21 July 2002 (Proper 11, Year A)
Christ Church Covington
The Reverend Pamela Porter Snare

We live in a world where good and evil exist together. All we have to do is read the daily newspaper or listen to the daily morning or evening news to receive the most recent accounts of robberies, kidnappings, fraud, murders, and armed conflicts which attest to the presence of evil in the human heart. There is also much good and goodwill for which to be thankful, although accounts of human mercy and compassion are generally less frequently reported in our media.

It is not only the world that suffers this admixture, however. The church, too, is a mixed body. Only a few years ago, our national office in New York City discovered a two million dollar embezzlement by our chief financial officer. Just before I left on vacation, The Living Church reported on the misappropriation of over a million dollars of Episcopal Church monies by two Central American bishops. The Roman Catholic Church has been plagued for months with cases of sexual misconduct by numbers of her clergy.

In addition to these scandalous situations which always attract much press and publicity, there are many more common instances of malicious intent and actions which Christians visit upon one another—such as not speaking to each other, gossiping about one another, carrying grudges, nurturing ill will. The church suffers no small amount on account of these bad examples, or “weeds,” as the gospel parable phrases it. Non-Christians and agnostics frequently use these bad examples in the Church to criticize her, and often use the presence of “weeds” in the Church as a reason for remaining outside of her fellowship.

Christians, too, sometimes become disenchanted, disappointed, and disaffected with the Church because of her lack of purity, perfection, and charity. Indeed, the Church’s lack of purity has been a recurring complaint throughout her history.

In the early fourth century, a group of Christians who became known as Donatists, thought that the wheat and the weeds could and should be separated in this present life, and they thought that they had the insight and wisdom to make the separation. They separated themselves from the rest of the catholic Church, and they thought and taught that only their priests were morally pure and upright, and that only morally pure and upright priests could effect valid sacraments.

What they discovered, and what every purist group that I know of has discovered (including the Puritans), is that we can’t keep the weeds out of the wheat. And sometimes, what appears to us to be wheat is really a weed; and what appears to us to be a weed is actually wheat. It is another way of acknowledging that on the day of judgement, some who are considered last in this world will be first; and some of those considered first in this world will be last.

Indeed, the “weed” referred to in today’s parable is called the bearded darnel. Because it is closely related botanically to wheat, it greatly resembles wheat, and can easily be mistaken for wheat especially in the early stages of growth.

I was struck by three insights in today’s parable regarding the fact that good and evil exist together in the Church, as well as in the world.

First, the sower in the parable sowed only good seed. It was an enemy who came and sowed the weeds among the wheat. As Joachim Jeremias notes in his book on the parables of Jesus, “…the introductory verses…[of this parable are] intended to make it clear that the owner is not to blame for the great quantity of weeds.” The one who sowed the good seed—the Son of Man, Jesus, God—is not responsible for the bad seed. God is not responsible for the evil we see and experience in the Church and in the world.

Who is? The parable does not attempt to answer this question except to indicate that an enemy is responsible for the sabotage. The allegorical explanation of the parable targets the devil as this enemy.

As we know, according to Scripture, the devil is one of God’s fallen angels. But even before the story of Satan’s fall, we have the story of the fall of humanity in the second chapter of Genesis. In the biblical view, sin, evil, rebellion against God, first made its entrance into the world through Adam’s and Eve’s act of disobedience in partaking of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. With that first act of disobedience, not only is sin, evil, enter the world, but also its consequence of death. Thus, in the biblical view, God neither willed nor created sin and evil. Rather, sin and evil entered the world by means of free human agency. From Genesis to St. Paul, that first, original bad choice is interpreted as the beginning of our present human predicament.

In the Christian view, evil, moral and non-moral—such as sickness, suffering, and death—are not caused by God, the All-Good and All-Loving. Rather, evil is an enemy of God which thwarts God’s design and distorts his purposes. God is no more pleased with human sickness, suffering, and tragedy than we are. Indeed, Christ, God’s envoy to us, was sent to heal disease and destroy death and its power. In Christ, God does not hold himself aloof from the human predicament or human suffering, but he experiences it himself, even taking evil upon himself from our hands, so that he may strengthen and sustain us; so that the evil we experience may not overcome or destroy us.

Secondly, let us consider the response of the sower once he has discovered the sabotage. When the slaves ask whether they should go out and remove the weeds, the owner replies, “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them…” A second characteristic of the bearded darnel is that it wraps its roots around the roots of the wheat. So, to pull up the weed inevitably means to pull out some of the wheat. In other words, human judgement is simply not sufficiently accurate to discern perfectly what is a weed and what is wheat.

Our eyes are not all-seeing and our minds are not all-knowing, like God’s. We make mistakes when we try to judge the hearts and minds of our fellow Christians and fellow human beings. If we tried to separate the wheat and the weeds now, we would inevitably pull out some of the wheat with the weeds, and we would mistakenly perceive some weeds to be wheat. We do not possess the wisdom or insight to make ultimate judgements about other people’s characters. Whatever judgements we may make in this life, and there are times when we are called upon to make them, we must understand those judgements to be provisional and penultimate. Only God’s judgement is ultimate, final, perfect, and perfectly just.

Finally, because human judgements are at best provisional, the owner of the field wisely instructs his servants to let the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest—that is, until the time of God’s final and perfect judgement.

Although this parable is a response to the admixture of weeds and wheat, good and evil, in the Church, it is at heart about the patience, mercy, and forbearance of God. God allows weeds and wheat to grow together because he knows that his mercy and forgiveness can turn weeds into wheat. The prodigal son rebelled, but he came to his senses and returned home. The shepherd left ninety-nine sheep in the fold to search for the one who was lost.

The Church is a mixture of good and evil, weeds and wheat, because each and every one of us is a mixture of good and evil, weeds and wheat. As Jesus reminded the Pharisees and his disciples, it is the sick, not the well, who are in need of a physician. Or, as Flannery O’Connor observed, “The Church is entirely set up for the sinner, which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.”

The parable of the wheat and the weeds is to remind us of God’s patience and forbearance toward us. It is not just others, it is our own hearts and minds which need weeding and pruning. Being aware then, of our need for God’s patience and forbearance, and our need of the patience and forbearance of others toward us, may we learn to reflect God’s patience in our dealings with and our judgements of others.

In the meantime, we trust that God’s time of harvest will be the right time. But even now, he is working to turn weeds into wheat, searching for the lost, healing the sick, restoring rebellious sons and daughters to fellowship, and transforming evil into good. May we, by our patience and forbearance, be a help to him and an example of his patience, in his work of transformation and redemption. Amen.
 

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