Pentecost 10 Year A Sermon

Pentecost 10 Year A Matt 13:24-30, 36-43 July 20, 2008 The Rev. Benton Quest

Welcome to our next installment of “Gardening With Jesus!”
As you will remember, last week we were discussing the whole sowing part of the gardening process. We were talking about how God spreads the seeds of his love everywhere, even to those places where most people would believe that love could not grow. And we discussed how God unconditionally spreads this love. Even where others may think it silly, God chooses to spread the seeds of love. We also touched on soil preparation, both preparing our own soil, but how to assist in the preparation of our neighbors’ soil.
This week, we have the seeds growing, but we have a new problem; we have weeds growing along with the seeds! So what is a good gardener, I mean Christian supposed to do? What are we supposed to do with those pesky weeds?
The usual response would be that we are supposed to pull the weeds out. Isn’t that what we have been taught all along? Having no weeds around make plants grow stronger, right? And isn’t this exactly what the workers in the parable suggest? Just get in there and yank those weeds out!
But, of course, we are gardening with Jesus and that means that what we expect to do and what we are told to do are often two different things. The master of the workers, who we can assume to be either Jesus himself, or God, tells the workers to leave the weeds grow along with the wheat. And when the plants have all grown, then the master will tell the reapers to collect the weeds to be burned and to gather the wheat into the barn.
Why not pull up the weeds? Don’t we hear that all the time? We need to get the weeds out of the way so that the good crops can grow? But here we have Jesus instructing his followers to do just the opposite: leave the plants and the weeds.
We probably all have stories of things in our gardens that we thought were weeds but end up being the very plants we were trying to cultivate. I moved into a new house and saw all these plants growing along the driveway. They were growing at an incredible rate and were producing a ton of seeds. I began to pull these plants out thinking that they must surely be weeds.
Well, you guessed it, they weren’t weeds; they were day lilies. Some started to bloom before I got there to yank them out and I realized that they were beautiful flowers! In my ignorance of plants, I almost yanked up an entire flowerbed! Thankfully I didn’t rip them all out and they managed to reestablish themselves.
But if we have this much trouble identifying which plant is a flower and which is a weed, think of how much harder it would be to make these judgments on people -- who are so much more complex than plants. How can we even begin to kid ourselves that we know which people are the wheat and which people are the weeds? Jesus is pointing out the folly of thinking we can boil a whole, complex, person down to a simple title such as wheat or weed. But yet, we as people try!
We can just look through history to see where this has happened and see the results when people tried to place others into the categories of wheat and weeds. Throughout history people have named groups of people as “weeds” and then tried to get rid of them. We have had the Jews, the Blacks, Women, Gays, Italians, Protestants, Catholics, Communists, the Mentally Challenged, the Physically Challenged, the Mexicans, Irish, the Poor, the Rich, the Indigenous Peoples of and area, the Christians, the Muslims, Chinese, Mormons, Japanese, the Left-handed, … and I am sure there are more categories that I have not thought of. But if you fit into ANY of these categories, at some point, you have been considered a weed and have been considered worthy of being yanked out by the roots.
So, as we can see, just about anything that one person could use to identify another person as “different” has been used to categorize others as “weeds.” And what is even scarier is that in just about every one of these cases, the labeling of “weed” was said to be mandated by God.
The other interesting thing, when we look at the historical context of wheat and weeds, is that history often portrays the ones trying to do the weeding as the actual weeds. Groups such as the KKK, The McCarthy Commission, and even the Pharisees have not fared well in the eyes of history. Although I am sure these people believed what they were doing was for the good of society through maintaining purity, hopefully we can see that their actions were as evil if not more evil than the evil they were trying to eradicate.
Now, this is not saying that we should just ignore everything anybody does and carry an extreme “Live and let live” attitude, but it does call us to think about what is happening. Crime is crime; murder is murder; abuse is abuse. There are things that do indeed tear away at the fabric of society. We need to be aware of what is happening in society and work to build up society as a whole. But when people are placed into the “weed” category en masse, it is then that we need to begin to wonder what is happening. We need to question exactly what it is that makes that group a bunch of weeds. Maybe even ask the question, “Why am I not a weed? What have I done, or not done, that puts me in a different category?” Are these people weeds just because they are different than you and me?
So often, it seems the thing that causes one group of people to place another group of people into the category of “weed” is a lack of understanding by those who are either in the majority or in power. And since these other people are different then those in the majority, there is a feeling of threat. Now most of us would agree that threat is not the most comfortable feeling and most of us would want to make it go away as soon as possible. So, instead of learning why the power folks feel threatened and growing through the experience, the power folks turn those who are different into “weeds” and try to get rid of them. So, to say it another way, the perception of who is a weed is based off of fear, ignorance, and discomfort. I feel uncomfortable so you need to change.
Unfortunately, right now there are various sections of the Anglican Union who are running around calling each other weeds. And unfortunately, these sections are trying to tear each other out by the roots. But tearing each other out by the roots is not what Jesus is telling us to do. Jesus is telling us that we are to grow together. And that has been an Anglican tradition for hundreds of years. When we are not so quick to yank those people we would consider weeds, we learn to grow together. And as we grow, our fear, ignorance, and discomfort decreases. It is in this way that we grow together and we grow into the reign of God.
It is not our job to select those who are worthy of God’s love and those who aren’t. We are not to go around yanking people out by the roots because we think they are undesirable. It is not our job to decide those who are part of the in crowd and those who are the weeds. If we were left to decide, eventually there would be no one left, except maybe me, ‘cause we all know that I never, ever, do anything that would cause God to be disappointed! Yeah, right!
Just like the lilies along my driveway, when we begin yanking weeds without knowing what we are doing, we may just start yanking the flowers along with the weeds. And some of those we have decided were weeds, if we had let them grow, may have grown to be wheat or flowers, but since we yanked them out, we will never know. When the time for the harvest comes, God will do the deciding, but for now, our business is to help all grow, regardless of whether we think they are wheat or weeds.
I do want to repeat that this does not give people free reign to do whatever they would like. And it does not mean that we are to tolerate everything that anyone would care to do. But it does mean that we are called to be inclusive, welcoming, and open to the alternatives the Holy Spirit might send our direction.
The garden that Jesus would have grow on earth is one of diversity and delight. It is one that both sustains us and dazzles us. It is found where we would expect it to be and where we would be shocked or even scandalized. The garden that Jesus would plan, would be so much more than we could ever dream. There is a place for all kinds of plant, all growing together. Christ placed the vision before us, and empowers us to help bring it to reality.