Trying to Keep a Weed-Free Church
a sermon based on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Rev. Karen A. Goltz

            Back when I was studying at Boston University School of Theology, I cross-registered at Harvard Divinity for a course called Theological German.  I was a new Lutheran trying to find my way at a Methodist-affiliated seminary, so I figured taking a German language class specifically designed to help theologians would be just what I needed.

            But after two classes, I realized that I didn’t have a strong enough grasp of English grammar to make any sense out of the German.  I didn’t understand the difference between a definite article and an indefinite article.  And when they started talking about the articles’ matching the case of the noun, indicating the nominative, genitive, dative, or accusative, I was completely lost.  Not wanting to deal with a lot of stress over a course I was supposed to be taking for fun, I dropped it.

            My friend Matt had also cross-registered into that class and, about three quarters of the way through the semester, I asked him how it was going.

            “It’s going well,” he told me.  “Remember how crowded it was in the beginning?”  I remembered.  The large classroom had been bursting at the seams.  “Well,” he continued.  “Now that we’ve separated the wheat from the tares there are only about ten of us left, so we’re really getting a lot done.”

            As often happened with some of my early conversations with professional intellectuals, it took me a little while to realize that I was offended by Matt’s statement.  I recognized the reference right away; the translation of the gospel we read today called what the enemy sowed ‘weeds.’  Other translations call it ‘tares.’  In any case, separating the wheat from the weeds means getting rid of what is bad, wrong, or undesirable, in order to keep what is pure and good safe from all unrighteous influences.  And by Matt’s casual comment about that German class, he was saying that he was wheat, and I was a weed.

            It’s an easy trap to fall into.  It seems to be a natural inclination to want to categorize people according to who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out.’  And of course, we’re always ‘in’.  I see that happening a lot in the Church in general.  We talk a good talk about loving all God’s children as our sisters and brothers, but when it comes right down to it, aren’t we pretty selective about who we treat with love and respect?  It’s easy to love the lovable.  It’s easy to give charity to the meek and repentant.  It’s easy to respect the respectable.  But the lovable, meek, repentant, and respectable make up only a very small segment of God’s beloved children. 

            Look around you.  Right now.  Look around at the people sitting near you.  What do you see?  Do you see anyone that you’d be afraid or embarrassed if they talked to you on the street?  Or do you just see people who are pretty much like you?  People who share roughly the same history and values as you.  People who probably fall within the same tax bracket as you.  People who meet the generally accepted requirements of who is ‘in.’

            And we do it with the best of intentions.  We want to keep the church clean, safe, and pure.  We don’t want to have to worry about a lot of disruptions distracting us from the important business of praising and serving God.  We want to keep our church as a haven away from all the troubles of this earth, a place we can go to escape from everything else for a little while.  We just want to keep the church untainted from the sin in the world, and pleasing in God’s sight.  We want to separate the wheat from the weeds.

            It’s a practice that’s common in the majority of churches around the world.

            And the majority of churches around the world are shrinking or dying.

            By trying so hard to remove the weeds that have been sown in the world, we’re uprooting the wheat, as well.

            And that right there exposes a terrible misunderstanding on our part.  If we’re the ones trying to remove the weeds, then we’re proving that we ourselves are not the wheat.

            Listen to the parable.  All the wheat does is get planted and grow.  That’s it.  For that matter, that’s all the weeds do, as well.  Sure, they may both struggle for the same soil and moisture, but the master is confident that his wheat will survive to the harvest.  And that’s all they’re called to do.

            No, we’re not supposed to understand ourselves as the wheat or the weeds in this parable.  We’re to understand ourselves as the slaves.

            What was the slaves’ reaction to seeing weeds growing among the wheat?  We hear the words—they question their master, wanting him to assure them of his actions and his intentions.  And when they hear that an enemy has done this while their master slept, they immediately want to undo the damage.  Why?

            We might say it makes good sense to weed a garden, and that the slaves were just being diligent.  But I think it’s more than that.  Had it just been good gardening, they simply would have weeded it and been done with it.  But these were no ordinary weeds, and the slaves knew it.  And they were scared.  They were scared that their master was not in control.  “Did you not sow good seed in your field?” They ask him.  “Where, then, did these weeds come from?”  If you did not sow these seeds, then who did?  And why did you let this happen?

            I’ve heard many people, Christian and non-Christian alike, struggle with the question of why God allows such suffering in the world.  Why does God allow terrorism?  Why does God allow genocide?  Why does God allow war?  Why does God allow sickness?  Why does God allow earthquakes, and tornadoes, and hurricanes, and tsunamis, and flooding?  Isn’t God in control?  What do we do if he isn’t?

Faced with that same question, the slaves tried to take control by offering to remove those evil elements from the field.  If the master wouldn’t bother himself to prevent this perversion, then by God they would take care of it themselves!

            So the one Church that was formed around the Gospel of Jesus Christ fought within itself, and then turned on others.  Jewish converts argued with Gentile converts.  The Eastern Orthodox Church split from the Roman Church in the west.  The crusades were fought to exterminate the Muslims.  An effort to reform abusive church practices resulted in a division between Protestants and Catholics.  Six million Jews were murdered in the name of one man’s perverted Christianity, while the rest of organized Christendom was either complicit or denied the horror in their disbelief.  Christianity continues to splinter to the point where Lutherans can’t even feast at the Lord’s Table together, depending on whether they’re ELCA, Missouri Synod, or WELS.  All because of our efforts to separate the wheat from the weeds.

            Look what happens when we try to second-guess our Master.  It’s just as the householder in the parable predicted.  “In gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”

            And yet, in spite of all that, in spite of all the atrocities we’ve committed on behalf of God, the gospel of Jesus Christ is still just as applicable to us today as it was in the beginning.  Jesus himself was crucified as a weed, in an effort by religious leaders to keep the wheat pure from desecration.  And even as he felt his Father turn from the terrible sight of his Son’s suffering, even as he cried out in anguish and agony “My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Even as he felt his life slipping away, he knew that this was not the harvest.   And he trusted his Father’s mercy, even though all evidence seemed to say that there was no mercy, that God was not in control.  And it’s because of that trust that I’m blessed with the opportunity to stand before you today and share the good news of God’s indescribable grace.

            God knows that the weeds and the wheat will struggle for the same soil and the same moisture.  But God also knows that the wheat will survive to the harvest.  And at harvest time and not before, God and only God will order the separating.

            The good news for us is that that’s all we need to know about this parable.  When Jesus’ disciples ask him for an explanation and he tells them about the great, final harvest, he’s not telling them that to frighten them into making sure they’re wheat.  It’s not a statement about what will happen to us later so much as it’s an instruction to us on how to live now.  God will send his angels to reap.  It’s their job, not ours.  All we are called to do is grow and bear fruit for the sower.  As for who is wheat and who is a weed, our roots are so entangled that it’s hard to tell where one starts and the other stops.

            A very wise friend at Boston University—not the one who called me a tare—reminded me one day that I don’t have to save the world; Jesus has already done that.  Nor do we need to save the Church; it’s not ours to save, and if we tried, we’d destroy it.  Instead God gives us the Church to teach us and help us to spread the word of his good news, giving us the solid foundation we need so that we can love the unlovable, help the brazen and unrepentant, and respect the disrespectful. God trusts in us, that we will make it.  All we need to do is trust in God, and we will.

            Amen.