This story (Matthew 13. 24-30, 36-43) divides people into weeds and wheat. So, who are the weeds and who are the wheat? Our natural tendency as human beings is to want to know and to assume that we are in the wheat camp rather than the weeds camp.
More worryingly, our natural tendency as human beings is probably to try to identify those who are different from us and attempt to weed them out of our community. That is what we call scapegoating and, interestingly, it is a human tendency that the French cultural critic, Rene Girard, suggests is gradually unmasked and exposed by the Bible. Firstly, because the people of Israel sacrifice animals as scapegoats instead of other human beings (as happened in the nations around them at that time) and then as God himself, in Jesus, becomes the ultimate scapegoat bringing an end to the need for any further scapegoating. “Jesus’ ‘strategy’ as the ambassador from a loving, non-violent Father is to expose and render ineffective the scapegoat process so that the true face of God may be known … in the scapegoat, or Lamb of God, not the face of a persecuting deity.”
It’s not difficult to think of times and places in our society where scapegoating occurs. Whether it’s the scapegoating of refugees that characterises the Government’s Illegal Migration Law or the way we view travellers as different from us or, in the Church, the ways in which the LGBTQIA+ have historically been excluded from leadership and some sacraments. Whichever side of those issues we stand on, we need to beware of arguments often made by those at the extremes which would seek to rid us of those who don’t agree with their position because Jesus, in this story, says that it is not our job to pull up the weeds from the field.
It is not our job partly because, if we were to try, we would pull up the wheat with the weeds. In other words, we do not know, as we look around our church, the Anglican Communion, or our society, who are the wheat and who are the weeds. It is God who “searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts” we are told in 1 Chronicles 28. 9 can see what goes on in our hearts, he knows “the secrets of our hearts,” says Psalm 44 and this is because it is God who created our inmost beings and formed us in our mothers’ wombs, as Psalm 139 tell us.
Therefore, it is for God, not us, to make that judgement in his way and in his time. Jesus warns us that it we judge others, we ourselves will be judged by the same measure we use on others (Matthew 7. 1&2). Again, he is saying that it is God’s place to judge, not ours, and, even, that we are likely to be surprised by the judgements that God makes at the end of time. Sometimes, Jesus says, as in Matthew 7. 21-23, that those who appear to be the most religious are actually those who are among the weeds.
So, it is not our job to judge, but God’s, and he will do so in his way and his time. What we need to do is to trust that that is so and we do this by allowing the weeds to grow together with the wheat. In other words, Jesus is commending here the aspect of Anglicanism that, it seems to me, has always been its great strength and glory; its holding together from its inception of ‘catholics’ (with a small ‘c’) and protestants and in more recent centuries its holding together of the diverse streams that have developed within those traditions – anglo-catholicism, evangelicalism, liberalism, the charismatic movement and so on. To hold these things together is, it seems to me, to show absolute trust in God’s ultimate judgement because we are allowing the wheat and the weeds to grow together.
Rowan Williams, in the opening session of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, encouraged the bishops and archbishops present to “find the trust in God and one another that will give us the energy to change in the way God wants us to change.” That is, he said, “the most important thing we can pray for, the energy to change as God wants us to change individually and as a Communion.” But it is trust in God and one another, he says, that will give us this energy.
Why is that? Well, if all our energy is going into pulling up what we think are weeds then our energies are not going into what makes for fruitfulness. Our responsibility is not to be monitors and judges of others but to allow our energies to flow into developing the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This won’t happen if we are forever distracted by try to spot and root out weeds but if we trust God to sort out the weeds in his way and time then we can focus on the things that contribute to fruitfulness.
This means that we need to accept what the author Mike Yaconelli called Messy Spirituality. This is the reality “that all of us are in some condition of not-togetherness, even those of us who are trying to be godly.” We’re all a mess, he says, “not only sinful messy, but inconsistent messy, up-and-down messy, in-and-out messy, now-I-believe-now-I-don’t messy, I-get-it-now-I-don’t-get-it messy, I-understand-uh-now-I-don’t understand messy.” Can you identify with that? I know I can.
Yaconelli goes on to claim that Christianity is a messy spirituality for people like us who lead messy lives: “What landed Jesus on the cross, was the preposterous idea that common, ordinary, broken, screwed-up people could be godly! What drove Jesus’ enemies’ crazy was his criticism of the ‘perfect’ religious people and his acceptance of the imperfect, non-religious people. The shocking implication of Jesus’ ministry is that anyone can be spiritual.” To prove his point, he suggests we look at the Bible where we will see that its “pages overflow with messy people” because “the biblical writers didn’t edit out the flaws of its heroes.”
Just look at today’s Old Testament reading (Genesis 28.10-22), where Jacob dreams of angels ascending and descending a ladder from earth to heaven. From the time of his birth, Jacob was associated with trickery and deception. His most notorious acts of trickery were committed against his twin brother Esau. Jacob offered his “famished” brother a bowl of soup in exchange for his birthright as the firstborn son, which was a double portion of his father Isaac’s inheritance. Moreover, Jacob robbed Esau of their father’s blessing, which had been Esau’s right to receive. Nevertheless, Jacob ends up receiving a vision of angels and heaven. That’s nothing if not very messy.
Those who follow God in the pages of scripture are not perfect, far from it, and yet they strive for the perfection of God the Father. We need to be the same, humbly recognising our own fallibilities and therefore bearing with the failings of others yet seeking to change ourselves and supporting others in the changes that they are also able to make.
So, let us do what Rowan Williams has suggested and pray for the energy to change as God wants us to change, individually and as a church, even as the Anglican Communion:
Pour down upon us, O God, the gifts of your Holy Spirit, that we may be filled with wisdom and understanding. May we know at work within us that creative energy and vision which belong to our humanity, made in your image and redeemed by your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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M Ward - Epistemology.
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