While our scripture lesson for this morning is from the lectionary, it is not from the lectionary for this week, but rather next week! When Melinda and I were planning out the summer preaching schedule, and she was assigned next Sunday, I commented that I was a little jealous in that I had a really good sermon title that went along with the Gospel lesson, “Weed ‘em and Reap.” She was gracious enough to decide that next week she will preach on the Old Testament lesson, the story of Jacob’s ladder, and would leave the Gospel lesson alone, so I could use it today! But then, when I got into it, I realized that maybe that clever turn of phrase doesn’t really reflect what Jesus was saying at all, in that we’re not supposed to be too quick to separate the weeds from the wheat. Let’s see if you agree.....
I want to begin by noting the recent event I call “Billy Graham and the Last Crusade.” Three weekends ago, Rev. Graham preached to over a quarter million people over three nights in New York, the city where he began his preaching career nearly fifty years ago, a city he said was chosen for this occasion not only because it still needs healing after September 11, but also for its ethnic diversity. Headsets were made available providing simultaneous translations of Graham's sermon in 20 languages from Hungarian to Hindi. Whatever else one may think of him, whether or not one agrees with his theology, Graham has reached out beyond the boundaries, across ethnic and racial and even religious lines, and always has. He invited Martin Luther King to pray at first crusade in 1957, insisting that the gatherings be integrated, and proclaiming that “Christian racist” is an oxymoron. Unlike so many of the evangelists he inspired, he remained free of scandal, never allowed even the appearance of impropriety, having TVs removed from his hotel rooms and never meeting with a female alone. He is known as “America’s pastor” – and while I have not always agreed with his theology or his coziness with power, I do appreciate him as a man of genuine faith and impeccable integrity.
The one place, however, where his evangelistic impulses and his passion for purity conflict is the fact that he has never granted an interview to Playboy magazine! It's not that he hasn't been asked -- he has, many times. And Dr. Graham has always said he would be glad to do the interview, on the condition that the magazine's centerfold not appear in the same issue!
Now I don't know about you -- I only read PLAYBOY for the interviews, which are always intriguing and insightful. But I suppose what Billy Graham is saying is, that he doesn't want in any way to be associated with the supposed immorality of the centerfold.
This kind of separatism has always been a temptation for Christians as a way of dealing with perceived evil in the world. It's hard to live a good life, a pure life, and rather than be spoiled by the bad apples among us, it is easier to live apart from them, be separate. And this attitude infects all of us, who will probably never be asked to be the subject of a Playboy interview -- or a centerfold -- but who do have to make decisions about the schools our children attend, the kinds of friends we have, and the places we work and play and worship, the kind of society in which we live.
Some parents choose to keep their children out of school altogether, and opt for home schooling, lest they be polluted by worldly values. Others choose explicitly Christian, or parochial schools, to avoid the evils of secular humanism, or exposure to evolution. Of course if some of our so-called legislators have their way, our children may not have to learn about evolution in our public schools either, at least in Kansas. (Just because these legislators haven't evolved, they don't have to take it out on the rest of us!)
Those who advocate separatism as a way of dealing with the world's evil often find justification in the Bible. In the Old Testament, Ezra, a priest in post-exilic Jerusalem, advocated that -- for its survival -- the newly returned Jewish community must keep itself pure, and that all Jewish men who had married foreign wives must divorce them. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, instructs them not to associate with the immoral, and approvingly quotes Deuteronomy, "Drive out the wicked person from among you." (Weed ‘em out!) And there is the historical witness offered by the medieval monasteries, which through their separatism were about the only thing that kept civilization alive through the dark ages. There are our own spiritual ancestors, the Pilgrims, founding a separatist colony at Plymouth Plantation, and there is the memory of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, who having been driven out of the Puritan settlements, began new communities in Rhode Island. And the witness of the Amish and Mennonites has much to teach us as well.
But for the most part, these are aberrations and not the norm! They are situational arrangements necessary in specific instances for survival. And for every Ezra, ordering the removal of foreigners from the communities common life, there is a Jonah, or a Ruth, proclaiming that separatism is not God's will at all, and that God's love and care extend beyond the walls of our community to all the people of the earth. And quite often, separatist communities exist precisely because of the intolerance of the rest of society for their views and practices, as was the case with the Pilgrims, and in turn with Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams.
My conviction is that we are not called to be separatists, but to welcome and invite everyone in, in all their glorious variety, and that we shouldn’t expect them to drop their uniqueness and simply blend in.
Now, there's a lot in the Bible that leads me to this stance. From the beginning when God proclaims everything to be good -- to the witness of Jonah who proclaims a message to people he doesn't like -- to Paul who takes the message to faraway lands -- the Biblical story is one of ever-widening circles of inclusion -- till at last you get to Revelation and only the dogs are left out. There are days I think that was a good idea.
There are so many things Jesus said and did that proclaimed inclusion. Which brings us to this morning’s scripture lesson. Here is a farmer who plants some wheat, and while he is sleeping, a competitor comes along and sows some weeds in the same plot. When both begin to grow, the farmer's servants suggest they ought to uproot the weeds for the sake of the wheat. That would seem like the prudent thing to do, especially in a land where you have to conserve water. But the farmer says, No! Let both grow until the harvest, and then it will be easy to separate one from the other, even use the weeds as fuel.
Now when Matthew included this parable in his gospel, there is little doubt he was thinking of the church. By the late first century, when he wrote this gospel, the church had become a messy mix of peoples, some good, some not so good, some downright difficult -- not all that different from today! And Matthew must have supposed Jesus meant: don't go heresy hunting among your own church members. Let them be, for God will take care of them in good time. And that certainly makes good sense for those of us in the United Church of Christ, who encourage a diversity of viewpoints and thought. We know that today's heretic may be tomorrow's revered theologian!
But when Jesus originally told this parable, there was no church. That didn't happen for another generation or two! So many scholars feels that it was probably directed at the Pharisees, good Jews who attempted to practice a very devout life, by keeping themselves pure, scrupulously obeying the commandments, and separating themselves from those who were not as good as themselves. In fact the word "pharisee" means, "those who are separated."
Now the Pharisees were good people. They were the leading Jewish thinkers of the day. They were trustworthy and decent. But they were also elitist, and did not have much use for those perceived as not such good people: the non-observant Jew, the tax collector, the tavern keeper, the outcasts.
It is clear from the record of his life that Jesus was not a separatist. It seems, in fact, that he spent most of his time dealing with and associating with the very people the Pharisees were at such great pains to avoid! Sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, outcasts of all kinds. His very life said, God loves all people, no matter who they are -- all are precious. I suspect he would have gladly consented to a Playboy interview, maybe even gone into the Playboy mansion itself to spread his message, if given the opportunity -- as my colleague and friend the Rev. Dosia Carlson actually did a few years ago. She had been a pastor to Hugh Hefner's mother in her later years in Phoenix, and so this wonderful woman who participated in my Dad’s memorial service and who has written many hymns (including two in NCH) went to the Playboy mansion itself to do the memorial service and preach the good news.
Jesus says that weeds and wheat grow together in the same garden -- the good, the bad, the in-between and indeterminate. Which is why I question my own sermon title, because Jesus says we shouldn’t be too quick to weed this garden of life! And if we want to take the whole of his message seriously, we will take this as a mandate not just for a greater toleration of differences, but for a radically inclusive new community -- a community that does not just allow for differences, but celebrates them. It calls for a community that does not simply adjust for others who are not like us, but invites and encourages them to be part of us, without their having to become like us. And not merely because this will enrich us, but because now the survival of humankind on this planet depends on our being able to do this.
And yet, it is a risky thing to go beyond separatism, to go even beyond toleration to inclusivism. It is risky because those who are different challenge us to be more open and teachable, and more vulnerable. We can no longer organize our lives around our prejudices or blind hatreds. And it is especially difficult in this era of terrorism, when those who would attack us live along side us, blending into the fabric of our society like the weeds in the wheat. How can we be vigilant without giving in to the temptation to regard everyone who is a little different with suspicion? What happens when we treat all foreigners living here or seeking to enter this country as potential terrorists? Even all travelers? Where do we draw the line in an open society?
Something else this parable suggests is that some of the "weeds" may not be so bad after all.
One of the reasons that Jesus has the farmer counsel that the weeds and the wheat be allowed to grow together is that it is sometimes awfully difficult to tell the two apart. In fact, if you go back to the original Greek text, you find that the words used for weeds and wheat here refer to two kinds of plants that in their growing stage look very much alike. Try to eradicate one, and you might easily uproot the wrong one.
And when you get right down to it, what is a weed anyway? Basically, it's any plant that you don't want where it is! Not necessarily a bad plant, just one you don't happen to want. Out West, we had a lot of “weeds” coming up in our yard, which my wife was always asking me to eradicate. I, however, knew that they were not weeds at all but wild flowers! In fact, I would secretly harvest the seeds and spread them around, so in the Spring we had what I thought was a beautiful yard! One of the things I love to do in August is go up to a secret undisclosed location on a remote mountain and harvest the wild raspberries that grow there. But technically, botanists consider the raspberry vine to be a weed. But if I saw it only as a weed, I'd miss out on a lot of joy, and good eating!
Not that we should never make judgments; we do need to understand the tentative nature of our decisions, and to understand that our prejudices limit our vision and exclude others and diminish us. And it’s hard to tell the weeds and wheat apart.
In 1824 a church in the South voted to remove a man from its membership for the sin of playing marbles on a Sunday. And a majority of those who made that decision were at the time slave owners.
I heard journalist Richard Rodriguez tell about interviewing a member of the KKK in Southern California. The man was livid in his disdain for all those people south of the border who were trying to get into this country, and advocated bigger fences and wider ditches to "keep them out". At the end of the interview, Rodriguez suggested they get a bite to eat. What would he like? A hamburger? A pizza? You know what the KKK man said? Enchiladas! "I just love Mexican food!"
Don't try to separate the weeds from the wheat, said Jesus. Not only can you not easily tell one from the other, they are all part of God's creation, and in the end they need each other, as we need each other. For there is finally no going it alone on the path to God's realm.
So, I suppose my clever title IS misleading. It’s not “Weed em’ and reap,” but rather “weed ‘em and weep!” Weed ‘em too soon and you may end up lamenting the lost opportunities for creating the beloved community that Jesus envisions and God calls us to cultivate.
