Thoughts going in, Sunday July 17th

Matthew 13:24 Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 27 "The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' 28 " 'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 29 " 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn. 36 Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field." 37 He answered, "The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. 40 "As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

This parable is commonly known as the Parable of the Wheat & the Tares.

Of course, before we even begin the process of digging in, it's always helpful to remind ourselves of what **precisely a parable IS, and what it was designed to do. In some ways the old Sunday School definition is appropriate: A parable is "an earthly story with a heavenly meaning." On the other hand, even *that definition needs refining. A parable, we could add, is a common-life story that teaches us something unexpected about God and the way things are when God's kingdom reclaims the world. In other words, there's a "GOTCH-YA" to parables, and that GOTCH-YA is about how God acts in ways that surprise us; in ways that we never would've imagined. In other words, there is a 'god' that we think we know, that we think we've entirely figured out, and that ...in our minds....would follow a certain path & react in certain ways. But one of the primary reasons Jesus came was to reveal to us that THAT'S not what his heavenly Father is like at all. Every parable, to one extent or another, illustrates for us that God is not the god we imagine, and is not the god *we create in *our own image.

Beginning with that concept of parables, it's interesting to see what we can learn from the parable of the wheat & the tares. How does God surprise us? How does God behave in unexpected ways?

PRAGMATISM: Well, for one it turns out that God is perhaps more pragmatic than we'd have originally thought. In the parable the farmer clearly believes that all is not lost; Surely a great misfortune has occurred at the hands of an ENEMY. There is a presence of evil in the world, external to God (God is not the author/creator of evil); this evil has designs that are contrary to the kingdom of God. Yet in the parable, the farmer keeps his head. He doesn't over-react. He doesn't say "burn the field!" He recognizes that in spite of the presence of *badness in his field, great *good is still possible and still remains what the field is all about.

PATIENCE: Probably the biggest GOTCH-YA of the passage is the patience of the farmer. Partly this is due to the pragmatic point already mentioned; He needs to be patient in order to reap *any harvest. But there's more. And this is where we need to recall what it says in other parts of the Bible, for example 2Peter 3:9 which says: "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." In the parable the farmer is patient because it's the most prudent choice. But in the parable wheat is wheat and tares are tares and that's that. In reality, we know that the Gospel has the power to **change tares to wheat. How true it is that often our first reaction upon encountering evil, badness, or opposition, is to uproot it as quickly as possible and dispense with it in short order. To mix the metaphors, 'one rotten apple is all it takes to spoil the barrel,' after all. But God is much more patient than we are.

POISE: One of the cool things about the parable is that the farmer never loses his cool. It's so easy for us to want (or think we want) a retributive god--a Zeus-type who immediately hurls lightning bolts at those who've angered him, etc. But the farmer in the parable isn't like that. He has a plan, and what's more, displays utter confidence that in the END all is going to work out; the good harvest will end up where it's supposed to be & everything else will be dealt with.

In short, we can learn from this parable that God is a lot more pragmatic, patient & poised than the 'knee-jerk god' we often imagine.

PITFALLS--Probably the biggest pitfall of this passage concerns concentrating on the judgment aspect of the tares (vss 41, 42): 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The reason this is a pitfall is that as Christians we have to walk a VERY fine line concerning the judgment passages. It's entirely TOO EASY to adopt an "us/them" attitude; in short, to get to the place not only where we believe in everlasting torment, but we have a list of those we hope will end up being everlastingly tormented. God forbid! This is NOT our place...and when we make it our place, too often we forget that salvation is by GRACE. It's entirely too easy to begin to think that God loves *us because we're **us, and God hates *them because they're not *us; to *smugly declare ourselves to be wheat, and disdainfully declare *those over there to be tares. I am more and more of the opinion that NO GOOD comes from **concentrating on God's Judgment. It is a mystery that does not concern us in the *wider sense. And in the narrow sense we ought to concern ourselves primarily with seeking God's grace/mercy, because we PERSONALLY have done much that would deserve His judgment.

The ultimate point of the parable is that God is not thwarted--and this needs to be what we concentrate on. The presence of an enemy; the enemy's wicked acts; the presence of tares in the wheat field...NONE of this can prevent a harvest. NONE of this can prevent God from realizing his ultimate goal-- having his righteous ones that shine like the stars.

Cheers,

TM