Sermon delivered Sunday, March 6, 2016 (4th Sunday in Lent, Year C) at St. Cuthbert’s Episcopal Church, Oakland, CA, where I am serving as long-term supply priest. Audio only (not video) available below.
(2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32)
Jesus is at it again in today’s Gospel reading: answering those self-righteous Pharisees with a parable that gets ‘em right in the gut. “So you’re worried about the fact that I’m eating with ‘sinners,’ are you? Well chew on THIS one for a while!” – and out comes the Prodigal Son, a story that has spoken deeply to the human soul throughout the centuries.
At face value, the message of the parable of the Prodigal Son seems simple, and completely appropriate for the season of Lent: The son repents, the father forgives him. Voila! The God-human relationship illustrated. As the son has sinned and left the father, so we have sinned and left God. As the son realizes the error of his ways and returns to his father, so should we repent and return to God in order to be forgiven of our sins.
But wait just a minute. If we look carefully at the story, it’s not actually that simple. Does the son actually repent? The story tells us that the son “came to himself.” But it’s not entirely clear what that means; whether he actually had a change of heart, or whether the “coming to himself” was him having an “ah ha” moment realizing another way he could continue to continue to make sure he was taken care of at his father’s expense. “How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!” he thinks. “I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” Is this expression of humility genuine, or is he just trying to figure out a way to get himself back in the door in a place where he assumes he will be unwelcome? It’s not like he becomes successful and wealthy and goes home to share the bounty with his father – as is so often the case with children and their parents (and with human beings and God!), he only turns back to the father when he needs something, when he seeks to gain from reestablishing the relationship.
So, we’ve got the problem of whether the son’s repentance is genuine or not, and then the story gets further complicated when the son returns home. The parable tells us that “while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.” The father runs to him while he was still far off. The son doesn’t even have a chance to make his confession, to grovel before his father and ask for forgiveness, before the father sweeps him into his arms with hugs and kisses. The son hasn’t said a word yet that would indicate that he is repentant, that he is sorry for what he’s done. For all the father knows, the son could be returning home to ask for more money – which, in fact, is sort of what he is doing, since he’s asking for his father to again provide for his needs in the form of food and shelter. But the father still runs toward him and embraces him. He doesn’t stand back, eyeing his son skeptically and asking him a bunch of questions about what he’s done and where he’s been and what has happened to all the money he gave him. He doesn’t lecture him on respect for one’s elders or demand an apology before he extends his hand in peace. His love for his son overtakes any feelings of resentment or being wronged. His love is unconditional, offered without any action required on the part of the son outside of just showing up.
“Now hold on there,” our inner sense of justice cries out. “That’s now how the story’s supposed to go! The sinner is supposed to show sufficient remorse and contrition before forgiveness is granted! God forgives the repentant, but the unrepentant he will burn with unquenchable fire… or something like that, right? I mean, there has to be some consequences for this guy’s actions! How can the father throw a party for this guy after what he’s done? Isn’t that like condoning his actions?”
Conventional religious thinking, in the Judaism of Jesus’s time and in many other religions in various times and contexts, tends to think of God as a just judge, concerned with impartially enforcing the law. In this way of thinking, God is ultimately concerned with “fairness,” with making sure that each person gets what they “deserve.” If they are good, they deserve a reward. If they are bad, they deserve punishment. Our relationship with God becomes some kind of balancing scale where we hope that, at the end, our good deeds outweigh our bad and we get in to heaven by virtue of how the accounting works out in some kind of divine judgment book. The elder son in the parable represents this kind of conventional religious thinking, as do the Pharisees who are so concerned about who Jesus is eating with and spending time with.
But Jesus constantly challenged the notion of God as an impartial calculator, crunching the numbers to determine our fate. Jesus emphasized the image of God as a loving parent, like the father in today’s parable, who is overcome with love for his or her children. That love guides his response to them, that love colors and influences her judgment, that love makes allowances for her children’s shortcomings.
When this kind of love expresses itself, it may not look “fair” to those who are keeping the great accounting sheet of rights and wrongs. It may mean that some people get celebrations and parties and forgiveness and acceptance that they don’t seem to deserve. But Jesus’s message is that God’s love and mercy is not something we can earn by doing or saying or believing the right things. None of us “deserve” God’s love or forgiveness based on our actions, however “good” we might think we have been! God’s acceptance and forgiveness of us is a gift freely given – out of a relationship based in unconditional love, a love that will not leave us if we screw up or disappoint or “squander our inheritance in dissolute living.”
This kind of love is more concerned with transformation than with fairness. This kind of love is willing to break all the rules if it means helping one soul to know they are loved and valued.
Can this kind of love be taken advantage of? Could the forgiven and loved prodigal son, after enjoying the fatted calf at his reunion party, have ripped his father off, stolen his valuables, and pawned them for money? Of course he could have. This kind of love is risky. It makes us vulnerable. It opens us to the possibility of being deeply wronged, or even physically harmed, in certain circumstances. But it also has the power to transform.
The main character of Les Misérables, that great novel by Victor Hugo that has been cinematized numerous times and made into a stage musical, is an example of a kind of “prodigal son” who is transformed by this kind of love.
Jean Valjean is released from prison after serving 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family. He has become cynical, hardened, and trusts no one. He has nothing to his name and is let out on the streets with no resources and nowhere to turn for help. As he goes door to door begging, he happens to knock on the local bishop’s door. The bishop takes him in and feeds him and gives him a place to stay. That night, Valjean sneaks out in the middle of the night, stealing the silver place settings from the table. When he is caught and the police drag him to the bishop’s door, they tell the bishop that Valjean has told them that the bishop gave him the silver. The bishop surprises everyone, Valjean most of all, when he confirms Valjean’s story. “That is right,” he tells the police. In the poetic wording of the stage play, he responds, “But my friend, you left so early / surely something slipped your mind / You forgot I gave these also / Would you leave the best behind?” – and proceeds to give Valjean the two silver candlesticks from his fireplace mantle.
According to the law, the right and “fair” thing for the bishop to do would have been to press charges, and for Valjean to go back to prison. But the bishop was more concerned with the transformative power of love than the fair application of the law.
The bishop took a risk by following Jesus’s teachings in Matthew 5:39-40: “Do not resist an evildoer… if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.” Valjean could have betrayed his trust once again after this incident, or gone on to do harm to others as well. The bishop had no way of knowing what the outcome would be, but he chose trust over fear. He chose forgiveness over retribution. And it changed a man’s life. This risky act of generosity and forgiveness by the bishop transforms Valjean. His hardened shell falls away and reveals a kind, tender man with a heart of compassion, who goes about doing good for the rest of the story. The bishop responded to Valjean’s behavior not by “giving him what he deserved,” but by giving him a second chance.
As much as Lent gets a bad rep as a depressing season where we are told how bad we are, Lent is actually the season of second chances. It’s the season where we are reminded not just of our sins, but of God’s mercy. The joy of the father in the parable of the prodigal son at seeing his son return home is a metaphor for the joy God feels every time we return to him, no matter what we’ve done and no matter what is in our hearts when we do. God welcomes us home not for a stern scolding, but for a great celebration.
And we are called to do the same. If we are truly transformed by the love and forgiveness God has shown to us, we will offer forgiveness as freely as the father in the parable and the bishop in Les Misérables. As Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians, God has “entrusted the message of reconciliation to us. We are ambassadors for Christ.” We are the ones carrying God’s message to the world, the message that God is ready to throw you a party if you would but show up: no questions asked, no explanations needed. Just come, join us, and feast at that banquet prepared before the foundation of the world. If we are doing our job as Christians, it will also be said of us, “Those folks welcome sinners and eat with them!” Amen.
Showing posts with label parables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parables. Show all posts
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Sunday, August 2, 2015
How much easier it is to see faults in others than in ourselves!
Sermon delivered Sunday, August 2, 2015 (10th Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 13, Year B), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
(2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a, Psalm 51:1-13)
In our reading from the Hebrew Bible last week, we heard about David’s affair with Bathsheba. The concluding sentence of that reading was, “In the letter [David sent to the general, he] wrote, ‘Set Uriah [Bathsheba’s husband] in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.’” If it seemed a little odd to you that our response to this reading was, “Thanks be to God!”, your discomfort should be assuaged by the way the story continues in this week’s reading. David might be remembered as one of Israel’s great kings and “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), but he doesn’t get away with adultery, deceit and murder without a stern rebuke.
In this week’s lesson, the prophet Nathan confronts David about his actions. But the way he does so is very clever. Instead of accusing David directly of his indiscretions, which probably would have made David defensive and unable to hear his critique, Nathan instead tells David a story. “There once was a rich man,” he says, “who had many possessions. This man had access to anything he could possibly want, but when a traveler came by seeking shelter and food, the rich man didn’t offer him anything from his own possessions, even though he had plenty to spare. Instead, he stole a lamb from his neighbor, a poor man who had barely enough to provide for his family. The rich man killed and prepared the poor man’s lamb as food for the traveler. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the lamb was not just livestock to his neighbor; it was like a member of his family, a beloved companion animal who was ‘like a daughter to him.’”
When David hears this story, he is outraged. He says to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” The Hebrew phrase that is translated “the man who has done this deserves to die” literally says, “this man is a son of death.” Calling someone a “son of death” was not a legal judgment indicating that the person deserved the death penalty, but an attack on a person’s character, a colloquialism used to disparage people.
So David has walked right into Nathan’s trap. “This man did WHAT?” he says. “What a dirty, rotten, no good…” you fill in the blank with your choice of insults. The names David calls the rich man in the story probably weren’t the G-rated version I’m choosing to give from the pulpit, if you get my drift. And then Nathan sticks it to him with his “gotcha” line – “You are the man! This story is an illustration of what you’ve done, you dirty, rotten, no good – hey, you said it, not me – rich man with all the abundance in the world of goods and possessions and many wives already at your service in your lavish palace – and yet you pick out the only wife of one of your men at battle, sleep with her, and then have her husband killed so you can take her for yourself. Yeah, the rich man in the story is a ‘son of death,’ alright – and that rich man is YOU!”
Nathan’s approach works. Rather than becoming angry and defensive, David’s eyes are opened and he acknowledges his guilt. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he admits, and, according to tradition, promptly pens the 51st psalm. The psalm we read this morning, that famous psalm of repentance, that psalm that we read every year on Ash Wednesday as we begin the season of Lent and acknowledge our own sins and repent before God, is attributed to King David, and tradition holds that he wrote it right after Nathan confronted him about his affair with Bathsheba.
Nathan’s use of an indirect story to confront David about his sin works because it is so often easier to see faults in others than it is to recognize them in ourselves. David can clearly see what the “rich man” in the story has done wrong, even when he is blind to his own sin. It is always easier to point out what others have done wrong in any conflict or argument than to seriously consider what role we have played in contributing to the issue. Sometimes seeing ourselves portrayed in caricature in a story allows our eyes to be opened to truths about ourselves that otherwise may be difficult to face.
A Jewish rabbi and therapist named Edwin Friedman, who specialized in family systems theory and applying that theory to congregational life, published a series of modern-day parables called “Friedman’s Fables” in the early 1990s. These parables were designed to open our eyes to the dynamics of unhealthy relationships within families or congregations. I’d like to share one of them with you today, because they are a sort of modern equivalent to Nathan’s use of a parable to help David to see his sin. This one is called “A Nervous Condition,” and it may give some of you an experience of what David must have felt when he realized he was the rich man in Nathan’s parable. See if you can see yourself or anyone you know in this fable:
[Read “A Nervous Condition,” from Edwin H. Friedman, Friedman’s Fables (New York: Guilford Press, 1990). I'm not sure whether it would violate copyright rules to post the story in its entirety here in written form, so I'm not posting it. But you can hear the whole story if you listen to the audio file of the sermon, linked above.]
The discussion questions included in the back of the book summarize this fable with the following moral: “Beware the insensitivities of the sensitive.” Having always been a very sensitive person from the time I was a child, this parable probably hit me as hard as Nathan’s story hit David when I first read it many years ago. My eyes were suddenly opened as to how my sensitivity could have a negative impact on others. I have since done a lot of internal work to try to recognize when my sensitivity may be inadvertently hurting others, and to claim responsibility for my own feelings rather than blaming my state of mind or reactions on others.
Friedman’s basic thesis in all of his family therapy and congregational work is that a system – whether it be a family, a workplace, a congregation, or a country – is only as healthy as its leaders, and that the key to successful leadership is not learning how to manage one’s children or employees or parishioners or constituents, but learning how to manage oneself. If we are able to become differentiated – that is, to become defined by our own sense of identity that comes from a place of deep internal conviction rather than being defined by the feelings, opinions, and reactions of others – then we automatically have a positive effect on the system, even without directly trying to change anything about it. Friedman suggests that sometimes rather than taking the “problem child” or “problem person” into therapy, if the person who sees the problem in others can begin to work on themselves, their own internal work can change the system enough so that the “problem person” begins to change even without making any intentional effort themselves. It is an illustration of Jesus’s advice in the Sermon on the Mount: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” In other words, if you want others to address their faults, work first on addressing your own.
The work of faith is the work of serious reflection and self-examination. While we are called to work for reconciliation and peace and justice and righteousness in the world around us, that work must first start with ourselves. The old cliché about “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” has more truth to it than we realize. Or the one about “charity begins at home.” One way we can all work to change the world is to work on changing ourselves. It’s the only thing we really can change, after all. So as our eyes are opened to the faults in others, let us see that as an invitation to look more closely at the faults in ourselves. With much prayer and discernment, and with the help of a trusted guide like a therapist or spiritual director, we can change the world, one repentant sinner at a time.
(2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a, Psalm 51:1-13)
In our reading from the Hebrew Bible last week, we heard about David’s affair with Bathsheba. The concluding sentence of that reading was, “In the letter [David sent to the general, he] wrote, ‘Set Uriah [Bathsheba’s husband] in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.’” If it seemed a little odd to you that our response to this reading was, “Thanks be to God!”, your discomfort should be assuaged by the way the story continues in this week’s reading. David might be remembered as one of Israel’s great kings and “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14), but he doesn’t get away with adultery, deceit and murder without a stern rebuke.
In this week’s lesson, the prophet Nathan confronts David about his actions. But the way he does so is very clever. Instead of accusing David directly of his indiscretions, which probably would have made David defensive and unable to hear his critique, Nathan instead tells David a story. “There once was a rich man,” he says, “who had many possessions. This man had access to anything he could possibly want, but when a traveler came by seeking shelter and food, the rich man didn’t offer him anything from his own possessions, even though he had plenty to spare. Instead, he stole a lamb from his neighbor, a poor man who had barely enough to provide for his family. The rich man killed and prepared the poor man’s lamb as food for the traveler. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the lamb was not just livestock to his neighbor; it was like a member of his family, a beloved companion animal who was ‘like a daughter to him.’”
When David hears this story, he is outraged. He says to Nathan, “As the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” The Hebrew phrase that is translated “the man who has done this deserves to die” literally says, “this man is a son of death.” Calling someone a “son of death” was not a legal judgment indicating that the person deserved the death penalty, but an attack on a person’s character, a colloquialism used to disparage people.
So David has walked right into Nathan’s trap. “This man did WHAT?” he says. “What a dirty, rotten, no good…” you fill in the blank with your choice of insults. The names David calls the rich man in the story probably weren’t the G-rated version I’m choosing to give from the pulpit, if you get my drift. And then Nathan sticks it to him with his “gotcha” line – “You are the man! This story is an illustration of what you’ve done, you dirty, rotten, no good – hey, you said it, not me – rich man with all the abundance in the world of goods and possessions and many wives already at your service in your lavish palace – and yet you pick out the only wife of one of your men at battle, sleep with her, and then have her husband killed so you can take her for yourself. Yeah, the rich man in the story is a ‘son of death,’ alright – and that rich man is YOU!”
Nathan’s approach works. Rather than becoming angry and defensive, David’s eyes are opened and he acknowledges his guilt. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he admits, and, according to tradition, promptly pens the 51st psalm. The psalm we read this morning, that famous psalm of repentance, that psalm that we read every year on Ash Wednesday as we begin the season of Lent and acknowledge our own sins and repent before God, is attributed to King David, and tradition holds that he wrote it right after Nathan confronted him about his affair with Bathsheba.
Nathan’s use of an indirect story to confront David about his sin works because it is so often easier to see faults in others than it is to recognize them in ourselves. David can clearly see what the “rich man” in the story has done wrong, even when he is blind to his own sin. It is always easier to point out what others have done wrong in any conflict or argument than to seriously consider what role we have played in contributing to the issue. Sometimes seeing ourselves portrayed in caricature in a story allows our eyes to be opened to truths about ourselves that otherwise may be difficult to face.
A Jewish rabbi and therapist named Edwin Friedman, who specialized in family systems theory and applying that theory to congregational life, published a series of modern-day parables called “Friedman’s Fables” in the early 1990s. These parables were designed to open our eyes to the dynamics of unhealthy relationships within families or congregations. I’d like to share one of them with you today, because they are a sort of modern equivalent to Nathan’s use of a parable to help David to see his sin. This one is called “A Nervous Condition,” and it may give some of you an experience of what David must have felt when he realized he was the rich man in Nathan’s parable. See if you can see yourself or anyone you know in this fable:
[Read “A Nervous Condition,” from Edwin H. Friedman, Friedman’s Fables (New York: Guilford Press, 1990). I'm not sure whether it would violate copyright rules to post the story in its entirety here in written form, so I'm not posting it. But you can hear the whole story if you listen to the audio file of the sermon, linked above.]
The discussion questions included in the back of the book summarize this fable with the following moral: “Beware the insensitivities of the sensitive.” Having always been a very sensitive person from the time I was a child, this parable probably hit me as hard as Nathan’s story hit David when I first read it many years ago. My eyes were suddenly opened as to how my sensitivity could have a negative impact on others. I have since done a lot of internal work to try to recognize when my sensitivity may be inadvertently hurting others, and to claim responsibility for my own feelings rather than blaming my state of mind or reactions on others.
Friedman’s basic thesis in all of his family therapy and congregational work is that a system – whether it be a family, a workplace, a congregation, or a country – is only as healthy as its leaders, and that the key to successful leadership is not learning how to manage one’s children or employees or parishioners or constituents, but learning how to manage oneself. If we are able to become differentiated – that is, to become defined by our own sense of identity that comes from a place of deep internal conviction rather than being defined by the feelings, opinions, and reactions of others – then we automatically have a positive effect on the system, even without directly trying to change anything about it. Friedman suggests that sometimes rather than taking the “problem child” or “problem person” into therapy, if the person who sees the problem in others can begin to work on themselves, their own internal work can change the system enough so that the “problem person” begins to change even without making any intentional effort themselves. It is an illustration of Jesus’s advice in the Sermon on the Mount: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.” In other words, if you want others to address their faults, work first on addressing your own.
The work of faith is the work of serious reflection and self-examination. While we are called to work for reconciliation and peace and justice and righteousness in the world around us, that work must first start with ourselves. The old cliché about “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me” has more truth to it than we realize. Or the one about “charity begins at home.” One way we can all work to change the world is to work on changing ourselves. It’s the only thing we really can change, after all. So as our eyes are opened to the faults in others, let us see that as an invitation to look more closely at the faults in ourselves. With much prayer and discernment, and with the help of a trusted guide like a therapist or spiritual director, we can change the world, one repentant sinner at a time.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Parable of the wheat and the weeds: Let God be the judge
Sermon delivered Sunday, July 20, 2014 (6th Sunday After Pentecost, Year A, Proper 11), at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN (Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43).
“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?”
This question from the parable in today’s Gospel reading gives voice to one of the oldest questions known to humanity. If God is good and intends good for the world, why do bad things happen? It is the classic “problem of evil,” the problem of why evil exists if there is an all-powerful and all-good God in control of the world.
There are two aspects to the problem of evil: one is the question of why people do bad things, and the other is the question of why bad things happen outside of human initiative: natural disasters and the like, things that no person or people caused to happen and so they are called “acts of God” by the insurance companies because there is no one else to blame. Today’s parable deals with the first aspect of the problem of evil: why people do bad things, or why there are “bad people,” so to speak, in our world.
The answer we get from the parable is that the bad people, the “weeds” in our world, to follow the parable’s analogy, are put there by the “evil one,” or the devil. According to the parable, God only planted the good seeds; the weeds were planted by an enemy trying to sabotage God’s harvest. This explanation gets God off the hook in that it attributes responsibility for the existence of the “bad people,” the “weeds,” to someone other than God, but the question still remains as to why God allows these weeds to continue to grow in his field – why not go out and pull them up? In fact, that’s exactly what the slaves in the parable suggest – “Do you want us to go and gather them?” they ask about the weeds. But the master says “no, because in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” He instructs them to let the two grow together until the harvest, at which time they will separate the wheat and the weeds.
In the original Greek, the word translated as “weed” in this parable does not mean just any weed in general, but a specific plant, most likely a plant called bearded darnel [1]. The darnel plant is a weed that is bitter and mildly toxic, but in its early stages it looks almost identical to wheat, so that it is nearly impossible to tell the two apart [2]. This is why the master says that in gathering the weeds the slaves would uproot the wheat along with them – they wouldn’t be able to tell what was wheat and what was weeds. It is only after the plant has reached maturity that the darnel turns a slightly different color and is distinguishable from the wheat. But by then, the roots of the two plants have become intertwined and it would be impossible to uproot one without uprooting the other: so the master’s solution is a wise one: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest,” and at the harvest the two can be separated. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to coexist together for the good of the wheat – so that the wheat is not destroyed accidentally in the attempt to destroy the weeds.
Thus, the parable’s answer as to why bad people are allowed to coexist along with good people is twofold: first, it is often impossible to distinguish the two. We can’t always tell which people are the “wheat” and which are the “weeds” in the fields of our lives. Only God truly knows, the God who, as our psalm says, knows us intimately, all our thoughts and motivations and desires.
Secondly, it would be impossible to get rid of the “bad people” without also harming the good – a truth that we see illustrated in the way most of our armed conflicts play out in this world. Every time we as human beings try to “kill the bad people,” we usually wind up killing a lot of innocent people along with them, the so-called “collateral damage” of war. But the master in the parable is not willing to take the risk of “collateral damage.” He knows that every grain of wheat in that field is precious to him and wants to bring them all to the harvest.
And so, we are asked to have a lot of patience, and a lot of trust. Paul says in our reading from Romans that “we hope for what we do not see,” and we “wait for it with patience.” Sometimes when we look around us and we see the weeds growing along with the wheat, we can feel like there is no justice, there is no order or purpose, there is no God. But we are asked to trust that although the wicked seem to prosper and we do not yet see justice in this world, that ultimately God will straighten things out in the end. It is easy to be tempted to take matters into our own hands and try to pull up what we think are the “weeds” in the world around us, but in doing so we may actually do more harm than good. This parable is as much a warning against being judgmental as it is an answer to the problem of evil. We cannot distinguish the wheat from the weeds, so we have to trust the one who knows us the most intimately to make that call.
And even though Jesus explains the parable by saying that the “good seed” are “the children of the kingdom” and the “weeds” are the “children of the evil one,” I’m not so sure that there isn’t a bit of “good seed” and a bit of “weeds” inside each one of us. Our myths, both religious and secular, tend to split the world into the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” but I think a more accurate word would be that there is a bit of “good guy” and “bad guy” in each one of us. Although the moralisms of the Bible always assume there are two clear-cut categories of people, “the righteous” and “the wicked,” the actual people in the Bible are hardly ever so cut and dried. Take Jacob, for example. In our passages from the Hebrew scriptures over the past few weeks, we’ve been reading along in the history of the people of Israel, starting with Abraham and Sarah and moving along through their descendants, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. Just last week we saw Jacob, the man after whom the entire people of Israel comes to be named, cheating his brother out of his birthright. Not exactly hero behavior, is it? Two chapters after that story, Jacob also steals his father’s blessing from his brother Esau. While his father is on his deathbed, Jacob can think of nothing but tricking him into doing something for his own personal gain. And then this week we have a nice story about Jacob encountering the Lord at Bethel, where God tells him that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you,” this man who was a such a liar and a cheater! Although Jacob had a lot of unsavory personality traits, God allowed the wheat and the weeds to grow together in Jacob until the harvest. (We can only hope that God straightened Jacob out for all his dishonest dealings when the time came for him to meet his maker!)
The Jewish tradition teaches that inside each one of us is the yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, and the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil, and both those inclinations compete for our attention. Our spiritual task is to choose to follow our yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, rather than the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil. If we apply this understanding to the parable of the wheat and the weeds, perhaps it tells us that the reason God does not do away with what we think are the bad parts of ourselves is that in uprooting those parts of us, he would also uproot and destroy the good parts of us. And maybe, just maybe, those thoughts and actions that we think are “weeds” might just be wheat. Perhaps we’re not any better at telling apart the good from the bad inside ourselves than we are at telling it apart in others. And so, we leave it to God to do the judging – about what is “good” and “evil” in other people and about what is “good” and “evil” in ourselves, trusting that at the final harvest, the One who knows all of our innermost thoughts will separate the weeds from the wheat.
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[1] Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 545. Accessed online via Google Books, 15 Jul 2014.
[2] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer, July 20, 2014 (Proper 11A).
“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?”
This question from the parable in today’s Gospel reading gives voice to one of the oldest questions known to humanity. If God is good and intends good for the world, why do bad things happen? It is the classic “problem of evil,” the problem of why evil exists if there is an all-powerful and all-good God in control of the world.
There are two aspects to the problem of evil: one is the question of why people do bad things, and the other is the question of why bad things happen outside of human initiative: natural disasters and the like, things that no person or people caused to happen and so they are called “acts of God” by the insurance companies because there is no one else to blame. Today’s parable deals with the first aspect of the problem of evil: why people do bad things, or why there are “bad people,” so to speak, in our world.
The answer we get from the parable is that the bad people, the “weeds” in our world, to follow the parable’s analogy, are put there by the “evil one,” or the devil. According to the parable, God only planted the good seeds; the weeds were planted by an enemy trying to sabotage God’s harvest. This explanation gets God off the hook in that it attributes responsibility for the existence of the “bad people,” the “weeds,” to someone other than God, but the question still remains as to why God allows these weeds to continue to grow in his field – why not go out and pull them up? In fact, that’s exactly what the slaves in the parable suggest – “Do you want us to go and gather them?” they ask about the weeds. But the master says “no, because in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” He instructs them to let the two grow together until the harvest, at which time they will separate the wheat and the weeds.
In the original Greek, the word translated as “weed” in this parable does not mean just any weed in general, but a specific plant, most likely a plant called bearded darnel [1]. The darnel plant is a weed that is bitter and mildly toxic, but in its early stages it looks almost identical to wheat, so that it is nearly impossible to tell the two apart [2]. This is why the master says that in gathering the weeds the slaves would uproot the wheat along with them – they wouldn’t be able to tell what was wheat and what was weeds. It is only after the plant has reached maturity that the darnel turns a slightly different color and is distinguishable from the wheat. But by then, the roots of the two plants have become intertwined and it would be impossible to uproot one without uprooting the other: so the master’s solution is a wise one: “Let both of them grow together until the harvest,” and at the harvest the two can be separated. The wheat and the weeds are allowed to coexist together for the good of the wheat – so that the wheat is not destroyed accidentally in the attempt to destroy the weeds.
Thus, the parable’s answer as to why bad people are allowed to coexist along with good people is twofold: first, it is often impossible to distinguish the two. We can’t always tell which people are the “wheat” and which are the “weeds” in the fields of our lives. Only God truly knows, the God who, as our psalm says, knows us intimately, all our thoughts and motivations and desires.
Secondly, it would be impossible to get rid of the “bad people” without also harming the good – a truth that we see illustrated in the way most of our armed conflicts play out in this world. Every time we as human beings try to “kill the bad people,” we usually wind up killing a lot of innocent people along with them, the so-called “collateral damage” of war. But the master in the parable is not willing to take the risk of “collateral damage.” He knows that every grain of wheat in that field is precious to him and wants to bring them all to the harvest.
And so, we are asked to have a lot of patience, and a lot of trust. Paul says in our reading from Romans that “we hope for what we do not see,” and we “wait for it with patience.” Sometimes when we look around us and we see the weeds growing along with the wheat, we can feel like there is no justice, there is no order or purpose, there is no God. But we are asked to trust that although the wicked seem to prosper and we do not yet see justice in this world, that ultimately God will straighten things out in the end. It is easy to be tempted to take matters into our own hands and try to pull up what we think are the “weeds” in the world around us, but in doing so we may actually do more harm than good. This parable is as much a warning against being judgmental as it is an answer to the problem of evil. We cannot distinguish the wheat from the weeds, so we have to trust the one who knows us the most intimately to make that call.
And even though Jesus explains the parable by saying that the “good seed” are “the children of the kingdom” and the “weeds” are the “children of the evil one,” I’m not so sure that there isn’t a bit of “good seed” and a bit of “weeds” inside each one of us. Our myths, both religious and secular, tend to split the world into the “good guys” and the “bad guys,” but I think a more accurate word would be that there is a bit of “good guy” and “bad guy” in each one of us. Although the moralisms of the Bible always assume there are two clear-cut categories of people, “the righteous” and “the wicked,” the actual people in the Bible are hardly ever so cut and dried. Take Jacob, for example. In our passages from the Hebrew scriptures over the past few weeks, we’ve been reading along in the history of the people of Israel, starting with Abraham and Sarah and moving along through their descendants, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. Just last week we saw Jacob, the man after whom the entire people of Israel comes to be named, cheating his brother out of his birthright. Not exactly hero behavior, is it? Two chapters after that story, Jacob also steals his father’s blessing from his brother Esau. While his father is on his deathbed, Jacob can think of nothing but tricking him into doing something for his own personal gain. And then this week we have a nice story about Jacob encountering the Lord at Bethel, where God tells him that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you,” this man who was a such a liar and a cheater! Although Jacob had a lot of unsavory personality traits, God allowed the wheat and the weeds to grow together in Jacob until the harvest. (We can only hope that God straightened Jacob out for all his dishonest dealings when the time came for him to meet his maker!)
The Jewish tradition teaches that inside each one of us is the yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, and the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil, and both those inclinations compete for our attention. Our spiritual task is to choose to follow our yatzer ha-tov, the inclination to do good, rather than the yatzer ha-rah, the inclination to do evil. If we apply this understanding to the parable of the wheat and the weeds, perhaps it tells us that the reason God does not do away with what we think are the bad parts of ourselves is that in uprooting those parts of us, he would also uproot and destroy the good parts of us. And maybe, just maybe, those thoughts and actions that we think are “weeds” might just be wheat. Perhaps we’re not any better at telling apart the good from the bad inside ourselves than we are at telling it apart in others. And so, we leave it to God to do the judging – about what is “good” and “evil” in other people and about what is “good” and “evil” in ourselves, trusting that at the final harvest, the One who knows all of our innermost thoughts will separate the weeds from the wheat.
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[1] Nolland, John. The Gospel of Matthew: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 545. Accessed online via Google Books, 15 Jul 2014.
[2] Dick Donovan, Sermon Writer, July 20, 2014 (Proper 11A).
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