rough notes:
July 20 2008 Sermon Notes:
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
This week Jesus wraps ups his parables about the seeds, the sowers and the harvest. In this passage we hear Jesus talk about some rather difficult things. We have a farmer who sowed good seed only to have an enemy come and sow bad seeds in among the crop.
Then we have the problem of what to do with the weeds – should they be ripped up or allowed to grow? And then we have the separation of the harvest: there is the separation of the wheat from the weeds, of the good harvest from the bad. And then the imagery Jesus uses is one of stark contrast:
The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
How do we begin to understand what Jesus is getting at? At the root of this parable is the fact that God takes seriously the difference between good and evil, and therefore, so should we. This is what the parable is getting at. Jesus makes known in this parable something that we already know: that both good actions and bad actions have consequences.
Let’s look at the first part of the parable: The farmer sows good seed in his field. God’s intentions for us are good. But then, Jesus says, an enemy came and sowed bad seed in the field. And then the good and the bad grow up together. Now we can take this parable on two levels. The first level is that there has always been, and will continue to be, a mix of both people who prefer good, and people who prefer evil. If you doubt that this is true, just spend some time reading newspapers, or history. Our world has its “Mother Teresa’s” and it has its “Robert Mugabe’s”. Those are perhaps most obvious kinds of examples. But the same is true of every kind of community: there is conflict between good and evil, with people and organizations choosing one or another.
And that brings us to another point which needs to be remembered when we hear the parables: Jesus consistently tells his followers that good and evil are not somehow forced upon us, rather we make choices one way or another. The separation of the weeds from the rest of the crop is not an arbitrary decision on the part of the farmer. Rather, God tells us that we can choose to be with Him, or we can choose not to be with Him. That is the consistent message of the stories of Scripture and of Jesus in the Gospels: God never decides to leave us, but we are free to leave God, and if we choose to leave Him, He will not force us to stay. But if we do choose God, as Jesus said “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”
An often overlooked part of this parable is that the farmer allows the weeds and the crop to grow up together, and does not instruct his servants to immediately go out and pull out the weeds. The farmer is not too hasty to dish out judgment, and so neither should we. Sometimes Christians can be a bit to focused on “rooting out evil persons”, where God would rather have us show patience and mercy.
On another level, the weeds and the good crop is a parable of our own hearts. We can see in our own lives both good actions and bad actions; both wise choices and unwise choices; both weeds and wheat. So how do the words of Jesus, this parable of the difference between good and evil, play out in our own lives? Jesus gives us an invitation to examine our own hearts. We all have times when we have chosen to follow God, to make a choice for good, and we have, in the long run, seen the good consequences – either in our own lives in the lives of those we have helped. And we can all look back to times when we have made unwise choices, when we have chosen the thing which is not good. Are we willing to allow him to uproot in us that which is not of God?
Comments