Weeds In the Garden, First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 7/17/2011

Weeds in the Garden
By Rev Steven R Mitchell
First Congregational UCC, Rock Springs, WY 7/17/2011
Based on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 & Wisdom of Solomon 12:13, 16-19

Last Sunday we looked at the Parable of the Sower and I shared with you my childhood experiences of gardening. This week we are again looking at a garden and what to do about those unwanted plants that seem to thrive more abundantly than what we'd like.
I grew up in a very large extended family, where my maternal grandmother was the strong Matriarch of the family. It was through my grandmother that the family’s religious education was passed down (not from formal reading of scripture, but rather through verbal teachings); the primary basis for morality was implanted by her understanding and experience from her childhood education in the scripture, of behavior within the church, and from life experiences. One of the axioms that I grew up with was: Why do I need to go to church? I can be just as close to God and am probably more Christian in my actions and believes than those ‘Hypocrites’ who go to church every Sunday. Has anyone ever heard that justification for not going to worship? How about this one: I can’t stand so and so, and until they die or leave the church, I’m not coming back. Or possibly, I’ve been so hurt by Joe Blow, I can’t step foot back into that sanctuary. (The reality generally being, they don’t step foot in any sanctuary.)
Matthew is writing this parable, supposedly taught by Jesus, to a church that was young and gaining new members and as a community of faith, was struggling with the reality that not everyone who had joined them had the same goals, or looked at or understood the teachings of Jesus in the same way. In other words there was internal struggle.
We struggle today with the same issue of not being unified, both as local congregations and as Christian Churches worldwide, usually around theological understanding. So much so, we within the larger church family have divided ourselves into categories or labels such as “liberal”, or “conservative”, or more sever “fundamentalist”, we have set up a situation that creates division and disunity by creating an “us” and “them”. I hear this same language to some extent used by some who volunteer at Broadway Bargains and by non-volunteers who attend First Congregational, openly use “us” and “them” language, setting up an adversarial atmosphere, instead of us all recognizing both bodies as being one and working toward the same goals. It is because of the adversarial atmosphere within and between churches and church related organizations, the non-churched folk’s question, “Why would I want to belong to something where so much fighting going on?” Weeds in the garden!
Last week’s parable focused on the planting of the seed and how it produced, this week the parable presumably uses good ground, but also gets mixed results because of the actions of an enemy (someone came in during the night and sowed seeds that were weeds among the field of good seed.) Let me remind you that ‘parables’ are not stories that give direct answers, but rather are designed to speak more to the “heart” and less to the mind. For when we think we have “understood” a parable, chances are we are more likely to be mistaken in its meaning. But if we’re made uncomfortable by the challenge of a parable, we’re probably getting a little closer to the heart of its meaning. Sermon Seeds, UCC, 7/17/2011 Kathy Huey
When we look at this parable within the context of the church, we can understand that it is God who has planted the good seed. Yet what church has not experienced weeds within it's congregation! Remember a little thing in the life of the church called, “The Crusades”? The church justified on “spiritual” reasoning that it needed to go to Jerusalem and purify the Holy City. We have sense been able to understand a more basic reason of “greed” to have been the underlying motivation. Weeds in the garden!
This past Thurs, I was reading in the New York Times, an article that was discussing the battles over abortion. “Taking Fight Back to Wichita, Doctor Seeks Abortion Clinic”. Listen to some of the article: Not long ago, Dr. Mila Means, the physician trying to open an abortion clinic in this city, received a letter advising her to check under her car each morning – because maybe today is the day someone places an explosive under it.” The note said. There was reason for concern: the last doctor to provide abortions here was shot to death (at the church where he worshipped, by a Christian from Kansas City), because of his work. I recall reading on face book the comments made by my fundamentalist Christ believing niece, praising the actions of the murderer – as doing God’s will in order to prevent the killing of unborn children. Weeds in the garden!
I am bringing this topic as an example, because it holds two sides of theological reflection within the church, those who we call “prolife” and those we call “prochoice”. Depending on which side of the issue you find yourself, the odds are that you have set up a “them” vs. “us” stance, and know full well that God is on your side. When we live with attitudes of “us” vs. “them”, we are unable to approach an issue in order to discuss it and find solutions that everyone can live with.
Here in Matthew, we can see where the evil doers will be judged, but by who? Not by the church, and not by humanity, but rather, will be collected at the end of time by the angles and judged by God. Then we have a much softer version in our reading from the Wisdom of Solomon, where it is written, “Although you [God] are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness, and with great forbearance you govern us. Through such works you have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins.”
Boy this is a true blow to those of us who feel we need to take “righteous” actions towards those that we perceive to be doing evil. Barbara Brown Taylor describes the frustration of “good” church members who recognize “weeds” in the midst of the church that ought to be a refuge from the tainted world saying: ‘If God really is in charge, then why isn’t the world a beautiful sea of waving grain? Or at least the church – couldn’t the church, at least, be a neat field of superior wheat?’
Then as now, “however the weeds get there, most of us have got them – not only in our yards but also in our lives: thorny people who were not part of the plan, who are not welcome, sucking up sunlight and water that were meant for good plants, not weeds”. Doesn’t this kind of attitude set up an either/or, Us and Them situation, where some of us are “wheat” and others are “weeds”? Who can tell the difference, and who can presume to pull the weeds without harming the tender wheat?
Religious communities, that’s who…at least we often presume to do just that, according to Richard Swanson: “even communities that affirm the radical otherness of God, that claim that God is above and beyond all human distinctions, even such communities assume that, if we must divide Us from Them, God is properly on our side of the dividing line [as was the thinking of the man who shot the Dr of the abortion clinic in Wichita, KS]. Carefully developed theologies, balanced and properly in awe of the majesty of God, hide in the other room when Us/Them divisions are being made.”
Kermit the Frog may claim that “It’s not easy being green,” but Barbara Taylor again observes that it’s not easy being wheat, either, having to compete with the weeds for fertile soil. How many people have thought they were doing the right thing, even if they use “hostile means” to rid the church of troublesome weeds, when they’re really doing the same thing as those they are fighting against? But, Taylor points out, “God said no!” Is it possible that the mystery of the parable has something to do with God’s timing, and our inability to judge or, for that matter, our unwillingness to trust in God’s own judgment? God’s judgment, of course, is always better for someone else than it is for us. Still, there is evil and wrongdoing, and surely we’re supposed to do something.
Taylor says that “what God seems to know is that the best and only real solution to evil is to bear good fruit. In the movie "The Greenlantern", the head lantern asked the Immortals to fashion a ring made from the lake of firery fear, in order to combat the force of "fear" that was killing the universe. The newest green lantern begged the Immortals not to go down that path - for there would b no return and there would be only destruction! Our job, in a mixed field, is not to give ourselves to the enemy by devoting all our energy to the destruction of the weeds, but to mind our own business, so to speak – our business being the reconciliation of the world through the practice of unshielded love. If we will give ourselves to that, God will take care of the rest…”
“Thank God, God judges us” this takes the burden off of us. Thomas Long writes, “It is easy for Christians to look through the church windows at the world and to think of ourselves as God’s special insiders, the ones who will ‘shine like the sun’ in the end. We can relish with smug self-satisfaction the thought of worldly types being rounded up at the great final, collected like weeds and burned up in the everlasting fire. However, we are, ourselves, a mixture of good and evil. Sometimes we are faithful, and sometimes we are not…”
Let us be reminded that God sends both sun and rain on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. If God shows such generosity of spirit, can [we] do any less? It’s hard to be a faithful follower of Christ, yet we must remember that Jesus told us to love our enemies. Sermon Seeds UCC, 7/17/2011 If we can work at doing this, we will be helping to stop the division that comes with the Us verse Them, and will allow us to place our energy on cultivating the “good” seed that God has placed within each human being. Amen