Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church
 

So You Want to Be a Weed Eater

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-42

September 15, 2002

Do you remember Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker? Do you remember Jim Bakker’s sexual misconduct and the financial collapse of PTL Ministries that followed?

If you don’t remember, you just weren’t watching TV -- or maybe you weren’t yet past watching Barney. The collapse of PTL was a major media event. Not the least of this was the televised auctioning off of relics of the PTL empire including such outlandish things as an air conditioned doghouse.

But what proved of special interest was the sale of Jim Bakker’s desk. A guy flew to North Carolina all the way from Toronto, Canada just to bid on the desk. It was obvious to everyone that this man was determined to buy this desk. So when the auctioneer shouted sold, a TV reporter got hold of the man and asked him why he was willing to travel so far and pay so much for Jim Bakker’s desk. His reply was memorable.

"This may look like a desk to you," the man answered, "but it’s much more than that to me. You see, some five years ago my wife and I got a divorce. We had created tremendous hurt and disillusionment for each other and there was no way the marriage could continue so we went our separate ways. Then about a year ago I got a telephone call from her and she told me that she was down here in North Carolina. She had just spoken to a man named Jim Bakker who had given her hope. She wanted to know if I could come down and join here because she was convinced that, if I would listen, we could get our marriage together again.

"I flew down as quickly as could. My wife and I sat on one side of this desk and Jim Bakker sat on the other and explained the way of salvation. He told us if we gave our lives to Christ that the past could be wiped out and we could have a whole new beginning.

"That day I accepted Jesus as my wife had done the day before. Our marriage was restored, our lives were renewed, and everything changed.

"Mister," said the man, "this may look like a desk to you but to me it is an altar. It is the place where I committed my life to Christ. To me, it’s a sacred piece of furniture, and I just couldn’t stand the thought that it might fall into the hands of someone who wouldn’t appreciate what it is to me."

You know, I need to hear that kind of testimony because I can get pretty cynical about some things that go on in the church.

Every day brings new revelations of sexual misconduct by Catholic priests and high level cover-ups by bishops. I can only imagine how honorable priests in the Catholic Church are feeling.

I know that back in the late ‘80s I hated to open the paper or turn on the news. They were sure to be there -- Gene Scott in flamboyant battle with the Church of the Open Door -- Oral Roberts being "blackmailed" by God --and everywhere Jim and Tammy and Jimmy Swaggart.

I got tired of the jokes -- the people who asked what Carol and I were doing wrong to have one car that was five years old and another that was seventeen. "Why, if we'd played our cards right we could pull up to church in a Rolls Royce."

I also hurt for the church. I hurt for good people who supported ministries and felt betrayed. I hurt for accountable, responsible ministries that were in a financial bind because some people became so hurt by the evil in parts of the church that they ceased to give and support altogether. And I could only conjecture about men and women in our community who were reluctant to give the local church a chance because they equated what happens here with what happened there.

And, frankly, I was also angry. I was angry at people who, to use Paul's words from Romans, "Teach you shall not commit adultery" but commit adultery -- who preach, "you shall not steal" but steal -- who, in effect, rob the people of God. On several occasions I was tempted to send cards to Jim and Tammy and Jimmy and the rest quoting the words of Paul in Romans 2:24: "the name of God is blasphemed among the gentiles because of you."

But I didn't do it. And hearing stories like the man and the desk make me glad I didn’t do it. Because I didn’t have the wisdom to know who the Bakkers really are and what Jesus is still doing in their lives. I know that I don't have this wisdom because Jesus tells me I don't have it in our text for this morning.

Jesus tells a parable that gives us guidance on how to deal with evil in the church. He tells us where it comes from and what we should do about it.

A man sows good seed in his field. While his men are sleeping, a sneaky and malicious enemy comes and sows weed seed among the wheat seeds and goes away.

What this enemy sows is "Zizania" -- Bearded Darnil which is botanically close to wheat and difficult to distinguish when the plants are young. The Jews called Zizania "bastard wheat" because the name Zizania is close to the Hebrew word "zanah" which means to "commit fornication." They said that these tares came from the time before the flood and that they were actually a kind of wheat that had gone wrong.

If the seeds of the Zizania mix in with wheat, the farmer has trouble. The roots entangle themselves around each other. They are also hard to tell apart. It is not until the heads of grain appear on the wheat that there can be no doubt about which plant is which. The wheat and the tares only show their true natures as they ripen. Then they must be separated because the grain of the Bearded Darnil is slightly poisonous. It causes dizziness and sickness. And even a small amount has a bitter and unpleasant taste.

So as the crop begins to grow, the slaves ask the landowner a question. The question addresses the problem of evil in the church. "Why are there all these weeds if you sowed good seed?" The farmer answers that the evil is because of the intentional actions of an enemy who came and sowed tares among the wheat.

That was not an unheard of thing. One act of vengeance between farmers was the threat "I’ll sow weeds in your field." In fact, there were laws in Israel to prevent this act. It’s not unheard of even today. (Judging from the weeds in my garden, I suspect that someone has it in for me.)

In response to the question of the source of this evil, Jesus says: "An enemy has done this." There is one who is the enemy of the owner of the field – one who would seek to disrupt and pollute His work. The slaves ask the landowner. "Do you want us to go weed?" He answers, "No, because you might root up the wheat too." They will not only mistake the good grain for the weeds, but the roots are so intertwined that at this point it is impossible to root out the one without plucking up the other. Both must be left to grow together until the time of harvest.

There is a Peanuts cartoon where Lucy is down on her knees looking intently at something on the ground. She says: "I’ve been watching these bugs, Charlie Brown. You see this one bug is about to leave home. He’s been saying goodbye to all his friends. Suddenly this little girl bug comes running up and tries to persuade him not to leave." Charlie Brown looks up with an amazed and puzzled look on his face. Lucy concludes, "If you’re going to be a bug watcher, you have to have lots of imagination."

Well as I read some biblical interpreters, and especially some who have written on the parables, I suspect that they have what it takes to be really good bug watchers. Some of their interpretations take tremendous imagination and a superhuman ability to "fill in the blanks." But this is one parable where they don’t have that liberty. For, at the disciple’s request, Jesus explains what this parable means. He says first of all that the one who sows the good seed is Himself, the "Son of Man." The field is the world. The good seeds are the "children of the kingdom."

But there is also an enemy. Jesus identifies the enemy as the Devil. He also scatters his seeds in the field. The "children of the kingdom" and the "weeds of Satan" grow up together until the harvest at the end of the age – when Jesus returns to draw history to a close. He will then send in the reapers who are the angels. These will gather the tares – described by Jesus as the "stumbling blocks and those who commit lawlessness" – and cast them into a furnace of fire where they will be consumed.

Now some commentators place a whole lot of stress on the fact that Jesus says that the field is the world. They say that Jesus is not speaking of the church at all. They say the parable is meant to explain how the "kingdom can be present in the world while not yet wiping out all opposition."

But there are some big problems with that reading. Jesus is speaking here of a "mystery of the kingdom of God." The world as a whole is not yet the kingdom of God. There is no mystery to the fact that God’s people and the people of the enemy live side by side in the world. That is self-evident. And if that is all the parable means, then the parable doesn’t even describe the situation. It would be more correct to say that it is the Devil’s children who are already in the field and that it is Jesus who comes and plants His seeds among them. It would be Jesus who does the new thing, not Satan.

But as Jesus tells the story, He stresses what the enemy does and that it happens after Jesus has already sown His seed. He says that the Devil is mixing counterfeit believers in with true disciples in order to pollute and hinder God’s work. And in the end, Jesus says, these counterfeit disciples are gathered – not out of the world, but out of His kingdom.

This is one of Jesus’ most disturbing parables. In the crowds that swirl around Him are people who talk like faithful disciples. But something is missing. They have not surrendered themselves to Jesus as the Lord of their lives. So they become vulnerable to the control and influence of a very different master. Judas is a prime example of this group. The problem that faced the committed followers is that initially, these others also look and talk like disciples.

The lesson of this parable is that evil will exist side by side with the good – even in the church. We are part of a wheat and weeds church. That we see this today -- in this morning’s newspaper -- shouldn’t surprise us. Jesus promised it. Jesus did not pretend that the church is perfect and we shouldn’t either.

The early disciples knew that the enemy had mixed his own people in with true Christians. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 11, that "Satan is able to disguise himself as an angel of light and that it is therefore not surprising if ‘his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness.’" And we should not be surprised if some seem to repudiate the faith and leave Christian fellowship. John wrote of such people in his first letter and said, "They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us" 2:19.

The point of the parable is simply that the enemy is going to bring forward people seemingly so much like true Christians and so mixed in with true Christians and yet not true Christians that even the angels will not be able to tell them apart.

But it would be much simpler if weeds would only look weedy. Wouldn’t that help a lot? If hypocrites would only snarl and growl a little or wear a black hat and a thin black mustache, it would be easy to recognize who they are. But they always look so pleasant and talk so sweetly. And unless we use the Word of God to evaluate their teachings, we can be deceived by "counterfeit apostles."

This January I plan to start a Sunday morning adult class on Christianity and the Cults in which we will look at some faith counterfeits and see how to evaluate their teachings, words and actions against the standard of God’s word.

I think we will all learn a lot. However, be warned. It is easy for us to spot the evil in "those others" – the fringe groups from our perspective. But the evil also exists in the so-called mainline church -- perhaps more dangerous because it is more subtle and sophisticated. This teaching isn’t just for our understanding of the evil in other parts of the church that we think are a little strange anyway. It is equally for our understanding of the evil in this part of the church. We cannot stand in spotless purity gazing in wonder at the "circus" in Catholicism or on the TV ministries because too often the mainline church puts on a circus of its own.

We need to recall that in the parable, we are not the harvesters. We are the harvest. Sometimes we long to take the sickle and wade in and clean the place up. But removing weeds is God’s task, not ours. He will do it by His schedule, not ours.

In this parable, Jesus warns us that although we want a pure church and we should exercise proper church discipline to the best of our ability in clear cases, we must not think that we will achieve total purity in this age. The angels can’t purify the church and neither can we.

"Let them grow together until the harvest." That is our Lord’s Word.

But it is amazing how many Christians ignore these words of Jesus and are constantly trying to purify the church in ways that are unwarranted in Scripture. They say that they are going to go off and start their own church, and it is going to be a true church, a pure church. There will be no heresy in it. No one will behave in an unchristian way. And so you find splinter groups call themselves the "One Way" and "The People’s Temple" and so forth. They say they have the truth and no one else does. Jesus says that you cannot do it that way. You cannot separate evil from the church. It will follow you wherever you go. You cannot even drive it out.

Now this does not mean that we are not to meet false teaching with the truth. We are. Nor are we to allow those who exhibit clear forms of error to take leadership in the church. Other scriptures help us here. But Jesus wants us to understand that human effort will not lead to a perfect church any more than it will lead to a perfect world. The Lord’s plan for handling the problem of evil in His church is this: "Let them both grow together. Let me take care of it. I’ve got My own plan for handling this. Keep your message positive. Preach the Word. Teach the truth. Deal with the evil in your own hearts. Exclude false teachers and unrepentant sinners from leadership. But don’t launch a campaign or a crusade for the purpose of driving out the evil in the church because you won’t do it and you’ll hurt some people who belong to me in the process of trying."

The parable also warns us that even in our exercise of valid church discipline, we must be extremely careful not to damage or discourage some who – even in a feeble and halting and immature way, really do belong to Jesus Christ and really do love Him and want to serve Him. Having a weak understanding of Scripture or having areas of immaturity and sin, is not the same thing as being a counterfeit disciple and a child of the Devil. And we must not, in our desire to purify the church, remove those who may not really be weeds at all, but only immature, unformed believers. Judgment has to wait until the harvest come. Ripening must be allowed.

Jesus, who sowed the good seed will also send in the harvesters. The outcome is not in doubt. Patience does not mean uncertainty. In the meantime, there is no possibility that the evil seed will crowd out the good. Jesus said rather that it was He who had bound Satan and is plundering his house.

Jesus assures us in this parable that there is a judge and that justice will be done. It may be that, humanly speaking, a person seems to escape the consequences of his or her wrongdoing, but there is a life to come. If justice is delayed in this life, Peter says that it is for the express purpose of providing time for repentance. For through the power of Jesus, weeds can become wheat. Weeds can become wheat. But for those who persist in being tares there will come a time of reckoning, just as there will come a time of reward for the wheat.

Our purpose in the meantime is to know what we are in the field of the Lord. Let us examine ourselves. Let us examine ourselves closely, and cut each other some slack. There are still surprises in God’s grace. In the words of the poem:

"I dreamed death came the other night and Heaven’s gate swung wide.

With kindly grace an angel came and ushered me inside.

But there to my astonishment stood folks I’d known on earth.

Some I’d judged, and labeled as unfit and little worth.

Indignant words rose to my lips but never were set free.

For every face showed stunned surprise "No one expected me."