Hilton Head Island, SC – December 9, 2012
The Chapel Without Walls
Matthew 13:24-30; Matthew 13:34-43
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – Another parable he put before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.” – Matthew 13:24 (RSV)
Jesus was a master story teller. In the four Gospels, but curiously only in the three Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – he told numerous parables, most of which illustrate the nature of what Jesus called “the kingdom of God,” or, in Matthew, “the kingdom of heaven.” I choose to believe that Jesus rarely if ever talked about “the kingdom of heaven,” and that therefore Matthew had an incorrect terminology. However, some of the best parables of the kingdom (whatever it should be called) are in his Gospel, and we shall refer this Advent to several of them.
Today’s parable, the wheat and tares, is another agriculturally-based story, as was last week’s parable of the sower and the seed. As a disclaimer, I want you to know that I know almost nothing about farming. If a farmer is properly defined as a man outstanding in his field, I am most definitely not a farmer, nor do I claim to be. Furthermore, almost everything I know about farming in biblical times I owe to my greatly admired acquaintance of 50 years ago, William Barclay, who taught New Testament at Trinity College of Glasgow University in Scotland. Willie Barclay composed a set of New Testament commentaries which have been very well utilized by three generations of preachers ever since he wrote them in the mid-Fifties.
I begin by alluding to one of his observations which is printed on the cover of today’s bulletin. In the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the text says that “an enemy” (and about that, more later) sowed “weeds” among the wheat seed that the farmer had carefully planted. The King James Version, however, says the enemy sowed “tares.” Tares, as Dr. Barclay said, were a particular species of weed. In the early stages of their growth, they looked almost identical to wheat. So if somebody wanted to botch up a crop of wheat to thwart an enterprising farmer, tares would be a splendid means for doing the botching. Given the reality of this dastardly deed, the only thing the farmer could do was to wait till the harvest. Then he would cut both the wheat and tares with his scythe, and at that point separate the wheat from the tares, because by then the two species of plants were instantly recognizable. So the farmer said he would tell the reapers to gather the tares together in bundles and burn them, and to put the harvested wheat into his barn.
Normally the RSV translation is preferable to the KJV translation, because biblical scholars in the 20th century had access to much more background information than those of the early 17th century, when the King James Version was produced. But the RSV merely says “weeds,” and the parable makes much more sense if it identifies the particular kind of weed as tares. However, you and I know that only because of the expansive expertise of William Barclay, the biblical expositor’s best friend.
Listen further to some more that the great Scot Barclay said about this parable. “The tares and the wheat are so like each other that the Jews call the tares bastard wheat. The Hebrew for tares is zunim, whence comes the Greek zizanion; zunim is said to be connected with the word zanah, which means to commit fornication.” And you thought Bible study is just a simple pastime! Not on your commentary, it isn’t. There is a lot of unfamiliar information we need to hear before we can fully understand many of Jesus’ parables.
So what does the parable of the wheat and the tares mean? Last week I said that the only parable Jesus ever explained to the disciples was the one from last week, the sower and the seed. Well, it turns out, I lied. Actually I didn’t deliberately lie, but I did misspeak. Jesus also explains this parable in much detail. Still, it is generally true that he didn’t do that very often. Or if he did it, the Gospel writers didn’t bother to write down the explanations. We are supposed to be able to figure it out for ourselves.
Now remember that Jesus presumably told the parable of the wheat and tares only to the disciples, and he did so immediately after he told about the sower and the seed to a large group of people. Now he was alone with the twelve. And the twelve being the twelve, and seemingly with nary a mental giant among the whole ditzy dozen, they asked what the parable meant. So here, in full, is Jesus’ explanation.
“He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds [or tares] are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age” Mt. 13:37-40).
These words in Jesus’ mouth in Matthew’s Gospel sound very “Matthean.” To me they sound much more like Matthew than Jesus. I’m not thrilled with this explanation, because I’m not thrilled with the idea of the devil, nor with angels, nor with anybody being burned up in hell at the close of the age. I’m not even very partial to the very idea of “the close of the age” as it found with alarming frequency in the Gospels. The Mayan calendar and the world ending on December 21, 2012 and all that stuff leaves me theologically and intellectually cold.
Besides, this explanation of this parable is far too metaphorical for me, and especially far too allegorical. Every detail stands for something else, Matthew says Jesus says, and I don’t think that was really Jesus’ method or intention when he told parables. There was a main point or a few main points to each parable, and not a whole slew of points.
So what’s the main point of the wheat and the tares? Here is the way I see it, although I can’t authoritatively vouch for the absolute authenticity of my interpretation. When Jesus talked about the kingdom of God (and I don’t think he ever talked about the kingdom of heaven, as I said earlier), he usually was talking about the here-and-now, about temporality, not eternity.
Here and now, in God’s kingdom, it is often hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys, the wheat from the tares. People are not necessarily what they seem. That’s the major theme in this parable.
A few weeks ago I finally read The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I saw the movie long ago, and I knew a bit of the story, but I hadn’t read the book. To me it is a sad story, a melancholy tale about people who are phantasms, living fantasy lives. That was especially true of Jay Gatsby, the title character, and also of Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story. Nick says of himself, knowing what he says to be untrue, “Everyone suspects of himself at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people I have ever known.” We learn, however, that Nick Carraway has misled everyone about his identity and his background, so he’s pulling his own leg and ours when he says what he says.
And Gatsby? Listen to Nick tell it. “The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God – a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that – and he must be about his Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” In the kingdom of God, the wheat is not instantly discernible from the tares. Remember that.
Of the several thousand parishioners I have known through my many centuries of ministry, and the few hundred I have known quite well, I have known at least four different types of people. There were first rate people who were always first rate, people who looked first rate for years and then proved themselves to be second-or-third-rate, people who seemed second-or-third-rate and were, and people who seemed fourth rate and turned out to be first rate.
I think, for example, of two attorneys, Clyde and Ed, both of whom appeared to be stellar human beings, and that is who they always were. I remember a woman we shall call Mary. At first I would have guessed her to be an exemplary person, but it turned out she was a gossip who loved to shred reputations, even when the shredding was utterly unjustified. Then there was George, who attended church each Sunday and was widely despised in the community, and for apparently good reasons. To my knowledge, he never changed his behavior till the day he died, and he was not deeply mourned by anyone, including his long-suffering wife and daughter. On the other hand, Jane seemed like a scatter-brained ditz who was friendly to everyone, but she also seemed to be without any discernible talent. When her husband died suddenly at a young age, she quickly worked herself into the executive director position of a community non-profit organization, and she did an outstanding job in that capacity for many years. Everyone was amazed. In medias res, in the middle of things, who can tell who is authentic and who isn’t? “Let both grow together until the harvest; and at the harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the tares first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
It is not easy to tell the good folks from the not so good folks, and it is a mistake for us to make severe judgments about anyone, particularly when we don’t yet have enough information. Often you can’t distinguish the wheat from the tares until the time of harvest comes, which presumably means until the end of anyone’s lifetime.
Do you remember Great Expectations by Charles Dickens? At the beginning of the novel, Pip, the young orphaned hero of the story, encounters an escaped convict in leg-irons in the marshes of County Kent in Southeast England. The prisoner has the wonderfully Dickensian name of Abel Magwitch. He forces Pip to steal a file to file through his chains, plus some food. Before he escapes, however, the police apprehend him. Magwitch says he stole the file and the food, and he is taken away. As though this were not a sufficiently unlikely plot, the rest of it is even more fanciful, including a mysterious fortune given to Pip on his 21st birthday. He thinks it was from Miss Havisham, his purported benefactor, who turns out to be a very mean-spirited and conniving woman. Much later Pip learned that the fortune came from Abel Magwitch, who became rich in Australia after he was sent there as a convict.
There are reasons why Miss Havisham became such a bitter person, and only at the end was Pip able to forgive her for her interference in his life. As for Abel Magwitch, the supposedly detestable man from his early life, he became the primary means that Pip could free himself from the poverty and poor prospects of his youth. Was Miss Havisham wheat and Abel Magwitch tares, or was she tares and he wheat? Or were both both? Until the end of the novel we can’t tell, and even then it is impossible to judge either of them with complete fairness.
And that leads to the final observation about the parable of the wheat and tares. Only God can judge anyone with total justice and equity. None of us can ever fully know why others behave as they do. There may be circumstantial factors in their early years or issues in the unique structure of their particular brains or whatever which cause them to do what they do. They might claim that the devil made them do it, and from the standpoint of their theology, that might provide the best explanation. But in the end, God alone knows who of us are tares and who are wheat, and only He can honestly make that assessment.
The parables of Jesus are endless repositories of theological truth. They force us to jettison some long-held certainties of faith, and to embrace other ideas we may have considered anathema for most of our lives. Jesus is a most meddlesome Messiah. He doesn’t seem to know how to leave “well enough” alone. Well enough isn’t good enough for Jesus. He demands a radical restructuring of both faith and practice for all of us.
However, we create the kingdom of God; God doesn’t. And we do it by means of putting the parabolic truths of Jesus of Nazareth into practice. Just being familiar with the parables doesn’t count. The Messiah Jesus doesn’t lead armies or wield political or military power or call down the wrath of God on miscreants of all sorts. He has come to transform hearts and minds, and until that happens, he won’t leave any of us alone.
The kingdom of God is God’s kingdom. It isn’t Christ’s kingdom, and it certainly isn’t our kingdom. Jesus insisted that only God is in a position to judge anyone. Jesus isn’t the ultimate judge; God has reserved that role unto Himself alone.
As I said in the announcements before the service began, “Come, ye thankful people, come” is not really a hymn of thanksgiving, although traditionally it is sung at Thanksgiving. It is the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, set to poetry by Henry Alford. He was a 19th century Low-Church Anglican priest who eventually became the dean of Canterbury Cathedral. If you look at the text of the hymn in your bulletin, you will see that the first stanza sounds totally like a hymn of thanksgiving. However, stanzas 2 through 4 are totally about our parable for this morning. If you question that, look at the words of the second stanza:
All the world is God’s own field, Fruit unto His praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown, Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade, and then the ear, Then the full corn shall appear:
Lord of harvest, grant that we Wholesome grain and pure may be.
We are all wheat, and we are all tares. Our “tare-ed-ness” convinces some of us we are pure wheat, but that is pure piffle. We are both. Fortunately, God knows what forces are at work within us, and why, and in the end He shall judge us on the basis of how we did in our lives, given all the factors that inevitably influence our lives.
But in the meantime, we should work at being better wheat, and tearing out the tares of our own existence. Further, it would be well always to remember this: the kingdom of God on earth, which is all we can know of God on earth, is always lived out “in the meantime.” So, dear hearts, grow long, and grow strong.