|
One of
the benefits of having a "brown thumb" is that nobody
asks me to work in the garden. They don't want to risk it.
After all, there's no telling what I might do if left unattended.
My lack of knowledge makes me a liability where gardening
is concerned. I don't know weeds from annuals. I don't know
weeds from perennials. I don't even know weeds from vegetables.
When Kris says, "Why don't you go out and do some weeding?",
I respond: "Of course. But you'll have to stand right
beside me." More often than not, she says: "Never
mind. I'll do it myself."
Not that
I am totally ignorant. I can identify some weeds. And there
are several varieties I positively hate. Crabgrass would top
the list. I can't stand the stuff. Dandelions, too ... although
I loved them as a kid. I remember picking them and taking
them to my teacher. Once or twice, I even took them to a girl
in my class. Now, when I see dandelions, all I can think about
is what they are doing to my lawn. And then there are those
weeds with sharp, thorn-like prickers. You can't pull them.
You have to dig them. I can't find anything good to say about
them.
But I
recently gained a new appreciation for weeds. Kris and I were
at the Community House for the annual antique show. We wandered
from room to room, looking at all the furniture and jewelry.
Suddenly we were in a basement room looking at art. I was
thumbing through a bin of "horticultural engravings."
They were extremely old ... and beautifully rendered. They
were also incredibly expensive. I didn't find one priced less
than $500. And most were well above that. "What do you
call these?" I asked my wife. "Botanicals,"
she answered. "They're weeds," I said. "So
what's your point?" she countered.
But back
to our story. A landowner sows good seed in his field. His
enemy sows bad seed. Which can happen, I suppose. I heard
tell of a fraternity prank that involved "bad seed."
On "Fraternity Row" at a southern university, there
was a great rivalry between two of the houses. At one fraternity
house, a new lawn was being prepared. Topsoil had been brought
in. Seed had been laid down. But late one night, members of
the rival fraternity threw kudzu seeds in the cultivated plot.
Which may not mean much to you who have lived your life in
the North. But a Southerner would understand the implications
of such an act.
Kudzu
was brought to this country in 1876 to decorate the Japanese
pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. As an
exotic import, it became popular as a shade plant, and was
seen as a God-given solution to the soil-erosion problem,
following the Great Depression. Between 1935 and 1942, government
nurseries produced 84 million kudzu seedlings, planting them
wherever they would grow. By 1943, there was a Kudzu Club
of America with 20,000 members and an annual "Kudzu Queen."
So what's
the problem? I'll tell you the problem. Kudzu is a vine with
phenomenal growth. Twelve inches in 24 hours is not unusual.
And 50 feet in a single growing season is well within the
norm. People in the South have a saying: "If you're gonna
plant kudzu, drop it and run." Which explains why some
have called it "the vine that ate the South." It
can cover anything and choke everything. It can twine itself
around fruit trees until it kills the entire orchard. It can
strip the gears of farm machinery. And railroad engineers
have even accused it of causing trains to slip off the tracks.
Which is why the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture)
eventually demoted kudzu to "weed status" ... with
the definition of a weed being "any plant that does more
harm than good."
The weeds
in Matthew's little parable are "darnel." If you
grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible, you call
them "tares." If you spend your days immersed in
botany books, you call them "lolium termulentum."
Just so you'll know. They are members of the wheat family.
They look like wheat. They hide out in wheat. But they are
poisonous in the end, capable of causing blindness ... even
death ... if too many of their little black seeds end up in
the bread dough.
But back
to our story. This is a judgment parable. Matthew is big on
judgment parables. Matthew is big on judgment language. Whenever
you read words like "weeping ... wailing ... gnashing
of teeth ... outer darkness ... consuming fire" ... you
can pretty much figure you are reading from the book of Matthew.
But, in this parable, it is clear that judgment is God's business.
Meaning that it is not our business. We are not the sower
in the story. We are not the judge in the story. We are not
even the seeds in the story.
Who are
we in the story? We are the would-be "helpful servants"
... that's who we are. And you will remember that the helpful
servants approach the owner of the field, having noted the
weeds growing in the wheat, and suggest that they go out and
do a little culling. Instead, they are told to keep their
hands off. "Let the weeds grow along with the wheat,"
the owner says. Then he adds: "I'll take care of things
at the harvest."
So who
are the "helpful servants?" I think the "helpful
servants" are the church ... meaning us. We are the ones
who want to sift, sort and separate. We are the ones who want
to thin the house. Turn us loose with our shovels and machetes
... not to mention our wonderful bottles of Round-Up ... and
there's no telling what (or who) we will chop down, pull up,
or spray into oblivion.
Picture
me as the "helpful servant." Picture me going through
your yard with my handy clippers and trowel. Better yet, picture
me going through Christ's church.
Weed.
Wheat.
Weed.
Wheat.
Weed,
Weed, Weed. Wheat, Wheat, Wheat.
All
weeds in this pew. All wheat in that pew.
Which
I could do. Except that I wouldn't know where to start. But
that doesn't stop my colleagues. I have colleagues who think
they know exactly where to start.
I have
colleagues who continually want to cull the field, making
decisions on the basis of belief ... behavior ... even baptism.
As many of you know, my wife is into genealogy. She's traced
portions of her family back over 500 years. Just a few months
ago, we learned that she had a relative who was burned at
the stake in Switzerland. Why? Because he had the wrong understanding
of baptism, that's why. They weeded him out. Then they burned
him up.
As for
me, I don't always know whether I am weed or wheat. Wasn't
it Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said: "If only there were
evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and
it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us
and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts
through the heart of every human being." Which, I suppose,
includes my heart. For all I know, I may even be the weed
in somebody else's garden. Perhaps in your garden.
Once or
twice a year, I tilt my head back and sing those wonderful
words of Fanny Crosby about "vile offenders." I
am not sure I always believe myself to be a "vile offender."
I mean, I don't have a long history of black deeds. One reason
I could never make it as a tent evangelist is that I don't
have a "sordid past" to describe in graphic detail
... meaning that "meeting Jesus" did not force me
into an "about face," so much as a slight "veering
to the right." But when I read the Apostle Paul, it forces
me to look in the mirror and acknowledge some measure of offense,
"vile" or no. With Paul, "if I say I have no
sin, I deceive myself." Seedy and weedy ... that's me.
But I
don't always know whether you are weed or wheat, either. I
used to think I knew. There was a time in my life when I was
less reticent to make judgments. I remember shouting at the
younger brother of my best friend: "Pat Max, you are
rotten to the core." I can't remember what he did that
made me feel it ... or say it. And his brother (my friend)
never let anybody forget it. His brother would walk around
saying: "My brother's rotten to the core. Ritter says
so. And everybody knows Ritter's gonna be a preacher."
Today, Pat Max is an upstanding citizen and a successful attorney.
Don't make anything out of that. Just accept it as an admission
that I was wrong.
And there's
a third thing I don't know. I don't know what God can do with
weeds (or wheat) on the way to the harvest. I mean, if we
believe that grace is as amazing as we sing it to be, then
what we see in the morning is not necessarily what we are
going to see at night ... what we see in the springtime is
not necessarily what we are going to see in the fall ... and
what we see in the beginning is not necessarily what we are
going to see in the end (when God gets done working in the
garden).
I look
around and notice that you are a pretty weedy lot. I hope
that doesn't surprise you. I mean, you didn't think you were
a field of "American Beauties," did you? And even
if you did, I suspect the film of the same name shot that
designation full of holes. But don't worry about whether I
find you weedy. You have no fear from me. Thanks to this parable,
God has taken the shovel and machete out of my hand.
Toward
that end, let me recast the parable (courtesy of the wonderfully
innovative work of Barbara Brown Taylor).
One afternoon
in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farm hands
decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat
field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they
began to argue ... about which of the wheat-looking things
were weeds. Did the Queen Anne's lace, for example, pose a
real threat to the wheat, or could it stay for decoration?
And the blackberries? After all, they were weeds. But they
would be ripe in a week or two. And the honeysuckle ... it
seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.
About
the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters,
the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field. Dejected,
they did as they were told. Back at the barn, he took their
machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made
them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved
across the field. At first, all they could see were the weeds
and what a messy field it was ... and what a discredit to
their profession. But as the summer wore on, they marveled
at the profusion of growth. Tall wheat surrounded by tall
goldenrod, accented by a mixture of ragweed and brown-eyed
Susans. Even the poison ivy flourished beside the Cherokee
roses. It was a mess. But a glorious mess. And when it had
all bloomed and ripened, the reapers came.
Carefully
... gently ... expertly ... they gathered the wheat and made
the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked.
And the fire the weeds made was excellent. And the flour the
wheat made was excellent. And when the owner called them together
... farm hands, reapers, along with all the neighbors ...
and broke bread with them (bread that was the final distillation
of that messy, gorgeous, mixed up field), they all agreed
that it was like no bread they had ever tasted before. And
that it was very, very good.
Let those
who have ears ... and half a brain ... hear and consider.
Note:
My treatment of this parable was inspired by Episcopal priest
and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor. The final recasting of
the parable is drawn from her sermon on The Protestant
Hour, delivered in 1990.
|
