Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (Jeremiah 29:1-7)
How To Tell Them Apart
James Sledge July 17, 2011
Most of you have seen the raised beds that we put in this spring, beds that are now filled with beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and –just to humor my southern roots – okra. People show up faithfully each week to weed the beds, to water it, and to pick the produce. Our small efforts are part of a growing army of community garden plots all over the city, and like us, many are taking their harvest to food pantries so they have some fresh produce.
Now imagine for a moment that some devious soul went around to all these community gardens sowing them with weeds. And worse, imagine that these weeds somehow mimicked the good plants, appearing to be vegetables themselves until they reached maturity, only then becoming distinguishable from the genuine vegetables. .
That’s the situation in the parable Jesus tells this morning. Our Bible simply says that an enemy sowed weeds, and I understand why. Most of us wouldn’t know what zizanium was, though that’s what the parable actually says. And even if translators used its common name, “bearded darnel,” that wouldn’t help much either. But in fact, bearded darnel is a weed that looks very much like wheat and is difficult to distinguish from wheat until the grain heads form. To make matters worse, darnel is mildly poisonous. And so you can understand the desire to pull these weeds right away. But the landowner says, “No. Wait for the harvest.”
Over the years, this parable has often been used to say that the Church is a mixed bag, that we can’t worry too much about purity, but should leave that problem to God. This interpretation goes all the way back to St. Augustine himself, and I’m perfectly fine with it to a point. But when Jesus explains the parable, he doesn’t say that the field is the Church. He says it is the world. Now clearly the world, like the Church, is a mixed bag. There are good, not so good, and really horrible people, and there is enough hate, violence and war to convince most people that evil is real. But is Jesus saying that we are simply to accept this fact, that we are simply to let God sort it all out in the end?
I think such questions become more and more important for the American church as we find ourselves increasingly pushed to the margins of culture. The days when Mainline theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr advised presidents and helped shape public policy are long gone. Nowadays, even though our denomination still makes statements that Congress should do this or do that, stop this or stop that, no one really listens.
Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann has suggested that the metaphor of exile is appropriate to describe where the Church finds itself in America.[1] We have been deported from our comfortable homeland of the mid-20th Century into a world that no longer works in ways we fully understand. The stores stay open and the youth sports teams play games during our sacred worship times. Public schools no longer serve as our agents or shape our children for Christian faith. The landscape of America has changed dramatically since the 1950s. And institutions such as the Presbyterian Church, which had their heyday in that time, find themselves aliens in a strange land.
When Israel is carried off into exile in Babylon, the people literally find themselves strangers in a strange land. Exile produced a profound faith crisis. How could this have happened. Why had God abandoned them? How would they survive?
But into this anguish, the prophet Jeremiah writes to the exiles in Babylon. “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” And I wonder if there are not parallels between the prophet’s words and the parable Jesus tells.
The Hebrew exiles in Babylon had to figure out what it looked like to be faithful in a world where there was no longer a Temple, where the Ark of the Covenant and the promise of God’s presence had vanished. And in ways less dramatic, we find ourselves needing to discover what it means to be faithful in a world that is much less "for us" than it once was. But Jeremiah says that the Israelites must be faithful within their new context. Their future is bound to that world that is not “for them.” And I think Jesus says something similar. We must be faithful and bear fruit in a world not for us, amidst the weeds.
Exiles are always in danger of disappearing, of being absorbed into the culture in which they find themselves. To keep this from happening, they must cultivate a distinctiveness, a peculiarity. They must live in ways that set them apart, allowing them to maintain an identity the prevailing culture does not support. For the Hebrews in Babylon, Sabbath keeping and the synagogue became crucial elements that marked them as different. But what about us?
I think those ancient Hebrews may actually have had an advantage over us. There was no denying they were in exile, no denying that they now lived in a world that was corrosive to their faith practices. But we can deny our exile. We can still speak of being a “Christian nation,” even if many of those people we count as Christian engage in no discernible activity, bear no fruit that would mark them as such. We can say, “If only they would put prayer back in school. If only our denomination got serious about evangelism. If only… If only…”
But however much we might want to deny it, we no longer live in a Christian world; if by Christian we mean anything more than a little window dressing. We now live in exile. The people around us may not look all that different from ourselves, but fewer and fewer of them see any need to follow Jesus. I’m not making distinctions of good and bad but simply between disciples, people who try to follow Jesus, and those who don’t. And in this sense, we live in a field filled with a great variety of plants and flowers and weeds.
Fifty some years ago, before we found ourselves in exile, we looked at the American landscape and imagined it one vast sea of wheat. We saw no need to be different or distinct or unique. But if that was ever true, it surely is not now. And in the very mixed bag of plants and flowers and weeds that we now find ourselves, the only thing that will distinguish us is the grain we produce, fruit that we bear.
And that is what Jesus calls us to do. He does not ask us to pull weeds. Rather, he calls us to distinguish ourselves by the fruit we bear. And that means seeking the good of all people, even the weeds. We bear fruit by embodying God’s coming new day for the world to see, by loving our neighbor, by longing for and working for a better world. We bear fruit by losing ourselves for the sake of that new world, and by taking up the cross, by not insisting on my own rights but instead being willing to give them up, even being willing to suffer, for the sake of others and for the hope of God’s new day.
In case you’ve somehow missed it, there is a huge fight in Washington over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling in time for the Federal government to borrow enough money to pay the debts we already owe. As often happens, this deadline makes a great place to play a monumental game of chicken where each side waits to see who will flinch first. And in this game, the question is whether America’s growing debt should be fixed entirely by reducing spending, or if there should be tax increases for the wealthiest or the end of some tax breaks.
Now almost no one wants his or her taxes raised. But I'm suspicious that the Jesus who says he comes to bring good news to the poor, who tells a rich man to sell all his possessions and give to the poor, would say to someone like me who may not be really rich but can afford a home, cars, TVs, computers, a motorcycle, that I should be more than willing to give a bit more in taxes so that the poor would have healthcare and we would not pass down too much debt to future generations. And considering that Jesus said, "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required," I imagine that he would call those wealthy enough to live extravagantly to contribute extravagantly to help the poor, the community, and the future.
I’m not saying spending shouldn’t be cut. I’m not talking about any particular tax structure. But I am saying that bearing fruit for the Kingdom, distinguishing ourselves from the weeds, means living in ways that are at odds with the prevailing culture, that does not ask first, “What’s in it for me,” but rather asks first, "How will this impact the other, the neighbor? How will this make the world a tiny bit more like God's dream for the world?"
Those who are serious about following Jesus, about living the life of disciples, increasingly find ourselves aliens in a strange land, exiles surrounded by ways that are contrary to Jesus' call to follow him. We may rail against this culture, but it is easy, even tempting, simply to fade into the world around us, a world that thinks Sabbath, and worship, and self-sacrifice, and loving our enemies, and taking up crosses to be pure foolishness.
But we are supposed to know better.
[1] See Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997)
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