Be Slow to Label

Proper 11A; Matthew 13:24-30; 7/19/2020

Jim Melnyk: “Be Slow to Label”

The new Rector finds herself kneeling before a flowerbed during a parish spring workday. Now this isn’t just any old flowerbed – no, it’s the flowerbed from you-know-where! It hasn’t been weeded in years – at least that’s what it seems like as the priest attacks the job with great vigor, pulling up crab grass and prickly bushes without a second thought. And then it happens. The Rector comes upon a plant – well, several plants – and cannot even begin to figure out what they are. On the one hand, they certainly look like weeds, but on the other hand, they look like they might have been planted intentionally rather than just having sprung up on their own.

They’re scrawny, flowerless, and spread throughout a couple of areas in the garden. They are weeds. Well, they sure look like weeds, and no one new to a parish wants to pull up someone’s memorial flowers. One after another the other workers are polled, but nobody seems to know. Just as the Rector wraps a gloved hand around the stalk of a plant one of the more learned parishioners yells out, “Stop!” Turns out the plants are in fact flowers purposely placed in the garden, and they have a meaningful connection to one of the saints of the parish who no longer tends gardens on this side of eternity. Whew!

           

Weeds or flowers? They turn out to be flowers planted intentionally – flowers that come summer will add beauty to the flowerbed beside the church. Flowers almost lost to some premature judgments about weeds and flowers – a lesson that just may stick with that priest for a while.

           

In today’s parable everyone knows there are weeds along with the wheat in the farmer’s fields. In fact, some scholars believe those in the story even know the weed by name – Darnel, a poisonous plant which while still young looks amazingly like wheat. And if scholars are correct about the weed being Darnel, early on it would have been difficult to spot the problem. But by now, the weeds have matured enough that they’ve become recognizable by the workers, who offer to weed them out.

           

Implicit to the story are some practical reasons for not pulling up the weeds. First, the plants resemble each other enough to cause a significant risk that even the most experienced laborers could pull up the wrong plants. And second, since weeds often mature at a faster rate than wheat, the weed’s roots can wrap around the roots of the surrounding wheat. This means the weeds cannot be pulled up without the possibility of uprooting a significant portion of the crop.

And although it might still make more sense to risk pulling up the weeds before they can damage the wheat, that reality wouldn’t meet the Teacher’s needs. Parables by their very nature offer a surprising and often confounding twist. What do we do with a field full of both weeds and wheat? “Not what you think,” says Jesus, “Not what you think.”

The possible theological implications hinted at in this story are more complex than the agricultural questions of the parable. Matthew gives us a parable not found in the other gospels, which may lead us to ask “Why?  Why this parable?” Matthew seems to be dealing with what has become the age-old question of how the church – how the people of God – can be both holy and sinful at the same time – and how we live with, or fail to live with, such complexity in our lives, and in the lives of our communities.

That “wonderful and sacred mystery” we call the church – or the community of the faithful – turns out to be a “wonderful and sinful mystery” as well. We might see this parable as Jesus taking a stand for including his doubters and detractors, along with tax collectors and sinners, as kingdom kin. We might see Matthew’s purpose for including the parable as a way of addressing friction in his community of Jesus followers. Either way, later in this gospel Matthew records Jesus telling the chief priests and the elders in Jerusalem that tax collectors and sinners will be the ones leading them into the kingdom – leading them in! Getting there first and perhaps forming a welcoming committee for the religious elite.

Jesus seems to be saying, “Just chill out for a moment folks! Don’t be too quick to label something [or someone] good or evil. Judge too quickly and you may just kill some promising growth as well.[1]” The landowner tells his servants, “It’s not your job to judge between the two.” “It’s not your job,” Jesus tells his listeners. “It’s not your job,” Matthew tells his fledgling faith community. “It’s not our job,” the parable seems to tell us. As one commentator puts it,

“Life is ambiguous and motives are often difficult to discern. Wheat and weeds can look alike. If you pull up the one you risk damaging the other.”[2]

Those listening to Matthew’s Jesus might possibly find themselves remembering a few lines from what we now call The Sermon on the Mount – the part where Jesus cautions his listeners against judging one another at the risk of bringing judgment upon themselves.[3]

Now it may sound like I’m going to contradict myself here, so bear with me for just a moment. To be sure, there are times when sitting back and waiting not only doesn’t make sense, but can be harmful or even deadly. When society, or even the church, treats fellow human beings in a harmful way, we need to be willing to stand in the breach with those who are being harmed – with those whom the world of power seemingly seeks to weed out of our presence.

Consider the significant loss our nation experienced this weekend with the death of Congressman John Lewis. John stood in the midst of great violence on behalf of God’s people who were being denied the dignity of full personhood – especially in the south. When he stood as a 17 year-old seminary student alongside Dr. King among others at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, he was willing to risk his life for others. Politicians, police, and an angry mob saw nothing but weeds to be eradicated standing before them. My guess is that Jesus would have seen a bumper crop of waving grain. Those wielding water cannons and attack dogs, however, stood in judgment of a righteous cause.

The author of Ephesians tells us, we are to speak the truth in love so that we may continue to grow into the full stature of Christ[4]. And I believe standing with fellow human beings in danger or pain is more about honoring and supporting them than it is about standing in judgment of those who seek their harm.

Our Baptismal Covenant challenges us to love one another and to work for justice and peace in active ways which save rather than destroy. We are challenged to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as one like ourselves. Consider the incredibly patient grace of God implied in both our Baptismal Covenant and in this parable. “Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” Yet even when the weeds are bundled for the fire, they will serve the farmer’s purpose; for it takes both wheat and fire to make the bread which sustains our very lives.[5]

And when we next have the grace to gather at the Holy Table once again, to receive the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we should remember that we partake of wine made from grapes that have been crushed, and bread made from grain that has gone through the fiery furnace.

When we seek to love one another as Christ loves us who knows what might happen: Tax collectors and sinners entering the kingdom – entering the communion of God – before the religious elite – possibly even before Deacons, Priests and Bishops – before good Episcopalians? Well, that’s just plain crazy! But it’s the gospel, too!

Think about the overwhelming grace of God implied in this parable. We don’t have to be eternal judges! It’s not our job! As the love of God grows within us we learn to love one another – and we learn to proclaim the Good News of God’s love for all creation – a creation which waits with yearning, and with groaning, for the fulfillment of God’s love.[6] Yes, there may be times when we are called to challenge one another – but we are called to do so in love. In the end I would much rather stand before the mercy of God accounting for my love than on the merit of my judgment of others.

At times we may well look like weeds to one another – we all mess up from time to time – we’re all part of that wonderful and sinful mystery we call the church – but that sort of judgment isn’t our calling. Trusting the grace of God we proclaim the truth that is the love of God for all creation. Our calling to treat one another as children of God, each created in the very image of the One who calls all people into the kingdom of heaven.

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[1] Synthesis CE

[2] ibid

[3] Matthew 7:1-2

[4] Ephesians 4:15

[5] William Brosend, Conversations with Scripture: The Parables p. 27

[6] Romans 8:22-23

Cry the Gospel

Proper 10A; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; St. Paul’s, 7/12/2020

Jim Melnyk: “Cry the Gospel”

Charles de Foucauld was a nineteenth century French explorer who joined the Trappist order and became known as “the Hermit of the Sahara.” He has been quoted as saying, “Cry the gospel with your whole life.” And it is said of him, “he did not follow that adage with worry about how it was to be received.”[1] In the light of today’s parable from Jesus, one might read his comments as an affirmation that we should always be ready to sow the seeds of the gospel, wherever we are – whatever we do. Cry the gospel with your whole life – sow the seed.

           

But before I came across the Hermit of the Sahara, another name came to me when I first started thinking about today’s gospel. John Newton. We just sang (or read) one of his hymns – Amazing Grace. Most of us know at least a little of John Newton’s story. Talk about your thorn infested, rock-strewn, hard-packed soil. Newton was captain of a slave-trading ship for many years – even after his conversion to the gospel. He bought, traded, and kidnapped human beings for a living. He was a bible-reading, church-going Anglican, who heard the gospel preached throughout his life, and yet he bought and sold his sisters and brothers – his fellow human beings. What a waste of good seed – scattered where the crows would snatch it away, the hot sun burn it dry, or the weeds choke its life before it could ever flourish. What a blind, lost, and wretched man. What a waste of good seed!

           

Were we to resign ourselves to the allegorical explanation of today’s parable as the only way it could be understood, as the author of Matthew seems to do, we would be shocked that Newton could write not only Amazing Grace, but that he could have written nearly 300 hymns of faith. Even more, we would be shocked to know how as an Anglican Priest he influenced and worked with the great abolitionist William Wilberforce in the fight to end the slave trade. “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”[2] And John Newton could certainly make that statement about himself.

           

Living with only the interpretation offered in Matthew, we would find ourselves focused solely on the question of what kind of soil we might be – and what kind of soil other folks might be – perhaps even to the point of not wanting to waste our good seed on the many types of soil not conducive to a good harvest.

           

And if the parable were to be expanded a bit to include the reaction of on-lookers, I’m willing to bet we would hear the Sower’s neighbors tsk-tsking away saying, “Look how that poor fool is wasting seed, tossing it where it will never bear fruit.” Not much different than the church throughout the ages: “You’re going to let those people into our church? You think God loves them? You want me to give communion to whom?”  

Perhaps the offered interpretation of this parable has been at the back of the church’s collective subconscious over the centuries when we persecuted Jews and Moslems, enslaved or segregated whole races of peoples, subjugated women, and excluded sisters and brothers who are lesbian and gay from the full sacramental life of the church. You are welcome to the gospel as long as we believe you to be the right type of soil as we define soil – otherwise, the Church has too often said, you’re just unworthy of the seed – just worthless dirt, just a bunch of poor lost souls we can dismiss without a second thought.

           

Now, I'm just enough of a gardener to know it takes good soil to give a plant its best chance to grow. But I've also seen some amazing plants take root and flourish – even on the side of rocky outcroppings, out of cracks in the side of a busy city street, or in a concrete sidewalk.       

Parables, by nature, aren’t meant to have just one answer – just one way of hearing them. Parables are “stories that upset worlds…. Parables work to reveal the unexpected, subvert the normal, cast out certainty to make room for hope, and thus provoke various responses. They are dangerous stories,” writes theologian Terrence W. Tilley[3]

           

And so in way, Matthew’s gospel does us a disservice in offering us a set interpretation of the parable about the Sower. “Here’s precisely how you should understand what I’ve just told you,” Jesus seems to be saying. Matthew seems to add those little interpretations to parables of Jesus here and there – and those interpretations are not always helpful. They fly in the face of the mystery that parables are supposed to communicate. The word pictures we call parables are Jesus’ way of inviting his listeners into the practice of what I would call “theological re-imagining” – a way of looking at the world as we expect it to be, and being challenged to re-imagine it as the world God calls it to be.

           

Unlike the interpretation in Matthew which seems to be an allegory about the soil, the parable also seems to be about the Sower and the seed. After all, Jesus starts his parable with the words, “A Sower went out to sow.” He doesn’t begin, “There were four different types of soil.” It’s the parable, more than the interpretation, which invites us to participate in the act of theological re-imagining. The Word of God – or the promise of the kingdom – or the Good News of God’s love – whatever we understand the seed to be, is sown all over the place – haphazardly – almost carelessly – by the Sower – without regard to the expected promise of the different soils – without anxiety about what may or may not come to fruition. “Such is the grace of God,” Jesus seems to be telling us. “Imagine,” he says, “a theological reality where no place – no person – is outside the Sower’s reach.” Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!

           

The Sower most certainly feels like Jesus to me – though I realize his unexpected, subversive, provoking way of preaching about the inclusive kingdom of heaven fits prophets and teachers of many traditions. The seed he scatters – the seed of the gospel – the seed of Good News – is meant to turn the world on its ear – is meant to shake the foundations of those who think they have an inside track on heaven – those who think they have a leg up on the rest of the world – those who think they smell just a little sweeter than the rest of us – or look just a little prettier – or deserve just a little – or even a lot – more than anyone else. Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!

           

Later in Matthew’s gospel Jesus will take a group of argumentative scribes and Pharisees to task. He’ll challenge them about their religiosity and their concern for status alongside their lack of concern for anyone else. Jesus will say to them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have ignored the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.”[4] I can almost hear Jesus asking them, “What kind of seed are you sowing, you hypocrites! You talk about your own righteousness while you ignore or reject the very people you are called to love and serve!”

           

But we see the same thing today, don’t we? We see those who would sow seeds of dissension rather than community; seeds of separation rather than inclusion; seeds of bigotry and alienation rather than seeds of tolerance and acceptance. We see those who sow the seeds of power, of status, and of unchecked wealth – those who sow seeds that bring about the destruction of our environment for personal gain. They need to be challenged with the gospel of love and grace!

All that said, I do think the soil part of the parable is important in our own lives. We should work at being the good, fertile soil that nourishes and feeds the gospel seed. In our own lives we need to do some spiritual gardening – we need to push aside some of the rocks, pull some of the thorny weeds, and break up some of the hardened soil that gets in the way of our own growth as followers of Christ. But we also have to “cry the gospel with our whole lives” as well – and recognize the giftedness of God can flourish in the most barren of places – just ask John Newton, or any one of the all too many folks the church has cast aside in the name of Jesus over the centuries – just ask the folks who have found their way to St. Paul's because they have been cast aside by the church in the past!

We need to sow the seeds of God’s good grace: seeds of compassion, community, and forbearance – seeds of justice, mercy and faith – seeds of inclusion, hope and promise. “Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see."

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[1] H. King Oehmig, Synthesis

[2] The Hymnal 1982, 671

[3] quoted by Julie Polter in, Preaching the Word, Sojourners

[4] Matthew 23:23