O God, give us serenity to accept the things
we cannot change; courage to change the things that we can; and the wisdom to
know the difference ☩
in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What do we do in the meantime? That’s one of the most basic questions of our faith and the vast majority of our conflicts arise from different responses to that question. The Lord who created all that is took on flesh and dwelt among us, taught us the way of love, died for the sin of the world, rose again on the third day, and ascended to reign on the throne of God. All has been accomplished. The work of salvation is done. And yet, the work continues. We still await the culmination of all things as we anticipate that day when, truly, all shall be well. So what do we do in the meantime?
That’s
also a question we ask in this season of the Coronavirus. There’s a register of
services that all churches keep for the historical record. Every liturgy that we
have is recorded in that book. Well, this morning, when I added today’s date,
it made for an entire page of nothing but entries with the note “No Public
Worship – Coronavirus.” We had already filled up half a page with that notation,
but seeing an entire page with that note is jarring. And there’s no end in
sight. Sure – we might start with some version of outdoor worship later this
summer, but it’s going to be a long time before we again have 150 people back
in the church and get to sing hymns together. So what do we do in the meantime?
And,
as you’ve noticed, the meantime isn’t perfect. From things as small as
papercuts all the way up to things like environmental degradation, there are
problems in this in-between time. And that suffering leads us to ask the
question – if God is in charge and loving, then why do bad things happen? That question
is the most challenging one there is. Theologians call it “theodicy” – the justice
of God. Unsatisfactory responses to that question drive people away from faith
and make the faithful uncertain of their beliefs. So what do we do with the
persistence of suffering and evil in the meantime?
That’s
the question behind the parable that Jesus puts before us this morning. Last week,
we had a very bad sower who just threw seeds around, and, by God’s grace, found
an abundant harvest. This week, we at least have a farmer who knows how to
plant seeds properly. The wheat has been planted and starts coming up. But when
the laborers go out into the field, in that meantime between the planting and
the harvesting, they notice that weeds are growing up around the wheat. It’s
the question of theodicy – if you, O Master, planted good seed, why are there
bad weeds in the field?
Personally,
I find it to be a fascinating question. But it’s also a profoundly practical
one for me. When people come to me and ask why their loved one has cancer, why
their children have disowned them, why their marriage is falling apart, why
racism persists in our society, I want to be able to do more than shrug and say
“I guess that’s just the way it is.” But, if I’m honest, that’s the best answer
there is to suffering and evil. Last year, I read six books in a row all on the
topic and at the end of reading nearly 1,500 pages on the topic, the best
responses to suffering weren’t the ones that did all sorts of philosophical
gymnastics; instead, the most faithful responses were the ones that said: “Suffering
is hard, but God is with us in that suffering, and the suffering will come to
an end.” For people with a Cross as our central symbol, that shouldn’t be a
surprising answer, even if it isn’t as descriptive as we’d like it to be.
Consider
the master in Jesus’ parable: all he says is, “An enemy has done this.” That’s
it. No explanations of what the enemy was trying to do or how this person came
to be an enemy. Just a simple statement: An enemy has done this. When we
encounter evil and suffering, sometimes that’s the most we can say – an enemy
has done this. As we know from St. Paul’s writing, the final enemy is Death. Death
is what stands in the way of abundant life, and that’s what we are left
contending with in the meantime.
So
the servants ask a very reasonable question – shall we pull up the weeds and
get rid of them? Now, like the haphazard sower last week, we see what happens when
the son of a carpenter uses farming metaphors to talk to a bunch of fishermen.
Of course, you pull the weeds that are growing – that’s what would have been
expected. But this farmer says, “No.”
Here,
we need to understand a bit of what’s going on agriculturally. Wheat, even if
we’ve never seen it or grown it, we’re familiar with it. From wheat, we make many
wonderful things like bread, pasta, tortillas. The weed though isn’t the garden
variety type. It’s a particular weed that only grows in the Middle East and is known
as darnel. What makes this weed so vile is that it looks very similar to wheat –
pulling all of the darnel would result in pulling a lot of wheat as well. And
the roots of darnel grow up around the roots of other plants, so even if you
pull the correct plant, it will uproot the good plants as well. But, if the
harvest is going to be saved, the darnel must be dealt with because a poisonous
fungus grows inside of it which can ruin an entire crop of wheat if it gets
mixed in. At harvest time though, the darnel is easy to spot because there aren’t
any grains on it.
The
fact that Jesus uses this type of weed for his parable tells us something about
the difference between good and evil – namely, that it can be hard to tell the
difference between them. Sure, we think that we can easily spot the difference,
but it’s trickier than we realize. Think about the situation we’re dealing with
in our schools right now – do they reopen for in-person attendance or do they
remain online only. Neither choice is great, both have good qualities and
potentially catastrophic downsides.
Many of the conversations
around race are similar. There are some ideas that people put forth as possible
solutions, and while they might do some good, there will be unintended consequences.
As we heard St. Paul say a few weeks ago, “For I do not do the good I want, but
the evil I do not want is what I do… So I find it to be a law that when I want
to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.” That’s how it is. This parable tells
us that we ought not fool ourselves into thinking that we can always tell the difference
between good and evil. And even if we can, if we try to root out the evil, we’ll
damage the good along with it.
This, I acknowledge,
is a very unsatisfying reality. I absolutely want to expunge injustice,
poverty, racism, and selfishness not only from myself, but from our society.
But humility reminds me that I do not have the mind of God. I get ahead of
myself if I put myself on God’s throne and think that I know the difference
between right and wrong. After all, the problems in Genesis started when Adam
and Eve ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The master says “Let
both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell
the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned,
but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Does this mean that we just let suffering evil
happen? That we don’t address racism? That we don’t seek medical treatment when
we are ill? We just accept evil and do nothing about it, letting it choke out
the roots of good and steal nutrients from the crops of justice and peace? In
our Baptismal Covenant, we commit ourselves to “strive for justice and peace
among all people” and to “persevere in resisting evil.” But is Jesus saying
that when we notice evil, we just let it grow up alongside the good? If that’s
what this parable is saying, then I’m really not sure that I can be on board
with it.
The issue with
reading the Bible in translation is that sometimes we miss the punchline – and that
happens in this parable. Where we read “Let both of them grow,” the word there
for “let” means so much more than “permit” or “allow.” No, it’s the exact same
word that Jesus taught the disciples to use in prayer back in the Sermon the
Mount in chapter 6: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
trespass against us.” Evil and suffering are to be forgiven, to be let go.
In the Kingdom, we
invest our energy into a different sort of economy, that of grace, mercy, and
forgiveness. Pulling up the weeds is an act of violence and destruction. That
is the currency the enemy used in sowing the bad seeds. Jesus says that
returning evil for evil is not a sign of the Kingdom. Ethically, there may be
nothing wrong with resisting evil and pulling weeds. But we ought not confuse
or delude ourselves into believing that pulling the weeds brings salvation. Salvation
comes through forgiveness, through resisting evil, through endurance, not
through more violence. For in pulling those weeds, much damage will be done.
At least in the
meantime, it seems that God is a pacifist, letting good and evil grow up
together. To be very clear, the parable ends with a separating of the good from
the bad. That reckoning will come and will be done by the reapers, which we are
not. And even in this, an abundant harvest comes. Instead of only a harvest of
wheat, the farmer has a harvest of wheat and of kindling for the fires that
will be used to bake the wheat into bread which will feed many. Perhaps having
good and evil grow up together doesn’t quench our desire for revenge, retribution,
and reordering, but if God is patiently enduring, then we’ll be in good
company.
In Jesus’ day,
people were wondering – Jesus says he’s ushering in the Kingdom of heaven, but
evil persists, so he can’t be right, can he? The world then, like it is today,
was one of “might makes right,” where strength and honor come in having seats
of power, wealth, and prestige. And the way to get those things is to compete
with others. In this parable, Jesus is saying that the Kingdom comes not when
we try to take matters into our own hands, not when we claim to know how things
should go, not when react hastily.
Instead, the
Kingdom is a place where we can patiently endure suffering because we trust
that God will make all things well. The Kingdom is a place where we can forgive
rather than trying to get even for we trust in the power of the Cross. The
Kingdom is a place where we can humbly acknowledge that we don’t have all the
answers because we know that God is God and we are not.
This, I know, is
not the most comforting message out there – that evil is to be tolerated, not destroyed.
But, perhaps, it is the most reassuring message there is. For all of our
attempts to rid this world of evil and suffering, it persists. This parable
tells us that is because it is not our job to eliminate these things from our
world. Rather, our response to them is what matters more. In the face of evil,
we witness to love. In the midst of suffering, we trust God. Now, this doesn’t
mean that we just ignore evil, pretending it doesn’t exist or adding to it. But
we ought not to fool ourselves into thinking that we have the capacity to rid
this world of evil. We do, however, have the ability to fill the world with
love as we wait in hope for God’s harvest.
And, I’ll tell you, there are a lot of people out there who probably think that I’m a weed – so I’m incredibly thankful that this decision about who to keep and who to cancel isn’t for humanity to make. Instead, the God of grace will be the one to sort things out. And, for that, I shall be eternally grateful. So, in the meantime, we wait in hope and grow in love. Let anyone with ears listen.
