew he should not do, he nevertheless did; and the things he knew he should do he somehow didn’t do!

So, let’s look at the parable itself. A field of wheat was planted. As the wheat grew, weeds also appeared in the field and grew. The farm workers were concerned about the weeds. They wondered where they came from! (we could have told them!) They asked the owner of the field if they should go out into the field and pull out all the weeds.

The owner said no, if you do that you might also pull out some of the wheat. He said when it is time for the harvest you can pull out the weeds and burn them, and then harvest the wheat.

What was Jesus trying to teach here?

Many people have asked Karen and me if we struggle with why our granddaughter is handicapped. Why do bad things happen? Why doesn’t God prevent such things, or fix them all. Was Jesus trying to teach his disciples that good and evil will always exist, side by side?

He once told his disciples that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.

If the owner said wait until the harvest, and then the weeds will be collected and burned, was this is what Jesus meant in his story about the final judgment, when God will separate the sheep from the goats?

Was Jesus pointing out that at the end we had better hope we are wheat, or sheep, and not weeds, or goats?

We could reasonably conclude that this is what the parable is about, and stop there. But what about in the meantime?

I have to say that I believe there is another whole way to look at this.

I know that Jesus did not always say or do what people expected him to say or do.

He often said surprising and hard things, which at face value were puzzling.

When someone wanted to follow Jesus, but said,” Let me go bury my father first,” Jesus responded: “Let the dead bury the dead.”

Taking that at face value doesn’t make sense. But if Jesus was looking into the man’s heart, and saw that he was stalling – that he wasn’t ready to commit to following Jesus, then we understand the rebuke in a totally different way.

So, let’s look at this parable about wheat and weeds and ask again, what was Jesus teaching with this story?

If you have lived in or around a farming community, you know that harvest occurs regularly. Farmers do not plant once, and wait until the end of time to harvest.

You also know that there is a time for removing weeds as well as a time to leave them in the field.

When we lived in Nebraska, we learned about a popular summer job for teens. They rode on the back of a wagon pulled by a tractor, with spray bottles of herbicides in their hands. Their job was to spray any weeds they saw as they rode over the newly emerging crops.

That was the right time to destroy weeds. Later on, when the wheat was taller, farmers did not want equipment or people out in the fields, because then the wheat would be damaged. Weeds that escaped the herbicides were left to grow among the wheat.

How did Jesus deal with weeds, with evil, with bad things, in his life? By his actions did he suggest that there is nothing to do but wait until the “end of the age”?

People in Jesus’ day believed that bad things were the result of someone’s sin. When blind men and lepers came to him, did Jesus say, “Too bad, God will judge whose sin caused this at the close of the age?”

No, he healed them!

When Jesus encountered a man possessed by an evil spirit, he drove the spirit out, into a herd of pigs - even ‘though the pigs then ran away and fell over a cliff.

When Jesus found corrupt moneychangers in the temple, did he shake his head and say to himself, “Well, that’s the way life is. Judge not. God will take care of this at the end of the age?”

No, he waded in with a whip, tipping over the moneychangers’ tables and saying that what they were doing was blasphemous.

Jesus did once say, “Judge not” but the rest of that admonition was, “Lest you be judged.”

We have to be pretty clear about when we are wheat and when we are weeds! That suggests to me that I must daily question myself: my attitudes, my choices, my behavior. Am I growing like a weed or something healthier?

That is one of the hidden challenges for me in this parable about the wheat and the weeds. Another is this: am I concerned about the weeds? Do I care about the bad that is mixed with the good in life? Do I have any responsibility to pull the weeds out at some point and bundle them to be burned? How do I know when the time is right?

I could leave these things up to God, and in the end, as Jesus said, at the final harvest GOD will separate the weeds from the wheat.

But Jesus’ example was to live with mercy and justice. He left the final judgment up to God, but in his day to day life, Jesus did not turn his back on people who were ill or discouraged or in trouble.

He did not turn his back on situations that were not right. He was not afraid to speak the truth and he was not afraid to act. This is a challenging parable we are considering today.

We could read it and find an excuse to blame everything on the devil.

We could read it and leave everything up to God to judge at the end of time.

Or, we could ask ourselves where we fit in this strange story about wheat and weeds, harvest time and judgment, and compare our answer to the life Jesus lived and invited us to follow as disciples.

Let us pray for insight, discernment and wisdom, to know when we are the weeds, when we are to go weeding, and when to wait for God’s judgment. Amen.