At Peace Among the Weeds

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

          Like last Sunday, our Gospel reading for today is split into two pieces in the 13^th chapter of Matthew. First, Jesus delivers the parables to the unbelieving crowds and the disciples. Then, once the disciples are alone with Jesus they say to Him, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” And Jesus does just that because these are the ones who are going to become His authorized apostles who will need to convey the message once He’s gone.

The purpose of every parable is ultimately to convey to the world something about God Himself. Which is what Jesus indicates when He answers the disciples, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.” “The field is the world, and the good seed is the children of the kingdom.” These are the people the heavenly Father has planted in the world. That’s you and me and every other Christian.

And then, as is the case with any story that relates the truth of this world we live in, Jesus introduces the reality that there are those who are in opposition to Him. Really, there’s one, “the evil one, the enemy,” who “came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.” But those the devil sows among the children of the kingdom will also be against the Sower. And naturally then, also against His good seed, his children, who are growing in the field of the world. And these weeds that are growing among the wheat become so intertwined that if a weed is pulled out, it may take some wheat with it.

So, Jesus instructs his servants, who are clearly his apostles, and today pastors, not to pull out the weeds but to let them grow until the harvest. Not until the end of the age will the evil ones sown in the field be separated from the righteous. At that time the sons of evil will be collected and bound to experience everlasting suffering, while the righteous will be gathered to a safe place where they reflect the holiness of God.

Jesus wraps it all up nicely for the disciples so that they might then be able to share this message with others, but what can we learn from this? The first thing is that in the visible Church in this world, there will be both genuine believers and hypocrites. Jesus is making the point about the difference between the apostles and the Pharisees, but it’s also true about the church today. There will always be true believers and those who simply play the part.

But as we know it’s not just that. We live in a world that exists outside of this, our Christian community. And it’s a world is full weeds that can be identified by their false teaching, false worship, and attempts to justify themselves before God. Not to mention those who are openly hostile to God and His Word.

The next thing we learn is that the Lord instructs his servants not to pull out the weeds, but to let them grow with the wheat until harvest. There are some weeds, especially when they’re young, that mimic the crop they’re growing among. And you just simply can’t know until the fruit appears that they’re weeds. And even if it could be done safely without tearing out wheat, pulling weeds isn’t the servant’s role. The Sower gives this role to the angel reapers at the end of the age.

This seems like a difficult command for us. Why should we allow or even tolerate evil in the world, let alone within of the Church. Especially as we read other passages that stress separation from evil. Jesus tells the disciples to cast out the leaven of the Pharisees. He empowers Peter and the other apostles to forgive the sins of the repentant, but also to bind the sins of the unrepentant. Paul warns the Corinthian Church to cast out an immoral member of the congregation. But when you look at all these passages, the purpose, just as is the purpose of excommunication within the church today, is to restore the erring person to a right and proper relationship with God and with the Christian community.

God is not telling us here that we are to somehow be against the law and to allow any and all things to happen, or to be acceptable. Yet God’s servants need to be careful not to judge too quickly that a son of the evil one is among them, especially since, in our sin, we are all evil. All believers are simultaneously sinner and saint and will always carry with us one of the causes of sin, our flesh.

The Church and her servants also don’t have the power of the sword, that is, the power to carry out criminal punishment. The church has erred on this point in the past, and certainly, when a law is broken, the civil authority has the right to punish and curb evildoers, but this authority isn’t given to the Church. The false teachers and hypocrites, the worshippers of other gods, and those who reject God’s abundant grace will receive their punishment at the end of the age, when they’ll be cast with the devil and all causes of sin into the eternal fire. It’s just not our job to carry out that sentence.

All of this is good news for the believer. Because we can look forward to a new life without the causes of sin. And at our death, and later on the Last Day, we will be gathered in for safekeeping. Those same angels who cast the sons of the evil one away to their fiery fate also gather beloved Christians to their eternal home for safekeeping.

Because the weeds aren’t going to be removed from the field until God decides it’s the right time, the Church will struggle with the causes of sin in the world. Which means that in the meantime we have to deal with the fact that the evil one will continue to sow and cultivate bad seed even as we’re trying to tend to the good seed God has sown. This is one of the reasons that we believers still on earth are called the Church Militant. We have a whole section in our hymnal devoted to this teaching. We could certainly complain about the strife in the organized Church, but it’s to be expected. We could complain about the persecution we face and the difficulties of living among unbelievers, but it’s just part of being who we are called to be.

Which is why one of the greatest virtues of Christians is patience. In one of the best sports movies of all time, Hoosiers, a veteran coach takes over a high school basketball team in a small town in 1950’s Indiana. For the first few days of practice the coach doesn’t let the boys touch a basketball. In early season games they can’t shoot until they’ve passed the ball at least four times. The team is losing and the basketball crazy town wants the coach fired. And yet, he insists that he knows what he’s doing. And of course, eventually everything begins to click. And spoiler alert, the last second shot goes in and the small-town team beats the big city high school for the state championship.

It might be a great basketball coach who sees what the players can’t, or maybe the mom whose wisdom is greater than the child who wants the cookie 15 minutes before dinner. Whatever it is, it all reminds us that there are times when someone with a different view might have a better handle on what’s best for us. And that’s the case with God, who won’t allow those weeds to be pulled before He’s ready. He can see the bigger picture. He knows that some of those young weeds will eventually bear the fruit of the wheat and it would be terrible to have pulled them before they were able to be brought into His fold.

We’re often shortsighted and can only see what we can see. God sees the invisible and the future, and on into eternity, which means that God’s ways will often be different, and always wiser than ours. Because of this it’s easy for us to become impatient with God and to jump to conclusions that He knows would be foolish. We would do well to remember the words of the Gradual we’ve been singing during this portion of the Pentecost season:  Oh, the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements and how inscrutable His ways! For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.

Above all, we learn from this text that already now, in the Church, true peace can be found in Christ Jesus. In the Means of Grace, Christ dwells with us and does his ministry through his called servants, and in his grace we are already at peace—at peace with God and at peace with our future.

Jesus’ death on the cross has sealed his pledge to redeem your bodies at that future date. His voice in the reading of the Scriptures and the preaching of the Word assures you that He is with you despite your suffering in an unbelieving world. His very body and blood, which you eat and drink with the bread and wine, gives certainty that you are forgiven for all those times the wickedness around you draws you also into sin. Even the suffering the Church experiences in this life identifies it with the sufferings of Christ. In this way, the Church is blessed. Remember the Sermon on the Mount. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” This is the theology of the cross where, through suffering, a great good results. Jesus summarizes that good when He says, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” So for now, we rest in the knowledge that although the world holds both belief and unbelief, we can be at peace because in the end Christ will judge the difference, and the righteous will shine like the sun. Amen.

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.