Sermon – Jesus as Merciful Judge

Genesis 28:10-19a, Matthew 13:24-30

I heard recently about a suburb in Canberra where a proposal to build housing units for intellectually impaired residents raised some anxiety amongst the community. Two community meetings were held, attracting around 200 residents. As I understand it there were several concerns, partly to do with building regulations: distances from fence lines and such like, and partly to do with safety issues. A similar housing complex in Canberra was being investigated after a fire, but there was another concern too: would the children of the local community be safe with neighbours such as these?

The Group Areas Act was one of the terrible policies of the Apartheid governments in South Africa that was still in force when we went to live in Cape Town. White suburbs were those closest to Table Mountain, and black suburbs were townships some distance away on the Flats. The University, built on the side of the hill by Cecil Rhodes, was at that stage consciously defying the act by allowing students of mixed backgrounds into the residential colleges, and we lived in a “gray” suburb not far away, but the effects of the policy were still keenly felt, for example we had friends who had been turned away from motels during their honeymoon in the late 1980s because they were a mixed race couple.

And we know that our own country has not been immune from such tendencies to want to separate people of difference. We hardly need to repeat the testimony of countless indigenous people, church organizations and government employees who saw Australian government policy in action as full blood aboriginals were allowed to remain in remote communities but light skinned children were removed from their families in an effort to bring them up as white Australians and breed out the aboriginal blood.

These are just a few of the examples of the tendency in human nature to want to divide, separate, keep pure – and that this has occurred throughout history and at all levels of society. The Old Testament is full of passages about Israel’s identity as the chosen race, separating from the nations around it and keeping itself pure and holy in religious and ethical practice. But there is a tension in the bible, because there is also a thread of tradition suggesting a more inclusive community. Abraham, and after him Isaac and Jacob would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The servant of Isaiah’s prophecies would be a light to the nations. Stories such as Ruth and Rahab and Bathsheba show how foreigners were integrated into the community. And Joseph and Daniel were Jews through whom God worked in foreign places for the good of those places.

But we also know that the New Testament Church struggled with the inclusion of Gentiles into the predominantly Jewish community. It caused great rifts between early evangelists, as we see from Paul’s letters and the stories in Acts. And probably the early church communities that were behind the gospels also had difficulties integrating the outsiders. Why else would Mark’s gospel be so pointed in its many stories of how the disciples, the insiders, misunderstood and got it wrong, but foreigners like the Syro-phonecian woman and the Roman centurion at the cross recognized and named Jesus’ true identity.

And Matthew’s church too, as we see from this parable, must have been wondering how it was that their community could include outsiders, apostates, perhaps even people with evil intention. There are at least four other parables with a similar theme – later in the chapter another “kingdom of heaven” parable is told – “the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; when it was full they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad.” (13:47-50) You see good and bad were together in the net and could only be separated at the end. And later is the story of a wedding banquet where a guest is found without the right clothing and is asked “how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” (22:12). These stories seem to reflect a community struggling to understand how the outsiders could be tolerated amongst the faithful. How the tares had found their way amongst the wheat. Perhaps there was an idea amongst the community that the Kingdom of heaven would not come until after the time of judgement when good and evil would be separated. Could the Kingdom be hurried along by weeding out the evil? Wasn’t this the time for the judge of the world to act? So the question is asked of the owner of the field, “do you want us to go and gather the weeds?”

But what does the owner say?

First, we should remember the teaching Jesus had already given. We saw in the parable of the Sower last week that the good news had been broadcast to all. It had been worthwhile preaching the word even in rocky soil, thorny patches of ground, out on the highways and byways. And seed had already fallen on good soil and had germinated.

And so the message in this parable is consistent with what had come before. Let the weeds grow with the wheat. Be assured there will be a harvest one day, but don’t give up on the world yet. The kingdom is already growing, but the kingdom is open to all. All have the opportunity to germinate and bear good fruit.

Jesus not only preached that message, he lived it with his life. He kept his circle open. The gospel is full of surprising invitations to be part of the kingdom. Jesus invited fishermen, a tax collector, scribes, family members, non-Jews, women, people the Pharisees described as sinners and even children to be his followers. Probably many of these had not even considered the matter until the invitation came – we are told the fishermen left their nets (4:20) and the tax collector left his booth (9:9). Jesus wasn’t like other groups of his day whose entrance gates were narrow and membership requirements were high – groups like the Essene community, the Pharisees, the Zealots. Jesus didn’t give his group of followers a name, he didn’t draw up a constitution or issue membership certificates, he didn’t even establish a fixed meeting place. His invitation was open to all, and in its best form the church has mirrored that down through the ages as it has set down roots and grown all over the world, sometimes in the most unlikely of places. (I have a beautiful photograph in my Switzerland album of a tiny church clinging to the edge of a snow covered mountain – the only building in sight in my panoramic snowy landscape. But I’ve also been amongst Christian communities in the highlands of Losotho, in what was then communist Romania, along the Fly river in PNG and in a triple level church built in the hilly terrain of Mizoram.)

As the followers of Jesus now our calling as a church is always a calling to set down our roots where we are in the world around us. When the parable is explained later in the chapter the listeners are told “the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom.” (13:38) That there will be a judgement on this world isn’t denied, but the timing is the issue. Now is not the time to pull up the weeds. Now is the time for grace and mercy, the time when God sends rain on the just and the unjust. The time for the Kingdom of God to take root and grow, and be an influence where it is. Not to dig out what is different in an attempt to grow as a pure crop. Our calling as God’s people is not defined by a reaction to evil, or to judge the way others lead their lives. Our calling is to be concerned for the good: to turn ourselves towards the kingdom and live as people of that kingdom.

After all, when we humans even with the best of intentions try to eradicate evil we can become evil ourselves. The church too has ended up self-righteous and cruel in attempts to root out the evil amongst us. In the church’s history how many heretics were burned at the stake or drowned in the river or stretched on the rack in the name of God? And while we may have ceased such dreadful practices the church can still be very heavy handed in dealing with faults amongst its people – publicly denouncing wrongdoers, blackening reputations, removing livelihoods by taking away jobs and causing great stress to families.

And public policy and justice systems around the world when trying to address evil can also result in much harm. In some places taking a person’s life for crimes they have committed is considered an appropriate way to deal with evil. Many think that war and collateral damage is an acceptable way to deal with evil. But this belief has been questioned throughout history.

In 1933, when Japan invaded Manchuria many people in America were calling for war. The theologian H. Richard Niebuhr wrote an article in a prominent journal entitled "On the Grace of Doing Nothing." Richard Niebuhr was not a pacifist. He did support the US involvement in World War II when it finally came. But, he had a point to make. The reason he argued for ‘doing nothing’ was that human beings often have a way of responding to evil with acts that produce more evil, however unintended. We allow our calling as God’s people to be defined by a reaction to evil rather than a concern for the good.

Jesus said “no” to the question of the workers who wanted to uproot the weeds with the reasoning that in gathering the weeds they may uproot the wheat at the same time. Most commentaries talk about a common weed known as darnel, whose strong roots entwine with the wheat and so the workers would run the risk of pulling out the young shoots of wheat also. So as well as the risk of answering evil with evil, the other obvious implication of pulling up weeds is the risk of rooting out the good along with the evil.

The story of Jacob is a great example of someone who from the outside might have been judged a weed. A disgrace to his faithful grandfather Abraham and obedient father Isaac. A cheat, a robber: his name even means “heel”. When we meet him in the story we were read he is running away in fear for his life. He lies down to sleep in a lonely place, with nothing but rocks for comfort, and some comfort that would have been. He must have been anticipating a miserable night. And yet something happened that night that allowed him to become one of the great legends of the Jewish people, one who was given the promise “all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you”. God met him in that rocky place and planted in him seeds that would bear much fruit. He may have imagined God had deserted him, but he was wrong. He may have thought God wanted nothing to do with him after the way he had treated his brother and father. But he was wrong. God was with him in amongst the rocks, offering a new start. To God’s eyes there may always be potential for good amongst what we would judge as a hopeless case.

I mentioned before that Jesus called followers who perhaps had never even considered the matter. Some were engaged in occupations that seemed far from the Kingdom – Levi the tax collector for example, or the numerous women who seemed to live outside the expectations of polite society. And yet he invited them to follow. He must have been able to spot the wheat amongst the weeds, and to inspire a change of heart and direction. But he also seemed able to recognise the weed amongst the wheat on occasion – do you remember the passages in the gospels where the disciples, the very ones who had accepted the invitation to follow Jesus, were arguing about their own status? (eg Matt 20:20ff; Mark 9:33-35) Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom, such as “Whoever will be greatest must be the servant of all” didn’t come easily for them. Even the disciples found it hard to live as with the openness and grace of their master.

But this is rather comforting because we ought to recognize that good and evil coexists in all of us. It is tempting to divide the world into good and evil, but more realistic to realise that to be human is to live with ambiguity. Some of the most popular cultural phenomena in recent years have been the Star Wars movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The storyline in both is set against worlds where good and evil are opposing forces, and where characters must choose to align themselves on one side or the other. But both stories portray the struggle in individual lives to make that choice, to recognise the potential for evil in the heroes, and the potential for good even when one is on the wrong side. Think of the ambiguous character of Gollum. Think of Frodo struggling with temptation to hold onto the ring at the very last moment. Think of Darth Vader, making a choice to turn to the Dark Side out of the desire to prevent suffering of his beloved wife. And the prophetic statement of trust by Padme on her deathbed about Anakin, “there is good in him. I know there is ... still.”

The community that Matthew’s gospel was written for found it hard to understand how they could live as Christians with the presence of evil amongst them. “Where did the weeds come from? Should we go and gather them?” But the landowner said “No. Let both grow together until the harvest.” To live as Christians in this world is to live with ambiguity. Jesus knows life is ambiguous, and encourages us to live in that ambiguity and yet expect a harvest. The wheat will ripen as the owner intends it to do. And we live with the hope that evil will be dealt with one day.

There are hundreds of products on the market that claim to eradicate weeds and allow the proud home owner to grow a beautiful garden. The cleverest ones are those that can encourage growth of good plants and simultaneously eradicate weeds. “Lawn builder” is one such product that a quick search on the internet brings up. It seems to be able to feed and nourish grass and at the same time feed weeds so they enlarge and wither away in the sun. Perhaps the “doing nothing” of God’s grace has the same effect: grace nourishes goodness, but puffs up evil so it perishes.

I’m aware that the Department of Immigration has been much in the news in this past week, but I want to refer to the Department in a positive light. You might remember a few weeks ago I sent a letter to Senator Vanstone on behalf of our church, congratulating the Department on some recent changes to detention policy for those seeking refugee status. I received a reply from an official during the week, where the author of the letter also congratulated his Department on acting in a more “considerate” way in relation to such people. But it seems to me that these changes came about through a process a little like the action of Lawn Builder. Because some in the government were willing to speak out against the detention policies, to show a greater measure of grace, the injustice of these policies were brought to light and caused enough concern that changes had to be made. Grace nourished goodness and puffed up evil so that it was scorched by the light. Maybe I am taking the illustration too far. And Peter Qasim is still being detained under psychiatric care, the result of 7 years of poor policy.* So there is a long way to go until harvest. In the meantime, wheat and weeds grow together, recognising that life is ambiguous and growth can be slow and at times difficult. And yet it is still our calling, to grow in God’s grace. We can live under God’s grace and trust God to bring the seeds of the kingdom within our lives to a flowering. And to allow that kingdom to be seen in the field of our part of this world.

And as for the time of judgement, when evil will be confronted for once and for all? We need to wait for that time by living in the wide mercy of God. We will wait for the weighing of all our ambiguous lives by our merciful judge – the God of love.

* Peter Qasim was released into the community into the care of a Christian couple in Adelaide the same day this sermon was preached!