Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Before
I get around to Jesus’ parable this morning, I want to remind you of two
stories from the Old Testament.
In
Genesis 18, Abraham gets a visit from two angels who are on their way to investigate
what is going on in Sodom, which happens to be where Abraham’s nephew Lot and
his family are living. If things are as
bad as reports say, the Lord plans to wipe the place off the face of the earth. Of course, that would destroy Abraham’s family,
since at that point he and Sarah had no children. So Abraham has a talk with God.
“Then Abraham came near and said, ‘Will you
indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty
righteous within the city; will you then sweep away the place and not forgive
it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a
thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the
wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is
just?’ And the Lord said,
‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place
for their sake.’ Abraham answered, ‘Let me take it upon myself to speak to the
Lord, I who am but dust and ashes. Suppose five of the fifty righteous are
lacking? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five?’ And he said, ‘I
will not destroy it if I find forty-five there.’ Again he spoke to him,
‘Suppose forty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of forty I will not
do it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak. Suppose
thirty are found there.’ He answered, ‘I will not do it, if I find thirty
there.’ He said, ‘Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord. Suppose
twenty are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of twenty I will not
destroy it.’ Then he said, ‘Oh do not let the Lord be angry if I speak
just once more. Suppose ten are found there.’ He answered, ‘For the sake of ten
I will not destroy it.’ And the Lord went his way, when he
had finished speaking to Abraham; and Abraham returned to his place.” [Genesis
18:23-33]
In the event, things did not go well, but
before the fire and brimstone started pouring down, Lot and his family were
given warning to clear out.
That’s
story #1. Story #2 comes from the book
of Jonah. The part that gets the
attention is the section where Jonah is swallowed up by a whale, or a great
fish. That’s not the juicy part,
though. What had happened before that
was that God had told Jonah to go to Nineveh and warn the town to repent its
ways. God would give them forty days to
turn things around, or else it would be another Sodom and Gomorrah moment. Jonah doesn’t want Nineveh to have any
warning, since it is the capital of one of Israel’s traditional enemies,
Assyria. He tried to sail in the
opposite direction but when a storm arose and the sailors learned what Jonah
was trying to do, they threw him overboard.
That was how he ended up inside the fish that eventually swam back to
the Middle East and threw him up on the beach, at which point he realized there
was no escaping God. Jonah went to
Nineveh, announced the warning, and then watched people repent and God do
nothing to punish them. He sat down outside
the city to stew about it and to hope God would act.
“The Lord God
appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his
head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the
bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that
attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a
sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was
faint and asked that he might die. He said, ‘It is better for me to die than to
live.’
But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be
angry about the bush?’ And he said, ‘Yes, angry enough to die.’ Then
the Lord said,
‘You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you
did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And
should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are
more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand
from their left, and also many animals?’” [Jonah 4:6-11]
And the Bible ends the story right there. Jonah does not get a rebuttal. For the sake of the children and animals,
even if only for them, God will spare his people’s enemies.
Now, about this
parable that Matthew records: it works out the same way. The Master’s servants (the Jonahs, let’s call
them) want to clear the field of all that is not up to standard – or
worse. The Master is more aware of the
possible collateral damage they may do in the process.
“‘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 then went away. So when
the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And
the slaves of the householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow
good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He
answered, “An enemy has done this.” The slaves said to him, “Then do you want
us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds
you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together
until the harvest…”’” [Matthew
13:24-30]
What
does that look like? Well, it may mean
learning to hold your tongue long enough for righteous indignation (and I do
mean it is truly righteous) to simmer down a bit, and it may leave anyone who
really and truly cares feeling cut short, like Jonah. Jesus said to love your enemy; he never
promised your enemy would learn to love you back. It’s great when that happens, but it’s not a
certainty. It may be for the sake of the
children who are nearby and observing, who need a peaceful environment. It may be for the sake of your own soul,
which is probably not going to benefit from long-held anger. For that matter, your blood pressure and/or
your stomach ulcers wouldn’t be helped by it, either.
A
blogger who shows up on a clergy page that I often read had this to say
recently about himself. Please note that
I have edited his comments for a general audience. If his political stance is not yours, just
flip it around and the story will apply just as much. He writes,
“After First Baptist Church of Dallas went
all-in on their nationalist idolatry, releasing an official CCLI Christian
praise song called “Make America Great Again.” After I heard about an angry
white man shooting a black girl with his concealed handgun out of road rage.
After Donald Trump released his wrestlemania tweet. …
I’ve been on a roll the last few days on
Facebook and Twitter. People are starting to share and retweet my stuff (which
always makes me feel strangely uneasy). My creative juices are flowing. I’ve
got zeal boiling over like a ripe volcano in my brain. So I was fired up to say
something really poignant and devastating. …
But then I found myself last night in a
conversation with a military guy who had a conservative seeming haircut and
biceps and mannerisms. And his wife has cancer that’s come back for a second
time and it’s metastasized all over. And he kept on saying, “The Lord has
blessed us so much.” And they’ve got two beautiful kids who were playing with
my kids and having a great time in the pool. We didn’t talk about anything
earth-shattering. It was mostly just dad small-talk. But he was friendly and
humble. He was patient and compassionate with his kids. And talking with him
made me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
So it got me confused.
What does resisting evil look like? Is it going
off on the apostate idolaters who think that everyone else is an apostate
idolater …
Or is it relishing and holding up human
interaction where ideological categories don’t exist and two dads are just
watching their kids swim together?
So if I like the warm and fuzzy feeling I have
when I’m just a dad talking to another dad, is that me retreating into my white
male privilege and pretending the world around me isn’t a giant dumpster fire?
Or on the flip side, am I being a toxic, self-righteous [jerk] who is hardened
against God’s love…?”[1]
There are times when you have to
remember that God has promised that in his own way, using his own judgement,
his own insight, and his own mercy, he will sort everything out. In the long run, I suggest that we should
all, one way or another, be grateful for that.
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