Pentecost 8A2023
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
A member of Grace Lutheran Church where I formerly served, I’ll call him Paul, always worked full time and very hard, but he could never get ahead. For short periods, he would find housing but then be back sleeping in his car or at an old crumby hotel in downtown Phoenix. One of Paul’s challenges was his untreated post traumatic stress disorder from some childhood experiences that led him to pick fights. Just prior to me starting at Grace, he got into a fight with another church member while on church property. Which led to him being 86ed from the property. But when he showed up a couple months into my tenure, he and I sat down to write a covenant—an agreement stipulating he wasn’t going to engage in physical violence while at church, detailing his coping strategies, and spelling out the consequences should he engage in physical violence again. Once Paul rejoined the Grace community, there was much rejoicing for Paul generously helped out at church whenever he wasn’t working. Power washing the sidewalks, fixing whatever needed fixing, transporting heavy bags and boxes of donations and groceries for various programs, flipping pancakes when the church scheduled to serve the pancake breakfast didn’t show. To be clear, Paul struggled to keep his hands off people. Nearly every day for the first year of his covenant, Paul was in my office talking through his emotions and detailing how he wanted to hurt people but didn’t. Beyond helping with projects, Paul sometimes overheard folks telling me their stories of financial need and their financial requests, requests I could very rarely grant because of limited funding. Paul would overhear my apologetic refusals and then reach into his own wallet to give the guy a couple of twentys. Paul lives a complex life, all his gracious, generous acts mixed up with his desire to do violence, a complexity we all live, not a single one of us exempt from sin and brokenness.
In today’s odd parable, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a farmer who sows good seed and an enemy who plants weeds among the wheat. Instead of getting out the hoe and uprooting the weeds, the master, the farmer tells his slaves to let the wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest—for he doesn’t want to accidentally uproot the wheat in the process. Note: the slaves want to pull up the weeds; naturally, they want a pristine wheat field. Later, Jesus explains to the disciples that the farmer is the Son of Man, Jesus himself, the world is the field, the enemy is the evil one, the weeds are the children of the evil one, the harvest, the end of the age. Granted, Jesus’ parable is apocalyptic, describing, as the gospel of Matthew so often does, the end of the age with fiery, intolerant imagery. Still, Jesus’ parable leaves me with a sense of lightness. For Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a time and place when judgment is suspended so that good may flourish. At the end of the age, God is clearly in charge, sorting out all causes of sin and evildoers from the rest, God, the only just judge—and thankfully, a gracious one.
Jesus’ parable slows me down. It is so easy to label some people good and others evil, so easy to define some public policies good and others evil, so easy to categorize institutions or even whole business sectors as good or evil. It is so easy to look at the world through the lens of dualism, assuming that everything and everyone fits into a neat category of good or bad. The reality is that we see and know and understand only a small sliver of all that is. We likely only see a part of each person instead of their whole experience, perspective, and all that shaped them. We ourselves may ignore our own goodness or brokenness, depending on the day. In our deeply polarized culture, we may not even be familiar with the other “side’s” argument on any topic—abortion or gun control, immigration or the debt ceiling—at least not in a genuine way. We may dismiss whole institutions because of our singular experience with them, such as the dismissals I hear so often of the Roman Catholic Church or religion as a whole. Whether we speak of religion or business, public policy or particular people, distinguishing between good and bad is neither clear nor easy. It honestly isn’t.
In Toni Morrison’s breathtaking novel Beloved, the main character Sethe’s life spans the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation. She was enslaved and then lives through the transition. But she is still enslaved when she gives birth to her daughter Beloved. Her life had included excruciating pain: rape, brutal physical assault by the person who enslaved her, shame, and broken relationships. When her daughter Beloved is 2 years old, Sethe can’t bear the thought that her daughter would grow up shaped by the devastating circumstances of her enslavement. And so she murders her daughter. As an act of mercy. Not evil.
As a college student, I read Beloved and realized I thought identifying evil was easy. That murder was certainly wrong. It says so right in the Ten Commandments. Right is right and wrong is wrong, I thought. Similarly, when I began serving Grace Lutheran Church, I entered a community of people asking ethical questions I had never had to consider. So many people in my community routinely broke the law—but for reasons that made sense to them and, eventually, to me once I started listening to people talk about their lives. The truth is that life is far more complex than “right is right and wrong is wrong,” and Jesus’ parable teaches us to suspend judgment so that good may flourish.
Ultimately, we are not the ones discerning the goodness or evil or anyone or anything. That’s above our pay grade. That’s God’s job. And yes, there are limits to this parable. For it’s a parable about the end of the age, God’s ultimate judgment of us and this world. It’s not a parable about how we vote or how we go about making ethical decisions at home or at work, not even a parable about loving or serving our neighbor. Rather, Jesus’ parable reminds us that judgment is left to God who sees and knows and understands all things, including us.
And so we are left at the end of this odd parable with a sense of lightness. Life is far more complex than we make it out to be, and Jesus teaches us that suspending judgment allows good to flourish. One day, we will all be judged, but it is not we humans who judge—but our gracious God. Thanks be to God! Amen.