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Sermon for Proper 11A         

July 21, 2002

If we were to take the basic message of Jesus’ parable in our Gospel lesson today and squeeze it into one sentence, it might come out saying something like this: “You’ve got to take the bad with the good.” Jesus’ image of a field where wheat and weeds are all growing together is an image of a world in which good things and bad things, good events and bad events, good people and bad people, are all tangled up together, and in a very basic way you just can’t get one without the other. The parable of the weeds in the wheat says to us, “You’ve got to take the bad with the good.”

Of course, if that’s what the parable says, it’s understandable if our first reaction is, “Well, duh!” We don’t need a parable to tell us that. We already know that there are good people and not-so-good-people and downright evil people in the world; any casual glance at the television news or cursory scan of today’s newspaper will tell us that. We already know that our lives encompass good memories and bad memories, that we’ve made smart decisions and stupid decisions, that each and every one of us have done things that have led to creativity and accomplishment and success for ourselves and for others and we’ve done things that have turned out to be hurtful and damaging and destructive to ourselves and to others. We already know that our own personalities, our own selves, have positive and negative qualities, a dark side and a light side—and like Annakin Skywalker in Star Wars, we know that the presence of the dark side is always lurking close by, even in our very best desires and ambitions and intentions. We don’t need a parable to tell us we have to take the bad with the good; we have our noses rubbed in it every day.

And yet perhaps we do need to be told that—or at least reminded of it from time to time. Because we human beings have a pervasive tendency to want to take the good in life, and to shuffle the bad off to someplace else. We only want half of the equation. It makes me think of a Peanuts cartoon I saw years ago: Charlie Brown and Lucy are talking together, and Charlie Brown says something about life havings its ups and downs, and Lucy goes off into a tirade: “Why!? Why does life have to have ups and downs? Why can’t I just have ups? Why can’t I just have ups and then even upper ups?” Lucy carries on until Charlie Brown just puts his head down and says, “Good grief!” We tend not to want the bads with the goods; we want goods, and then we want even gooder goods.

In that respect we’re kind of like the farm workers in the parable. When they see the weeds growing along with the wheat, they immediately want to go out and pull up all the weeds. They want the field for the wheat alone; they want just the good stuff, without any of the wasteful, futile, unproductive stuff they know is out there.

But the householder in the parable knows better. “No,” he tells the farmworkers, “you can’t go pull up the weeds; because if you do, you’ll end up damaging the wheat, too.” And there are a couple of reasons why the householder says that. First, wheat is a kind of domesticated grass, and grasses grow with extensive, delicate, complex root systems. A grass plant is not like a carrot or a potato, where there’s one big root that’s easy to identify and protect; but grasses have lots of little roots that spread out and intertwine with other roots and rhyzomes around them. If the farmhands were to go pull up the weeds, chances are good they’d damage the root systems of the wheat plants, too. They might want to do good, but they’d wind up unintentionally doing harm. And to make matters more complicated, there are some weeds that look an awful lot like wheat as long as the plants are still young and growing—you can’t tell which is weed and which is wheat until the plants have reached their full maturity and have become everything they’re going to become. If the farmhands were to go out and pull up the young plants now, chances are good they’d end up pulling up some weeds and pulling up some wheat and letting some wheat grow and letting some weeds grow—and the net result might be worse for the field than it was in the first place. There just isn’t any way to separate the weeds from the wheat without doing some unintended damage along the way; the good and the bad are too deeply intertwined to have one without the other. So the householder says, “Let them both grow up together; let each plant become what it can become; don’t try to judge them too quickly; and in the harvest, in the end, when eveything is complete, then we can tell which is which.”

And that, it seems to me, is the real wisdom of the parable, that’s the thing we do need a parable to tell us. It’s not just the platitude that you have to take the bad with the good—but the message is that sometimes you can’t tell in advance what will turn out to be bad and what will turn out to be good—and therefore you shouldn’t rush to judgment between them. Our first tendency is to be like the farmhands; but the parable tells us that God is like the householder, God is merciful and patient, God always allows things and people and events to grow to the fullness of all they can be before God judges them fruitful or futile—and the parable invites us to be godly in that way, too.

And the really remarkable grace in that invitation is the way it encourages us to discover that some things we thought had been weeds really turn out to be wheat—how some of the events and experiences we go through seem difficult or damaging or disappointing at the time, and yet grow in us into bearing the seeds of of wisdom and compassion and love. When we lived in Michigan I knew a family who had a child with Down’s syndrome. They already had a little girl and a little boy, about 5 years old and 3-1/2 years old—just about Maggie and Aidan’s ages when we knew them. And their first two kids were active and energetic and busy—and quite enough of a handful to take care of as they were. And both parents had jobs, and worked long hours to make ends meet, and shuffled their work hours around so that they could share more equally in caring for the kids and didn’t have to farm them out to childcare very often. And money was kind of tight in their household. And then they got the news from the amniocentesis that their third child would be born with Down’s syndrome—and while they couldn’t predict in advance how severe his mental disability would be, the doctor had to be honest with the family that he would never be “normal” like their other children. Well of course the news was devastating to them. Their family life was full—sometimes even tense—as it was; how could they possibly add a special-needs child and have any hope of making it work? In fact, their doctor even suggested that if they wanted to abort the fetus and not have challenge of a special-needs child, that could be arranged for them. But they didn’t believe in abortion as a way to solve problems like that, so she went ahead and carried the child to term. And it was not an easy thing for them. It meant extra childcare and extra medical bills and special equipment around the house; it meant having to do some things twice as slowly with their new baby as they had done with their other kids; it meant teaching their older children that their baby brother required special attention and care, even from them—and it all took its toll, it all added its measure of anxiety and frustration to the lives that they had known.

But after a time they began to find something else happening with them as well. They found that, because they had to pay extra attention to their third child, they were developing the habit of paying extra attention to each other as well. They found that, because it took longer to do things with their third child, they were slowing down, not rushing around so much, taking longer to do things, and to enjoy things, with each other as well. They found that their third child laughed more easily and hugged more often, and they all began to learn to laugh more and to hug more from him. Over time, they found that their third child, their “problem” child, their “retarded” child, was teaching them, was bringing them a gift of patience and wisdom and compassion and love, a gift they never would have known without him. What had seemed like weeds growing in the field of their family life turned out to be the finest wheat, the bread of a communion that went deeper than anything they’d even known.

Of course, that didn’t mean that everything for them was rosy all the time; they still had days when it felt like their life was growing mostly weeds. And certainly not every story like this has such a happy ending. Not every weed turns out to be wheat. But the point of the story—and the point of the parable—is that in our life the good and the bad, the difficult and the joyful, the seemingly futile and the untimately fruitful, are very deeply intertwined, and it takes mercy and patience and compassionate judgment to let things grow to their rightful harvest. And the promise of the Gospel is that, with the mercy and the patience and the grace that come from God, even some of the weediest parts of our lives can grow into the wheat of saving and redeeming love.

That’s the love that Jesus shows for us; and that’s the love we all can share in him.

In the Name of God: the Holy One, the Holy Word, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Readings For Sunday, July 21st, 2002

The First Lesson                        Wisdom 12:13,16-19

For neither is there any god besides you, whose care is for all people, to whom you should prove that you have not judged unjustly; for your strength is the source of righteousness, and your sovereignty over all causes you to spare all. For you show your strength when people doubt the completeness of your power, and you rebuke any insolence among those who know it. Although you are sovereign in strength, you judge with mildness and with great forbearance you govern us; for you have power to act whenever you choose. 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.

The Second Lesson     Romans 8:18-25

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

The Holy Gospel        Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Jesus put before them another parable: "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. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?'  But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 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!”