Last Sunday we heard the parable of the sower and the seed - and discovered that God has some peculiar farming techniques.
This week - with the parable of the weeds in the garden we discover once again God's method of farming is different than ours - and I am for one am very glad of it.
Last week's "parable of the sower and the seed" and today's "parable of the weeds" are parables about the church - about the field that God plants in the hope of gaining a rich harvest of blessing for himself and for the world that he has made.
We are the field of God - we are the ground he works - the plants he nurtures - the people he rests his hopes upon - the people he plants his seed in, the congregation he anoints with his Spirit.
The farmer's parables are parables about us - about you here in the church - you who are called by the name of Christ - as much as they are about God and what he does.
We are the field of God.
I daresay that the two predominant reasons modern people give for not being Christian and for not associating with or attending church are the following:
1. People in the church as just as lousy as everyone else in the world - that in general they are hypocrites - and in particular - there are thieves, liars, gossips, cheats, snobs, and adulterers among them.
2. The whole idea of a good God is clearly ridiculous - because if he was so good why would he allow so much evil to exist in the world.
Does any one of those two reasons sound familiar to you? Say Amen if it does!....
IT's true. That's where people are at.
They are upset - and I think rightly so - that not everything is perfect.
Like the farmer's servants in today's parable they are concerned:
- concerned that there are weeds among the wheat
- concerned that the harvest might not turn right
- concerned that the good purpose of their master might fail.
At least some are - the rest are just plain critical - they don't understand things of the Spirit nor do they want to understand things of the Spirit.
The highly esteemed Bible teacher Dr. Howard Hendricks said something quite interesting sometime back. Let me quote:
"From research and personal experience," says Dr. Hendricks, "I've come to the conclusion that in every church, 16 percent of the members will never change. The tragedy is I see young pastors every day leaving the ministry because of that 16 percent. It's as if they are butting their heads against a brick wall. What they should be doing is concentrating on the 84 percent who are ripe for change. That is where the real ministry of the local church takes place."
Dr. Hendricks is right. What is true for young pastors is true for many people.
It is easy to be intimidated by what we might call the weeds in the church; it is easy to focus that exist in here in the church and out there in the world; it is easy, so easy, that we can forget the vast bouquet of flowers that makes up the rest of the church, the eighty-four percent that is the baby instead of the bathwater - or perhaps it's just five percent! But that five percent is the leaven that raises the whole loaf! The electricity that makes the whole engine operate! The power that makes it all come alive and come true.
There is almost no explaining why God allows the devil to cast his horrid seed in his garden.
But the word that God gives his servants about it is very clear -
"do not disturb it! Do not try to pluck it out - because if you do - you're going to wreck the whole place; you're going to end up pulling up wheat as well no matter how careful you are, you're going to develop an eye of judgement - and while you may be right in that judgement - you may end up doing wrong. Leave it to me. The weeds will be burned at the time of harvest - and all of you will have a hand in it - you will see justice done. The weed will perish - and the wheat stored in the granary of heaven."
Leave it me. Wait for the time I have set....
It's hard to wait. And it's hard to understand - especially when you see such terrible things happening; but when it comes to dealing with other people - with other people - both in the church and out of it, God calls us to mainly to plant and not to pluck up - at least for a while.
We are to resist evil of course - in ourselves and in others - through his power.
We are called to recognize evil and to name it - and to pray to God that he will take care of it, much as the farmer told his servants in the parable that he would take of it.
BUT most of all we are told to do good instead of evil
- to bless instead of curse
- to praise instead of criticize
- to help instead of stand off
- to love instead of hate
- to forgive instead of resent
- to tell truth instead of lies.
It seems that there is a plan, that God does have a system, but still - when you look at it with only the dim light of human wisdom, or the closed eyes of human doubt and human pride, there is almost no explaining why God allows the devil to cast his horrid seed in his garden..
Why, O why does God allow weeds in his field?
I want to finish off today by saying that I am sure glad of one thing in this whole mess, - in this strange system of divine agriculture - in this field that is so mixed and cluttered with weeds (and some of them are real whoppers), I am sure glad that God waits a while and that he tells his servants to hold back.
You see - every now and then I get this idea into my head that perhaps I'm being a weed right now.
And I know for sure that I've been a weed in the past - that some things I have done or failed to do - were more of the devil than they were of the Lord.
And knowing that - and knowing what God has done and can do with us and for me - then I let him; I'm rather content to have the weeding put off to the end!
How about you???
How often have you been a weed in the garden of the Lord? Would you - with what you know now - fancy being plucked up at those times?
My friends, God is so merciful that he allows evil to exist so that what is good might grow. He allows it exist because so many times he can turn it to the good.
Indeed - as we celebrate here today with Holy Communion - he can even turn death to life.
There is almost no explaining any of these things - but there is a truth - there is a substance to it - that can be touched and experienced much as the disciples touched the risen body of Christ; and that truth is a saving truth, a healing truth, a truth that can only be found in that crazy mixed up field in which God plants his seed, in the love of Christ Jesus our Lord, who gave himself over to death so that we might live and who lives so that we might never die.
May his name be praised day by day. Amen.
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