WAITING PATIENTLY FOR HARVEST TIME

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1 Matthew 13:24-30, July 20, 2014 WAITING PATIENTLY FOR HARVEST TIME Jesus was a storyteller at heart. He told many parables to his listeners parables that revealed important things about God and God s Kingdom to those who had ears to hear. And, in some cases, Jesus stories seemed intended to offer answers to some of life s difficult questions. Take this morning s parable about the wheat and the weeds. A farmer sows some wheat seeds in his field. He s looking forward to a good and healthy harvest. But one night, under cover of darkness, an enemy of the farmer goes into that field and sows some tares, a weed that s particularly hard to distinguish from wheat that hasn t ripened yet. Okay, Jesus. You tell this story about worthless, troublesome weeds thriving alongside good wheat. What s your point? What s your parable really about? You know, when I imagine Jesus sharing a parable with a crowd of people gathered around him, I don t picture him suddenly, out of the blue and for no particular reason, blurting out a story and then saying to them, There, go chew on that for a while. I put Jesus parable-telling in the context of a give and take conversation between him and his audience. Maybe they ask Jesus a question: Rabbi, what is God like? Or, Teacher, tell us about God s Kingdom. And Jesus responds with a story to illustrate to them what God is like or to tell them about God s Kingdom. So, in my mind, I can imagine someone in the crowd throwing out a question to Jesus. A question such as, Lord, there are many good and righteous people in our synagogue, praise be to God; but we also have people who do bad things and spread dissension, who criticize and complain and tear down the good work of others. Why is that? Or, Rabbi, ever since I was a child, I have tried to be faithful to God and do what is right. And yet, now I m suffering from a terrible illness that threatens to end my life. Why would something like this happen to someone like me? Or, Teacher, God created human beings and called them good. Why, then, are there evil individuals who threaten and terrorize and even kill many innocent people?

2 Good and bad existing together. The righteous and the unrighteous living on the same street. What s up with that, Jesus? We ve all wondered about that at times, haven t we? And Jesus responds, well, let me tell you a story. There was this farmer who went into his field and planted some wheat. And an enemy of his came along and planted some weeds right beside them. So the farmer discovered that he had good wheat and bad weeds growing together in the same field. Just like there are good people and bad people, good events and bad events, existing together in the same world. The story goes on. After the farmer s servants discover this unfortunate occurrence, they ask their boss, Do you want us to pull up those worthless weeds? No, the farmer replies. Leave them alone. I ll sort it all out at harvest time. And Jesus says, God is like that. God declines to sort things out right now, the good from the bad, the evil from the righteous, on this side of the harvest, before the final judgment. Now, Jesus offers a reason for God s inaction, for God s refusal to rip out the weeds from his field right away. It would put too much good wheat at risk. Some of the good wheat would inevitably be destroyed in the weeding. And perhaps there are other legitimate reasons for God s motivation, or God s lack thereof. Such as, maybe God thinks the good wheat will eventually grow up, mature, and crowd out the bad weeds. Good ultimately overcoming evil. It could happen, if we do what God says. Or perhaps God realizes that such sorting of the wheat from the weeds is best done at the time of harvest, when the kernels of wheat are more easily distinguished and more easily sorted out from the produce of weeds. Whatever God s motivation is, God s action, or I guess it would be more accurate to say God s inaction, it gives both the wheat and the weeds the gift of time. There s still time for both to grow and develop: time for the good wheat to develop into the best crop it can be at harvest time; and time for the bad weeds to perhaps die out or be overcome and made insignificant by the good wheat. As the Apostle Paul wrote, Do not repay evil for evil, but overcome evil with good. Those are the marching orders of all the good wheat growing side-by-side with bad weeds in the field that is our world. But in the meantime, we wait. Wait hopefully. Wait patiently. Wait in faith for the right time to come so that our farmer-god will finally arrive 2

3 and do his thing, gathering up the weeds for burning and the wheat for harvesting. If this is indeed a parable about the good and the bad growing together in the same field, the flourishing of evil in a good world, or about the question on most of our minds, Why doesn t God do something about this tragedy? I have a few thoughts to share. First, please note that this parable of Jesus doesn t try to explain anything or directly answer the question of Why? There s no defense of God s action or inaction; no reflection on the origins and causes of evil. In the end, what Jesus parable tells us is something we really already know: that in this world, the good thrives alongside the bad, evil can occur right next door to us, and if we re going to grow in God s wheat field we re going to have to get used to being among both wheat and weeds. This is a fairly radical and different understanding of God than we usually have. Most of us think that God can do anything that God wants to do. But maybe this parable is telling us that God can choose not to do anything that God doesn t want to do. God can say No. God doesn t have to act according to our rules or our standard of what should be done. God doesn t have to work on our time schedule, at our convenience, at our beck and call. You re moving a little slow there, Lord. The evildoers seem to be winning. Get moving, would you? The result of such divine autonomy is that God, for reasons known best only to God, doesn t aggressively punish, root out and judge people now. God waits. God takes God s time, and no one else s. We get impatient; we say we want, and sometimes we even demand, a judgment, a reckoning; but do we really? We should be careful what we wish for, because we just might get it! The great British theologian and author N.T. Wright once wrote, Would people really like it if God were to rule the world directly and immediately, so that our every thought and action were weighed, and instantly judged and, if necessary, immediately punished? If the price of God stepping in and stopping a campaign of genocide were that God would also have to rebuke and restrain every other evil impulse, including those that exist within ourselves, would we be prepared to pay the price? Pondering those words of N.T. Wright, maybe it s accurate to say that, all things considered, in the end it s a good thing for there still to be time! Maybe God s plan to allow the wheat and the weeds to grow together for a while, until the harvest, is in our best interests. Even if we have to wait patiently for that time to come and the wicked to be judged and dealt with. Here s something else to consider. 3

4 I think it s fair to say that most of us hear this parable of the wheat and the weeds with the assumption that we re the wheat. We re the good ones who must wait patiently for the harvest to come and take away these trashy, weedy bad ones growing all around us. But did you notice that Jesus parable says nothing about God s criteria for goodness and badness? Which to me implies that only God knows what really makes for good or bad, evil or righteous. Just look in the Scriptures for numerous examples of God using unscrupulous individuals liars, con-men, even murderers like Moses to do God s good work. I m sure we would have judged such people much differently and maybe even told them to get lost because God doesn t want you around. So all of our judgments against ourselves or against other people, that this one is a weed beyond redemption and that one is good wheat who doesn t need to be redeemed, are at best foolish and irrelevant. Because only God truly knows which is wheat and which are weeds; and the bottom line is, such judgments belong to God alone and we have no part in it. Are you disappointed about that? I ll admit it. There are times when I wish God had given me the ability to judge and punish others for their unrighteousness. I keep a running list of those I would love to smite, to use that old fashioned, King James Bible word. I can clearly see at least I ve convinced myself that I can clearly see who is evil and deserving of a severe rebuke. Not that my righteous conviction is in any way true to the Gospel message, mind you. Because I can think of moments in Scripture when Jesus makes it clear that I wouldn t know what good and bad, righteousness and unrighteousness, wheat and tares, looked like if my eternal life depended on it. I remember the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25. The goats didn t know they were goats and the sheep didn t know they were sheep until the Lord told them so. And I recall all those stories of Pharisees who thought they were so very good and tax collectors who thought they were so very bad, all being shocked and surprised that God looked at things very differently than they looked at things. I think it s rather ironic that that in Jesus parable of the wheat and the weeds, the servants consider the weeds to be the big problem. What do you want us to do with all these worthless, harmful weeds? they ask. But when we read the Gospels, it s not so much the bad weeds that bring Jesus to such grief, but rather the oh-so-righteous wheat. Jesus harshest words of criticism and judgment were for the self-confidently, selfevidently good, rather than the notoriously bad. 4

5 So perhaps one of the meanings of this morning s parable is that Jesus is saying, I don t trust you people to root out the evil and to establish the good. Only God knows for sure the final value of the things that grow in God s garden. If that s true and I believe with all my heart that it is true then it would seem to be a wise and prudent thing for us to wait patiently; to allow the wheat and weeds to grow together, because that s what God is allowing them to do; and to strive, as much as we are able to do, to be like the good wheat in God s field, without judging or seeking to root out the weeds. Because it s not our job to do any weeding on God s behalf. Rather, it s our job to grow as much as we can and as well as we can in God s world, striving to overcome evil with good, as we watch and wait patiently for God s harvest time to come. May God bless us and help us to grow healthily into fruition, as good wheat, while we do. Amen. 5