Texts: Isaiah 44:6-8; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
I understand that the Bishops gathered in London for the Lambeth Conference are starting each day with a series of Bible studies on St John's Gospel. Perhaps they should interrupt those studies today and join with us in pondering the significance of today's passage from St Matthew's Gospel, for it seems to me that it could hardly be more timely. Those who wish to exclude others from their midst, and those who have absented themselves from the gathering, it seems to me, have failed to understand this Parable of the Weeds.
For whatever else this parable is about, it surely speaks in opposition to those who are all too ready to separate the crops (that is, those who agree with them) from the weeds (those who do not agree with them). The Bishops haven't got that tendency alone, of course, but they are a terrible example of it at this particular moment in history. When they look at some of their fellow Bishops they see, not brothers and sisters in Christ, not fruits of the same Gospel they themselves profess to preach, not even fellow human beings made in the image of the same God they profess to love. They see weeds – worthless scraps to be plucked out of the Lord's garden and thrown on the heap.
What do they see when they look in the mirror? I guess they see themselves as fine servants of the Lord, ever anxious to serve the Lord, ever ready to hear his word and do his bidding. Above all, they apparently see themselves as perfectly capable of judging others, of determining who is and who is not worthy to be in the Kingdom of God. They see themselves as right on all essential items of faith, which means, of course, those issues that they themselves identify as essential items of faith.
Perhaps today they should polish those mirrors, find their best glasses, and have another look. This time, perhaps, they may be granted the grace to see themselves as servants indeed – but as the servants of the owner depicted in Jesus' parable. Then may they also be granted the grace to hear again the dialogue that takes place in the parable between the owner and the servants. The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time, I will tell the harvesters: first collect the weeds and tie them into bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring them into my barn.'
And just in case the Bishops are as slow in understanding the parable as the disciples were, they could stop looking in their mirrors and have a look at the second half of our reading where Jesus spells out exactly what he is talking about. He is indeed talking about truth and untruth, good seed and bad. There is no muddle, no suggestion that everything is equally valid, all seeds are just as valuable as one another. In the end truth and falsehood will be separated – but not yet, and not by human hands.
As with any parable, we mustn't push it too far; but it does seem to me that our bolshie Bishops could profitably ponder one detail in this parable. Jesus says the reason why the servants are not to go weeding just yet is that, in pulling out the weeds, they might uproot the wheat as well. But who is the wheat? When we hear Jesus' explanation of the parable, we find out. The good seed (the wheat) "stands for the people of the Kingdom". So what Jesus is warning about is the danger of premature weeding to the people of faith themselves. In seeking to exclude (weed out) others we risk damaging ourselves. Let us hope that our dissident Bishops have, at least, a strong sense of self-protection before they do too much weeding for their own health.
There is, perhaps, one more detail that we should note in passing, and that is something that is NOT said in the parable. If we think about a related parable, the one we call the Parable of the Sower, we may remember that there some weeds spring up and choke the good plants before they have had a chance to grow. Nothing like that is said in the Parable of the Weeds. They are weeds, they will never produce a good healthy crop to be ground into flour, but they are not, it seems, destroying the wheat. Perhaps we should note that intervention may sometimes be justified; but we should be far more hesitant to take it upon ourselves to pass judgment on others than perhaps we are.
We ourselves may usefully ponder our national obsession this week with the wretched Tony Veitch affair. What an awful lot of servants we had telling the owners of a television network and a radio channel that there was a weed in the garden and volunteering to pull it out. Was there any danger to anyone else – was there some emergency requiring immediate action? Not that I'm aware of – but the justice system is so slow. It requires time, and care, and keeps letting the facts get in the way of a speedy solution. If it ever comes to trial, where will we find twelve jurors who have not already made up their minds, or had them made up for them by the media circus of the last few days?
Isaiah calls us back to essentials. There is one God, and only one God. That's non-negotiable. If there are Bishops who do not hold that view, I'd be supportive of a little gardening. In terms of the parable, there is only one owner of the field, and, as Jesus explains, the field is the world. So this is about the sovereignty of God. Lose sight of that and we're really in trouble. But that's exactly what seems to happen in these sorts of arguments. We forget that God is sovereign – not the Bible, God. God calls whomsoever he will. If we decide that there are to be classes of people – whether identified by gender, or class, or ethnicity, or orientation, or anything else – who cannot be called into ordained ministry, we are not breaching their human rights, we're doing something much more terrible than that. We are denying God's sovereignty. We are putting people outside the reach of God's call. We are denying that he is the owner of the field.
And, as St Paul reminds us this morning, those who would follow this approach are forgetting that they themselves are not yet perfect. None of us is yet perfect – even St Paul didn't quite make it this side of the grave! We are being made perfect by the working of the Holy Spirit within us, by virtue of our baptism. We are heirs, but we have not yet fully inherited. We are wheat, but with weedy tendencies! Put another way, there is a part of us that still more closely resembles weed than wheat. It is in our interests that the weeding doesn't start too soon! St Paul gives us the wonderful assurance that the Spirit himself intercedes for us – which he wouldn't need to do if we were already perfect, would he?
Those who have spent the last week anxious to weed out Tony Veitch might like to ponder if there is anyone in their life who might have reason to wish to do the same to them. Those Bishops who wish to decide who among them are worthy of the Lord's garden and who are not might like to ponder by what criteria they consider themselves worthy; and who they are to doubt the authenticity of the call of others who seek to worship the same one true God, and to serve the same one true God, they themselves profess to worship and serve.
And when they have finished with today's passage from St Matthew's gospel they can indeed return to their studies from St John. I suggest they spend some time on chapter 17, and hear again Jesus' wonderful prayer for unity among all believers – even Bishops.
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