Living with Weeds
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United, Aurora, CO 7/20/2014
Based on Matthew
13:24-30, 36-43
In
this morning’s parable Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone
who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came
and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.” I cannot help but think that on this second
anniversary of the Aurora Theater shootings and along with the two major news
headlines of this week, Israel’s invasion
of the Gaza strip and the murder of
292 people on Malaysian Airline MH17, as it was shot out of the sky over
the Ukraine, as amplified examples of “weeds” in the world.
As
I struggle to understand such violence in our world there is a certain reality
to this parable about the evil one sowing bad seeds alongside the good
seed. Yet, one of the more troubling parts
of this morning’s parable comes in the very first sentence: the
kingdom of heaven may be compared to…
Jesus often preached that the kingdom of God is among us, here and
now. Heaven is the place we think of as where
God dwells; and dwells for “eons”, meaning past, present, and future. Heaven over the centuries has developed in
the minds of many people as something that can only be experienced after one
dies. As I have shared in the past,
Jesus’ understanding of heaven is it exists both in the present and in the
future. So if the kingdom of heaven is
what I presently am living in, is there any hope for peace in the midst of so
much violence, hatred, and fear? And is
the heaven of the future going to be any different?
Rev
Kathryn Huey shares: This week’s sower
presumably uses good ground, but gets mixed results because of the actions of
an enemy. There’s tension and conflict
in this week’s story, active not passive resistance to the work of God the
sower. Perhaps those early Christians (who
Matthew was addressing) had a stronger
sense of their own powerlessness, feeling small and vulnerable in opposition to
the powerful but (clearly) wicked forces around them.UCC Sermon Seeds 7/15/2014
Do we not experience
these same feelings of powerlessness as we constantly learn of massive acts of
evil going on throughout the world? Young
boys being kidnapped and taught to become killing machines, young girls being
kidnapped and sold into slavery and sex trafficing, never ending killings
between Palestinians and Israelis’, senseless attacks on civilians either on
the ground or in the air, mass shootings of school children or in public places,
and the list just goes on and on; how can we not feel powerless and at times
lose our hope for a better world? When
will God’s kingdom actually come to fruition?
Matthew’s
story could be speaking about the world at large but he might also be addressing
what was being experienced in a rapidly growing church. As a church that was young and gaining new
members, the community of faith was struggling with the reality that not
everyone who had joined them had the same goals or understood the teachings of
Jesus in the same way. In other words
there was internal struggle; weeds sown in their garden.
The
church struggles 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 with 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” verses “them” attitude. It is because of the adversarial atmosphere
within and between churches and church related organizations, that non-churched
folk’s question, “Why would I want to belong to something where so much fighting going on?” Weeds planted in God’s garden!
In
the summer of 2011, the New York Times ran an article about 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.” There was reason for concern: the last doctor
to provide abortions here was shot to death (at his United Methodist church
where he was worshipping, by a Christian
from Kansas City), because of his work. I
recall reading on face book comments made by some fundamentalist Christians,
praising the actions of the murderer – as doing God’s will in order to prevent
the killing of unborn children. I wonder if this might be an example of
weeds being pulled out among the wheat?
I bring this article
up as an example because it holds two sides of theological reflection within
the church, those who believe in “prolife” and those who believe in
“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. The reality of an attitude of “us” vs. “them”
creates a road block to discuss an issue and prevents finding possible solutions
that would benefit all.
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. In the Wisdom of Solomon, 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?
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?
(I think of how the Nazis treated the German Jews and how Israel is
now treating the Palestinians.) 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.
Last month we initiated
the Take 5 program. We are working toward
becoming an actively planting church; planting an awareness of love, peace, and
mercy as an alternative to fear, hatred, and violence. I wonder
if any of you can share with us this morning what you have experienced by picking
up these brochures and leaving them in places where others might pick them up and
read? As active planters, we are opening
ourselves up to having people come visit us who might not do things the way we do
them, they might not think the way we think, we might have to make changes in how
we do things, but we are sowers of God’s love.
Taylor says that “what God seems to know is that the best and only real solution to evil is to
bear good fruit. 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…”
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,
7/15/2014 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
No comments:
Post a Comment