Weeds Among the Wheat
Today, we are going to talk a little bit about church hurt.
I don’t know if anybody has ever experienced church hurt.
Actually, church hurt is real.
Harm happen to us in churches, by churches, by Christians.
Sometimes harms are wrapped in good–but flawed– intentions or miscommunications and misunderstandings.
But those who harm us can also be motivated by actual evil: power grabs, calculated self-preservation, or hate.
Church systems beyond our local congregations can harm us. And sometimes we are harmed when deep, irreconcilable differences separate us from people who claimed they would love us no matter what.
How should churches deal with the differences and even evil that show up in what we believe to be Kingdom spaces?
Spaces that should be ruled by the Holy Spirit.
Spaces full of people who claim to be Jesus-followers.
One answer is to try to purify our Kingdom spaces.
We start by identifying the best way to follow Jesus. That could be the right liturgy, or right beliefs, or morality (right actions), or right partisan identity, or some combination of all of these things.
And then, as a community, we strive for this “best” that we’ve identified. We expect everyone involved to do the work.
And if someone disagrees, they can find somewhere else to worship. Lots of churches in Georgia, right?
This purifying instinct makes sense to me, because I want to be part of an amazing church, full of loving people, bounding from one discipleship goal to the next, all according to my theology and my convictions.
Sounds great!
Fear can get mixed in with the purifying instinct, as a motivator, and as a tool to enforce purity.
Purifying may take the form of actively pushing people out who are dangerous or different. In order to keep those on the inside safe from harm; safe from being pulled away from a Holy and Jealous God.
Or purifying can be more subtle.
Communities quietly assume and reward sameness.
In these communities, conformity ensures belonging.
But unidentified evil might be lurking just below the surface, under the sameness.
The purifying impulse can flow the other way, too.
As individuals, we leave communities, looking for a better fit, for comfort, for safety, for growth, for healing from the hurt we have experienced
This is something I’ve done; I’ve left before I could be kicked out of an organization where I didn’t fit anymore.
When we face difference and evil in church, we might try to purify our space.
Another possible way to try to deal with difference in church is to create a “tolerant” space.
Tolerance makes room for all the differences: different life choices, partisan identities, theology, convictions. It’s the big tent!
With tolerance, we can stay in the same space even when we deeply disagree.
Tolerance lets us worship side by side with others who have strong but incompatible beliefs about what a Jesus-shaped life even is.
Tolerance can help us “keep the peace.” Keep the parish from blowing up. Keep butts in the pews.
Tolerance can feel like a balm or antidote to that “purity” impulse that contributes to so much church hurt.
But total tolerance requires not touching “hot topics,” not talking about things that we or someone else in the congregation might consider “political.” Even if these subjects are important. Even if the Bible talks about them.
Tolerance also requires keeping parts of ourselves and our convictions hidden so that we all look a little more alike, so that we all can just get along.
And when tolerance is used to protect attendance or giving, it might even look the other way when someone is pushing the safety boundaries, or saying or doing something that is hurting some tolerant “other” in the community.
I wonder if you, like me have ever kept silent in order to keep the peace at church.
I know I’ve edited myself to fit the space. I have even overlooked questionable behavior for the sake of the “greater good” of avoiding conflict.
When we face difference and evil in church–especially when we have personally experienced that purifying hurt–we might be drawn to “tolerant” spaces.
How should we deal with the differences and even evil that show up in what we believe should be Kingdom spaces, ruled by the Holy Spirit, full of people who claim to be Jesus-followers?
Well, in our Gospel, we get to hear another one of Jesus parables, spoken to a crowd.
And, parables have multiple interpretations. That’s how they are designed.
They are like a gift you keep coming back to; you open it up, and there is something different inside each time.
And I hope you do keep coming back to this parable, and opening it up.
But we also get an interpretation, where Jesus lays out for his disciples one particular interpretation that is for that context at that time.
Now, this particular parable, and its interpretation, are unique to the Gospel of Matthew. So, it is probable that not only was the interpretation good for Jesus’ disciples, but it was also something Matthew wanted his community to hear and think about.
The gospel of Matthew was likely written for a mixed group of followers of the way of Jesus.
They were figuring out how to deal with their differences, in ethnicity, citizenship, religious backgrounds and practices, theological convictions and behaviors.
How should they deal with all these significant differences–plenty of which looked like full-on evil! –that were showing up in their kingdom spaces, ruled by the Holy Spirit, full of people who claimed to be Jesus-followers.
Should they Purify? Should they Tolerate? Something else?
In the parable, an enemy [the devil!] mixes in some not-wheat with the wheat. This not-wheat isn’t just general weeds or thistles. The Greek is the word for what we now call “darnel,” or “false wheat”.
Darnel looks just like wheat. It’s really hard to distinguish, while it’s growing, whether it’s wheat or darnel. It’s not always clear to the naked eye. And it really matters which one it is.
Because if you pull up darnel before the harvest, its roots (which wrap around the roots of the wheat), will yank up your wheat, and you will lose your crop.
The householder in the parable refuses to do it, refuses to let the workers yank out the darnel.
Pursuing the clarity of perfect purity in unclear situations leads to destruction.
But if you harvest darnel seeds willy nilly along with the wheat, you will poison–and even possibly kill-your livestock or fellow humans when they eat that darnel. And the householder refuses to do this, either.
Because endlessly tolerating poison also leads to destruction.
The way of the householder – the sower of good seed,
the son of man – the way of the kingdom says, “Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”
This is not perfect purity. It is instead a vision of a kingdom that happens in the patient, muddy, ambiguity of communities.
Communities made of diverse, broken, weed-y, people. Where we can be honest and loving and growing together.
Communities where we refuse to make demons of each other. Where our spiritual warfare is against that greater enemy who is trying to push us away from God.
And so our spiritual warfare is not against each other. We are not tearing each other up; we are not tossing each other out.
Our warfare, instead, in the words of psychologist and theologian Richard Beck, is “a battle fought with love and for love”.
Confronting, repenting, forgiving, reconciling.
“The church is a laboratory of love,” he says, and “a laboratory of peace”.
It is not our job to decide who is beyond God’s loving redemption.
Instead, we face our differences and ambiguities with patience, trust, and hope.
Hope–that the redeemer will keep doing the redeeming, even turning tares into wheat, like he turned water into wine.
But that is not all because in this parable, there is fire.
The way of the householder, the sower of good seed, the son of man, the way of the kingdom says, “At the harvest time, I will tell the reapers, 'Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned.’”
This is not endless tolerance.
It is instead a vision of a kingdom where Jesus clearly acknowledges and deals with evil.
First, although it is not in this parable, just a few chapters later, in Matthew 18, Jesus gives his disciples, and the Gospel author gives his community, instructions for carefully discerning and confronting evil.
So it’s not just pretending evil’s not there.
We are instructed to discern together and protect the vulnerable.
When the body sees what looks like evil in their midst, there are ways to act:
Together.
Prayerfully and decisively.
We can name evil.
We can walk away from evil. That’s ok to do.
We are not required to tolerate harm.
In the Episcopal church, we are known for our “middle way,” our embracing ambiguity and difference, our not rushing to judgment, our not enforcing a narrow identity.
But where there is communal clarity, we take a stand against evil through our Canon Law. I don’t know how often you hear preaching on Canon Law, but one of the reasons I chose the Episcopal tradition was our Canon Law.
This is our community-wide (the whole church), communally-discerned answer to “How will we be in community?”
What are our priorities? How will we enforce those priorities?
Many of these rules are about protecting the vulnerable.
We’ve made errors in the past. I was looking it up, and in the 1990s, we had so many cases of abuse, systemic issues. But the church said, “No more,” and came together, identified the evil, and made Canon Law that now requires us, here at St. Mary and St. Martha, to protect our children and youth from abusive predators.
We do this protecting through our data-informed Safeguarding training and standards. (If you haven’t been Safeguarding trained, go do it! It’s so empowering to know that we can do something about evil in our midst.)
We also have systems in place to protect those most at risk of being excluded–excluded from membership, or marriage, or employment, or advancement, or ministry. And we have appeals for when these systems fail to produce true belonging.
Additionally, we have a Title IV process, where any person with a complaint against clergy can be heard and taken seriously, with transparency. And we bring in secular legal systems when necessary.
These canons fail us at times!! Wheat and tares, right?
But as a kingdom people, we acknowledge evil and take a stand against it in the name of our redeemer and righteous judge. We do not tolerate evil that is clearly discerned, clearly understood by the body.
But let's get back to the fire in the parable.
Does it make you uncomfortable?
What kind of fire is this?
Is this the punishing hellfire of medieval imaginations–torment and punishment for eternity for those the devil, the enemy, has deceived? Should we be afraid that, maybe, in the end, we’ll turn out to be tares? Fake? Worthy of being burned?
That’s where my preacher, grandfather found himself as he faced death. So afraid. So afraid.
In our New Testament lesson, we are told that we are not given a spirit of fear.
So that kind of fear can’t be right.
In her book Wholehearted Faith, Christian writer Rachel Held Evans, contemplates the Rock Harlequin. This plant grows in Glacier National Park, and it only flowers in the year or two after a wildfire. She says, “For those of us taught to fear fire and brimstone, perhaps it’s instructive that sometimes fire cleanses and clarifies, is even a liberating force that cracks open the seeds of new life that would otherwise remain dormant, waiting for freedom” (p 133).
It is good news, the best news, that harms of every kind, that the causes of sin and the doing of evil, will eventually come to an end.
All of creation will become the kingdom. Cleansed. Clarified. Liberated.
New life will crack open; the barns will be full.
Everyone who is made in the image of God will then reflect God’s full, righteous glory;
righteousness no longer dulled by our wounded and wounding weaknesses, our deceived and broken hearts.
We groan for this. All creation groans for this.
In the meantime, in the micro-kingdom of each of our hearts,
the householder, the sower of good seed, the son of man,
patiently waits and walks with us.
He promises to us, just as he did to weed-y Jacob,
that he will be with us wherever our weed-y selves go.
And he uses the cleansing, clarifying fire of an honest, kingdom community.
First, to reveal our own hearts to us,
to see if there be any wickedness in us,
and then to carefully burn away our weeds,
so that we can walk ever deeper in the way everlasting.