Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43):
The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.
Ce̱t ciaŋ kuäärä nhial kɛ ram mi ci kuay ti gɔw piɛth kakädɛ, kä mëë te naath ni̱n, cu gua̱n tɛ̈rɛ ben, cuɛ jol ben piɛth rɛy bɛɛl, kä cuɛ jiɛɛn.
Prayer: May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Have you ever bought something, which is a cheap imitation of something else? Something that looks like the real thing, but is in actual fact a dud?
And you think for a moment that you got a real bargain, until a couple of weeks later it breaks!
Our reading today is about imitations. The man sows good seed in his field – good strong wheat. But then his enemy comes and sows in the middle of all the wheat “weeds”. In the older translation they were called “tares”. Now we call this the parable of the weeds, but a long time ago it was called “the wheat and the tares”. The word in Greek for these is “zizania”, which refers to not just any old weed, but a particular type of weed. Today, we would probably call it “bearded darnel”.
And there’s something funny about this plant. It’s not completely useless – it can be used for medicinal purposes, and was once used for treating insomnia and a few things like that. But if you eat it in large quantities it is poisonous.
On the other hand, you can eat plenty of wheat and it doesn’t do you any harm. But “darnel” – this pesky weed – looks a lot like wheat, so much so that you can’t really tell the difference until they grow larger.
And so what a shock it would have been to the man who sowed the seed, when after his wheat had been growing for a while, he went and found that there were all these weeds around the place.
I know that there are a lot of keen gardeners in the parish. You must know how frustrating this is when you plant something in your vegie-patch or in your garden, and there are these pesky weeds that keep poking up. Now when the plants are quite different, it’s quite easy to go and pull up the weeds. But if the plants are the same height as the weeds and they are all in between, it can be a difficult task.
The farmer in today’s story is a very careful man – he doesn’t want any of the wheat to go to waste. He wants to make sure that it all grows up well – but if the servants were to go in and start pulling up the weeds, the risk is that they’ll pull up the wheat too. Maybe by accident, maybe because the roots of the darnel are tangled up with the wheat, maybe because pulling up the weeds will disrupt the soil so that the wheat can’t stand up.
It’s too much of a risk – the farmer wants to make sure that none of the wheat will be lost. His servants come and say to him, “Do you want us to go and gather the weeds?” But he said, “No, lest in gathering up the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
Now hopefully we’ve got a good picture in our mind of what this parable is describing.
So later on, we read that the disciples ask Jesus what the parable is about.
Jesus says: “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. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are the angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age.”
It’s important that we understand our place in this parable. If we misunderstand where we fit into this story we can do an enormous amount of damage.
Firstly, we are not the sower. Jesus is the sower.
Also, we are not the reapers. The angels are the reapers.
We don’t build the church, and we’ve also got to make sure we don’t judge too quickly who the wheat are and who the weeds are.
But also, the field is not the church. The field is the world.
But we know that all of us are just as much a part of the world as we are a part of the church. We can’t grow like wheat unless we are planted in the ground. We can’t be part of the church unless we are citizens of the world, and members of a society, a nation, a country, a people. We have to be sinners if we want to be part of the church – there’s no-one else around to be part of the church!
But let’s just have a look at this enemy for a moment. Jesus says: “The enemy who sowed [the bad seed] is the devil.”
Everything about the devil is a cheap imitation. He’s been a cheap imitation from the beginning. We have two characters in the story: the man who sows the good seed and the man who sows the bad seed.
But just think, if the good man hadn’t sown his wheat yet, the devil wouldn’t have even thought to go and plant the bad seed.
The good seed gives the devil the idea to plant the bad seed. The devil sees Adam and Eve enjoying themselves in the garden of Eden. And when he sees this, it gives him the idea to go and try to wreck it. When churches flourish and do well, the devil sees it and goes and tries to wreck it.
And what does he wreck it with?
Another cheap imitation.
God made a promise. “If you eat of that tree, you will surely die.”
The devil makes a promise he can’t keep. “You will not surely die.” This is a cheap imitation promise. And it isn’t a promise at all.
The devil is a cheap imitation god. He pretends to be as powerful as God, when he’s not. He pretends to have the same authority as God, but he doesn’t have it.
Our gospel reading today is one that teaches us patience. We have to know our place, and where God has put us in this world. We are growing in the field, right next the weeds. And we might look around at all the problems in the world, and we think, I’d just like to get in there and fix everything! I’d like to just get in there and pull up those weeds!
But you are not the reapers. The angels are. Get back in your box. Know your place. Otherwise you will end up doing the devil’s work and destroying God’s good work.
There’s no point in a doctor operating on a person if it will damage an organ which is more important that the one they want to remove.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience… We have to be patient. We have to wait.
Jesus calls the devil “the father of lies”. He sows lies. He makes people liars. And when we don’t tell the truth, we end up entangled in a weedy mess. Woody Allen once said, “It’s much better to tell the truth, because there’s less to remember!”
But Jesus says, “I am the truth.” And he also says, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
On the other hand, the devil is the father of lies. And he clouds the truth and makes people slaves.
This is the thing about the wheat and the tares, the good seed and the weeds. When they are both in the ground, and when they still haven’t grown much, they look a bit the same. There’s not much you can do to tell them apart.
When someone does something good, there always follows the cheap imitation. So after a prophet comes a false prophet. After an apostle comes a false apostle. After Christ comes the Antichrist. After God reveals the true religion comes false religion. After Christ builds his church come fake churches.
And the greatest temptation for us is to say: It’s all the same thing. There’s no difference between good seed and bad seed. There’s no difference between the farmer and the enemy. There’s no difference between one religion and another religion. There’s no difference between one church and another church.
In a time past, only a fool would ever have said, “I’ve got my truth, and you’ve got your truth.” “There’s not such thing as truth, it all depends on what you consider to be true for you.”
Then people say, there’s no difference between us and Buddhists. There’s no difference between us and Muslims. We’re all the same.
No we’re not. Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except by me.”
Christianity is one of the most bigoted, exclusive religions in the world, because it will tolerate no cheap imitations.
Your mind, your heart, your opinions are a cheap imitation for the word of God. False religions are cheap imitations for the true religion.
And there’s plenty of churches around that are cheap imitation churches. People say, they all do the same thing. They say some of the same prayers we say, and yet they are not building God’s church on earth, but something else – social clubs, friendly societies, and fun-houses. They are cheap imitations for God’s church on earth, where Jesus Christ promises to be present, and promises to be there in his word spoken and preached, and promises to be there in his body and blood in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.
Baptism is a real thing: anything which pretends to be Holy Baptism isn’t. It’s not the real thing.
The Lord’s Supper is a real thing: if people have the Lord’s Supper and don’t believe that the body and blood of Christ are actually given there for us to eat and drink, is a cheap imitation. It’s not the real thing.
The devil is the master of cheap imitations. When we are satisfied with cheap imitations, we invite the bad seed to be sown in our hearts. And Jesus says, “while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.”
We have no time to be asleep. St Peter says, “Be watchful, [stay awake]. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
There is no time for you to be asleep and be lazy about what you believe. There’s no time to say, “The wheat and the weeds all look the same.” You either believe the truth, or grow up into a weed.
There’s no time for the church to be lazy about what it teaches. The church can’t be built by empty traditions, the church can’t be built by adopting any old business practices to solve the church’s problems, the church can’t be built by conducting own our experiments, the church can’t be built by resting on the work of people in the past, the church can’t be built on the backbone of old Lutheran dynasties from the Barossa Valley or the western districts, the church can’t even be built on European church taxes. All of that stuff is weeds, weeds and weeds, unless the church is built on the good seed and nothing else. The devil will twist everything else even if is good and make a bad imitation of it.
If the church is not built on good seed, on the word of God which endures forever, then the church becomes nothing but a weed. And people will hate it, just like they hate themselves. But the words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times
But we have to wait. We have to be patient.
An old Lutheran pastor called Hermann Sasse once said: “Sects [that is false relgions and false churches] want to do everything now. That’s because they have no future. But the church has a future, therefore sometimes we have to wait.” Truth and falsehood grow together in the world, and for a long time they will look the same. How often people come up to me and say that everyone worships the same God, and everyone’s going to the same place in the end. The true religion and false religions will grow together and they will look the same. Real churches and fake churches will grow together and they will look the same. The true God will invite people to worship him and the devil will invite people to worship him, and many religions will look the same. Good people and evil people will grow together and they will look the same.
But they’re not the same. Because the wheat will be gathered by God’s angels in the barn, and the weeds will thrown into the fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. These are not my words, they are Jesus’ own words in our reading today.
Jesus is the one who sows his seed. He is the one who plants it. He is the one who waters it and nourishes it.
He has planted you, he has died for you and risen for you, he has baptised you, he has forgiven you, and he gives his body and blood for you. And when he’s the one who is the sower, then we read: “The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, keep us strong in your word, and in the words of your dear Son Jesus Christ. Give us patience in this world, as we live among lies, evil and sadness. Make us to shine like the sun in your kingdom, as healthy and strong wheat, gathered into your barn by your holy angels. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.
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