St. Paul's On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

10 Pentecost; July 20, 2008

Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

GOD WAITS

We gather once again to hear the Word of the Lord. Like the people gathered on that beach to hear Jesus who sat teaching from a the boat, we are not too sure it applies to us.

We are not the ones who spend all day in the Temple praying, like the Sadducees and the Chief Priests. We are not the ones who can give all our time to reading Scripture, like the Scribes and the Pharisees. We are not the ones who go around all the time doing good.

To some extent we don't have time for all that. We're too busy working. To some extent, we don't care enough, certainly not as much as we know we should.

So we sit and listen again to Jesus' words, and we reflect on them, and we wonder if they apply to us.

“The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.”

OK, we're on solid ground here. Jesus is explaining the problem of evil people, and where they come from, and where good people come from. Nice and clear. We hope we're not among the evil people, but some of us aren't so sure.

We carry on for a while in the parable, distinguishing between good and evil, in a way that helps explain the presence of evil ones in the world.

Then comes the next question, from the slaves, from us. “Then do you want us to go and gather them,” the weeds? That sounds like a good question and a good solution. God gathers up the evil people so the good people can be left alone to grow and prosper.

Or better yet, we as his disciples are called to gather up the evil people, even those from among our own midst planted by an evil lord, so we can grow safely.

And here's the answer: “No.”

No. Stops them dead in their tracks. You'd think a good God would want to rid the world of evil. You'd think a loving God would want to protect us good folk from evil people, and get rid of them.

But no. He says, 'No.'

“For in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
What's this? When given the chance to tell us what he does with evil people, God says – wait.

And why wait? You might make a mistake, he says. You might gather up the wrong plants. You might mistake wheat for weeds, and gather them up instead.

But we know the difference, we say, between horrible people and good people, good wheat and bad weeds.

No you don't, says Jesus. They look too similar on the outside. You might make a mistake.

You might make a mistake because the true nature of wheat and weeds is only made clear at the end, at the harvest, when they bear fruit! For the fruit is definitely different. The outer nature of the two plants, wheat or weeds, is somewhat the same, with perhaps minor differences, but none big enough to make a definite ruling.

Only when you see the fruit, the good things someone does in life, can you tell who was good, and who was bad.

And God is willing to wait, and wait, and wait; and watch for the fruit that he knows each of us can bear.

For he knows – you see – that we can, and we will. He put that fruit in our souls to begin with; and he is just waiting and watching for it to come out.

He's got a long time, and a lot of patience.

We don't! We want to get it done, get the show on the road! We don't have the patience. We want to get the evil people out of here now, before they do any harm! We want to pluck the weeds out of our own lives, and leave only the wheat. We don't want to wait for ourselves to develop.
And we don't have the compassion. We don't have the compassion, within our souls, that that person might not be as bad as we think, as evil as we think. They may have fruit in their souls, unknown to us, known to God; fruit that will eventually come out at the harvest and be used to feed and nurture and help and enlighten – other people; fruit that could even feed and nurture and help and enlighten – us.

And here's the biggest surprise of all. That fruit, that good fruit, might even be in us.

We, who sit on the beach, watching our Lord and Savior Christ teach from a distance, in his boat, a seemingly unbridgeable gap between him and us, is telling us, that we may not be among the few who can teach and pray in the Temple all day. We may not be among those who can study and do the work of Scripture all day. We may not be among those who have the time or even the inclination to help other people all day.

But we may nevertheless be children of the Kingdom. We may nevertheless not be children of the evil one – and Jesus certainly is not going to let loose any inquisitors upon us.

We may be children of the Kingdom, just a little weedy on the outside, just a little scraggly, with maybe a few resemblances, here and there, to weeds.

But he knows we're wheat. He planted us. And he's going to wait, and wait, and see – that we can bear fruit, maybe just a little bit, but he knows we can do it. And he knows that it – and we – will help others in some way with that product of our lives.

He's just waiting – until we know it too.