My
lawn reminds me of our world these days: nature’s beauty all mixed up with so
many weeds: weeds of hatred; weeds of injustice; weeds of shortsightedness;
weeds of war and killing; a draught of love; a draught of compassion; and so,
so many withered blossoms. Is Jesus really telling us in today’s Gospel that we
should just let these evils be? That we should shrug off all that destruction until
the End Times? That we should watch and wait from the sidelines? Shouldn’t we
be pulling up the weeds, no matter the consequence?
Scholars
are pretty sure that the word translated “weeds” in our Gospel is really a
plant called “darnel.”[1] Darnel is a wheat
look-alike, common in the Middle East. The trouble is that darnel usually
carries a poisonous fungus along with it. This fungus will sicken all who
mistakenly gather it up with their wheat and eat it in their bread. Good
farmers in Israel and Palestine know that they need to recognize this noxious
weed. They certainly wouldn’t leave it in their fields; they would root it out
early, before it gets mixed in with the wheat at harvest time.
Imagine
that you’re a worker going out into the wheat fields one hot, sunny morning.
You find that the field where your master himself had sewed good wheat, is
suddenly full of poisonous weeds. You’d be afraid of his reaction. You’d wonder
if you’re going to be blamed for the disaster. At the very least, you’d sigh in
despair over all of the delicate work that’s going to be expected of you in
weeding the bad plants from the field. What would you think when the Master says,
“Nope, this time we’re going to leave the wheat and the weeds alone. You won’t
even have to do the reaping. I’ll bring someone else in at harvest time, and
they’ll take care of it.” You’d probably shake your head in confusion at the
change in practices, at the master’s new generosity toward you, and at his new
slovenly way of farming. Instead of feeling grateful, you’d probably grumble, “If
I had my own land, I’d put up a big fence around it, with guard dogs to keep
the enemies out. I’d make my workers root out those weeds before some of that
fungus got mixed in with my wheat!” You’d think that your master had
lost his mind.
Jesus
loves to make us think that God has lost God’s mind, because Jesus is trying to
transform our minds. We react to evil in our hearts and in our world just like
the workers react to the darnel in the wheat field, don’t we? The parable makes
me think again about my own backyard, my own reactions. You see, my lawn is
under the care of our Homeowners’ Association. They’re in charge of watering
it, fertilizing it, keeping the weeds out. At the same time, we also have a
three-foot-perimeter of garden all around our house that is our responsibility.
We have to water and care for that small area. And you know what I’ve noticed
about myself? I look out at my dying lawn, littered with pinecones and weeds,
and I pout stubbornly to myself, “Oh well, it’s a mess, but it’s not my
responsibility.” It makes me very grouchy that the people I pay to take care of
it aren’t doing their jobs, and I certainly gripe to my neighbors about it. Sometimes
I send a curt note to the HOA manager. But I myself don’t lift a finger, even
though I could take some steps on my own to make it better.
On
the other hand, that 3-foot band around my house? I obsessively pull bits of stray
grass out of there, as if they were poison. I’ve burned myself dumping boiling
water on the clover growing in my rocks. I half-killed a bush once putting
vinegar on some nearby weeds. I even got so carried away in my uninformed
weeding that I once pulled out some nice perennials that the previous owner had
planted. But I want order in what is mine. I want to control my garden ... and
all that is mine.
It’s
interesting, isn’t it? How I either seem to renounce responsibility or decide
that I alone am judge and in control. When we wake up to find harmful bits in
the goodness of our soul, it’s easy to despair. To blame God or another human
being for its presence. To punish ourselves with self-judgment as caustic as vinegar.
And when we wake up and look out at the injustice seeded in our community? It’s
easy to give up, shrug our shoulders, and let the powers-that-be deal with it. It’s
also easy to start blaming those who disagree with us, judging that the
community would be a better place if the poisonous people could be rooted out. We
attempt to gather those who agree with our position into neat bundles of wheat.
We start ripping at the soil until the whole field lies dead and barren.
Jesus
knows how we human beings can react. It’s not that Jesus is telling us to sit
back and let the weeds harm us. Notice that the weeds in our parable don’t actually
harm the growing wheat. There is still a harvest, and God’s justice will be
done. But Jesus wants to help us avoid judging parts of ourselves or parts
of our community as dispensable. Our parable wants to free us from games of
blaming and judgment, fear and control. It wants to transform our minds to live
in the hope and freedom that Paul describes to the Romans in today’s Epistle.
I
was strongly marked fifteen years ago by the book, Amish Grace, about
the Pennsylvania Amish community who reacted with grace and forgiveness when their
farming community was shattered by a mass shooting at their little country schoolhouse
in 2006.[2] I went back and looked at
that story this week, and I’m still struck by the reaction of this community. The
shooter was a non-Amish community member who, angry with God over the death of
his own infant daughter, decided to sow evil in God’s wheat fields by killing
other innocent children.
Despite
their pain and the loss of 6 innocent children, the Amish community didn’t
choose vengeance, hatred, or despair in response to this evil. They didn’t
withdraw into themselves, either. The Amish have a strong belief in God’s
loving Providence and in our call to follow Jesus in the way of forgiveness. Strengthened
by their faith, they were able to reach out right away to the family of the
deceased shooter. They visited his family to offer sympathy and forgiveness for
his deed, hugging them and drawing them close. They shared donated funds that
they as victims had received with his widow and children. “They need help as
much as we do,” the Amish said. The larger Amish community, including the
families of the victims, attended the gunman’s funeral. “This is a community
tragedy,” the Amish victims proclaimed. They left all the judging to God,
and moved forward as one humanity.
Right after the horror of September 11, then-archbishop
Rowan Williams published a little book called, “Writing in the Dust.” Williams
wrote to encourage us Americans, the victims, not to turn toward
violence, vengeance, and retribution as we responded to the horror of that evil—not
to pull out the wheat with the weeds. Had we as a country only listened to him.
He encouraged us to act, “so that something might possibly change [in the
world], as opposed to acting so as to persuade ourselves that we’re not
powerless.”[3] Williams
refers to the story in John 8 of Jesus writing silently in the dust with his
finger before responding to the woman caught in adultery. Williams says, “[Jesus]
does not draw a line .... tell the woman who she is and what her fate should
be. He allows a .... longish moment, in which people are given time to see
themselves differently precisely because he refuses to make the sense they
want. When he lifts his head, there is both judgement and release.”[4]
Perhaps
we can all spend some time writing in the dust among the wheat and weeds of our
world? Not jumping to judgement, and yet not shrugging off responsibility. Taking
the time to see the whole differently, to remember that we are a whole.
[1]
Ulrich
Luz, Matthew, 254.
[2]
Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt, and David L. Weaver-Zercher, Amish Grace: How Forgiveness
Transcended Tragedy (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2010).
[3]
Rowan Williams, Writing in
the Dust (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 24.
[4]
Williams, 78.
