Sermon for 7/19/2020 | Seventh Sunday after Pentecost | Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 | by Andrew Smith |
24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, 42 and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 13:36–43.
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text for the sermon is the Gospel lesson just read. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.’” This is our text.
As a disciple of Jesus, I must confess that there are times when I get frustrated and discouraged by the evil in the world. Working as a chaplain at the naval hospital was a constant battle against evil, the kind of evil that we confront and feel powerless to overcome, sometimes even powerless to fight against. It’s similar, I think, certainly to a lesser degree, but similar to the powerlessness that many of us feel when we go to the mailbox these days. Bills and bills. We feel like these companies have us over the barrel and we have to pay. Their record profits just don’t seem fair. How is it they can still make money in an economy where so many are laid off? Greed is just sort of basic level human evil. The list is long—certain people, organizations, companies like the cable or cell phone company, governments, groups, and gangs. There are even times when I get frustrated with people in the church who profess faith in Christ but who do some very weed-like things. Maybe you feel that way too. Like the disciple in the Garden of Gethsemane who drew his sword, our inclination is to take matters into our own hands.
Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds is intended for us, so, let’s listen closely. Not only does Jesus intend that hearing this parable will ease our frustration, but much more. By giving us this parable, Jesus intends to make heirs of the kingdom of heaven even more so than if he simply stamped out evil.
We hardly need ears to hear how frustrating things already are. We know why Jesus gives us the parables. He wants us to know some aspect, some facet of the kingdom of God’s rule that has already come to pass in this world, not just in the world to come. When Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven is like…” he is saying “When God is acting in our world to set things right and reestablish his rule over all people, it looks like this…” So the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed excellent seed in his field but his enemy came in the night and sowed bad seed all through the field. Not many of us are farmers, but we have all experienced this.
The kingdom of heaven is like a woman was driving down the street with her hands at 10 and 2, doing the speed limit, and driving defensively but she was soon followed by a selfish driver who was not content to drive safely and was tailgating and flashing his lights at her. She thought she might call her boyfriend who was a cop and turn the guy in but instead she decided that the aggressive driver behind her might be persuaded by her example and drive safer and less aggressively in the future or one of these days, or he’ll get nabbed for really speeding along this road and have his license taken away.
Now, that is a really terrible parable. Maybe I should start a collection of really terrible parables. But you get the point. Our evil is thinking that we could be the cop. Sure that too is pretty low on the scale of evil. I mean it’s not murder or ethnic cleansing but as much as we experience these lesser evils we also commit many of these lesser evils too. That’s the nitty gritty of the message this morning. Little evil comes from the same place as big evil. These big evils—war, terrorism, rape, adultery, greed, and oppressive governments—we know where these come from. We know from what kind of plant comes fruit like this—fruit that kills and maims and destroys and oppresses. Or do we? We would prefer to think these terrible things spring from the hearts of horrible, diabolical people bent on destruction, soulless devils prowling the ravaged regions of our planet seeking someone to devour. But these evils come from the hearts of people. It’s just one step from ethnic cleansing in Rwanda by people outside the church, to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia by people who claimed to be inside the church, the Orthodox Serbs. It’s just one step from radical Islamic fundamentalism causing the death of innocents to radical Christian fundamentalism and the Crusades. These are not even categorical differences. And so, just like we experience these little evils done to us, we commit some little evil, some racist slur or theft of a few dollars. But these little evils are just as evil to God as the big ones and they spring from the same place as the big ones. These things come from our hearts. This evil is like a weed and it’s active against all that is good in the world, even the good that God has planted in each of us. And it’s well-rooted in us and alive and active in us when we would despair of God putting all things right or when we might decide to take matters into our own hands and start to root up the evil at whatever the cost. And this tendency to do weed-like things is rebellion against God and his kingdom. But again this parable is not so much about what we do as much as it is about what God does.
God is actively ruling his kingdom, we see. St. Augustine was more willing than probably some modern Bible interpreters to go one step further with the parable. He said, “Let the one who is wheat persevere until the harvest; let those who are weeds be changed into wheat. There is this difference between people and real grain and real weeds, for what was grain in the field is grain and what were weeds are weeds. But in the Lord’s field, which is the church, at times what was grain turns into weeds and what were weeds turns into grain; and no one knows what they will be tomorrow.” (Sermon 73A. I, MA 1:249; WSA 3 3:295) If this is the case, then God, through the example of his well-planted field (a.k.a. his kingdom of heaven now arrived) is calling others into that kingdom. There may be some weeds among us here today whom God is calling to repent and believe in the kingdom Jesus has established. There may be some weedy things we wheat have done that need confessing too. Jesus is preaching to the crowds in one instance and instructing the disciples in another in an attempt that both would come to understanding. God has announced that it is his will that all come to saving faith in Christ and become true, bountiful wheat, and inheriting the kingdom. He is using this grace period to fulfill his plan for his kingdom.
But this parable gives us more than a sense of what God is doing in the face of that evil in our midst. Jesus lets those who have hears to hear understand why things are the way they are. Even though the Son of Man has already come and brought with him the restoration of the rule of heaven, things are this way because this present age is a period of grace. We all know what a grace period is. My rent is due on the first of the month, but I won’t be penalized unless I pay it after the 5th. It’s the same thing here. Now and ever since Jesus came, we have been living in a grace period. Our world is no longer the same since Jesus came preaching the kingdom of heaven and healing. The signs of the end of the age—darkness covering the earth, dead rising from the grave, earthquakes—these signs happened the day Jesus died. These other signs, the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem they followed shortly thereafter. The end of the age has arrived and it didn’t come with COVID-19 anymore than it came with the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago. Dear friends in Christ, yes, we are already in the end times and have been since the day of resurrection. The bill has come due. And Jesus has paid the bill in full. We are waiting for the grace period to be over and the final accounting to begin. We are living in the kingdom already now. We are growing in the kingdom right now. We are bearing fruit in the kingdom right now. And this is the activity of God ruling his kingdom that he is making sure that not one of us risks being uprooted by an early culling of the evil weeds around us. That is good news.
I’ve been pondering this idea off and on most of the week. That God does not want to risk our uprooting by pulling out the evil around us. The servants know that the good wheat will bear more fruit if they are not in competition with the bad weeds. And this is what we want too isn’t it? We don’t want evil around us while we’re trying to grow in the kingdom. We would be better off, we say, if God would uproot all that keeps us from becoming our full selves, if God would uproot all that keeps us from bearing the kind of fruit we have the potential to bear. History is filled with people who have thought that life would be a lot easier and a lot simpler if all the evil people were gone. Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, those are the easy ones. But how about Pope Urban II, Emperor Charles V, the television preachers with their high profile scandals, the low profile folks that nobody’s ever heard of until the bad news hits the local news. How about us when we mess up royally and do or say things that we really should regret but pride will not let us? What does it say about us and our faith in God, when we, not the normal bad guys, when we take matters into our own hands for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? How many have been lost to the kingdom because they look at the atrocities—great and small—committed by the so-called Christians, and say, “That doesn’t look like the meek inheriting the earth to me. I don’t want to have any part of that hypocrisy.” They are smart people, and ethically, morally good people but they are now lost to the kingdom of heaven because we and people like us gave into temptation and decided that it would be better to uproot the evil now than follow the Word of the master and wait for the harvest.
Instead, God in Christ does something completely different. We know that Jesus came not only to sow, but to be wheat among us. He knows what it means to be surrounded by evil and chocked for growing room and to have everything you are called into question and discounted. Remember the kingdom is not about what we do. The kingdom of heaven that Jesus preaches is about what God has done for us in Christ. He become wheat so that we all might be wheat and he cross-pollinated us with all his holiness and righteousness and blessedness that we might bear good fruit. That’s the message of Jesus’ kingdom; it is explained completely in Jesus’ cross. He has rooted us in his cross, in himself. We started the new Bible class this week on Psalms and we began at the beginning with Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water.” He is like a stalk of wheat planted from good seed and tended by a caring farmer who will not risk pulling him up just to get rid of the evil around him. God has rooted us firmly in him who was rooted at the cross.
In this parable, Jesus gives us a snapshot of the kingdom of heaven. There is good and evil mixed together for now but God is in full control. God sent his son to take away the sting of that evil in his own flesh. Even more so, Jesus answers the question, “why?” Why is it like that? Why does it look like the bad guys are winning? Because this time is a time of waiting. To pull the weeds out now would to risk pulling out too much wheat and our Lord would not suffer that any should be lost. The servants should not take matters into their own hands. History provides too many examples of this terrible mistake. Have faith in the plan of the sower, the landowner. Remember God is using this time to cross-pollinate and grow others and have them bear fruit in his kingdom. Remember, the harvest is coming and until then, may the Lord give us ears to hear.
The peace of God which passes all understanding stand watch over your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.
The Rev. Andrew Smith
Heavenly Host Lutheran Church
Cookeville, Tennessee, USA
E-Mail: smithad19+prediger@gmail.com
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