Saints and Sinners Both

Text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

We are going to start today with a little Bible study.

There is a school of thought that says that the closer things are to us, the more influence they have over us, and the more they affect who we will be in the future. Things that are far away in time and space are less important to us day to day than things that are near. One purpose of the Bible, or one thing it has succeeded in doing, is keeping Jesus close to us. Jesus lived and died two thousand years ago, yet his life and teachings remain in us. The institution of the church has done the same, preserving the story of Christ and keeping it near.

The church and the Bible do an OK job of this, but they are not perfect. We are a long way in years and culture from the time of Jesus, and much more from the time of Jacob, the hero of today’s first reading. Our devices—books, tradition, ceremony—do their best. Though the church claims the Bible is inspired (Lutherans of our sort do not officially insist that it is inerrant)—though it may be inspired, no one claims that all interpretations of it are. And even the translations we read are interpretations. It is a twisty road that runs from the words that Jesus spoke in Aramaic to the stories people told about him to the writing down of those stories in Greek by Matthew to the assembling of all the fragments of the Gospel (there is no such thing as the original complete Gospel of Matthew, just little bits), to the translation of the result into English. There are by necessity interpretations all the way, before it even gets to our own thoughts.

Why does this matter? Because everyone in the chain of interpretation has some agenda or other. Everybody has a stake in the meaning of Jesus and his words. Jesus means something, otherwise the people would not even be involved in the program. They cannot help, and they might not want to help, explaining Jesus in a way that makes sense to them in their own time, according to their own circumstances, and in light of their own hopes and fears. We have to remember this because their agenda may not be ours.

Today we look at the agenda of Matthew, the author of today’s reading, in telling this story of Jesus telling a parable. This parable appears only in the Gospel of Matthew, not in the other very similar Gospels of Mark and Luke. It is possible that Matthew made it up, but I’d say that’s not likely. It is likely, though, that Matthew included this parable because it suited his purpose—his agenda—but did not suit the purposes of Mark and Luke. If you want to guess what Matthew’s purpose is, you can refer to the little program guide he includes right after the parable. An interpretation of the parable as an allegory. I suspect this interpretation, even though it is in the Bible, was made up by Matthew. I have doubts that Jesus said what Matthew quotes him as saying.

I say that for two reasons. The first reason is that we know from the rest of Matthew that he was really interested in figuring out why everyone did not immediately turn to follow Jesus. And more to Matthew’s point, why those who did went to a different church than Matthew did and probably disagreed with Matthew. Now, there were not really churches like that in those days, but there were communities of followers of Jesus. And they all had slightly different ideas about what Jesus meant, said, and did. In spite of Jesus command that his followers love one another, by Matthew’s time they probably didn’t.

And the second reason I think Matthew made this up is that in this passage, Jesus interprets the parable. Which he sometimes does elsewhere, but not often. And interprets it as an allegory, which parables were not. Not allegories. Matthew has Jesus saying “this part of the parable stands for this other thing.” But parables are not really told that way. They are intended to be weird little stories that make us think. They are the Christian equivalent of koans. In them, there is usually a shocker of sorts. In today’s parable, the shocker is that the landowner does not weed his crops, but lets a dangerous invasive look-alike plant grow among the beneficial wheat. Why would he do that? That is one of the things that is supposed to make us think.

This does not mean that we can just toss out the allegorical interpretation of the parable. The verses are, after all, still in the Bible. People left them in when they were first assembling and then repeatedly copying this Gospel of Matthew. They could have left them out; they have left out lots of other parts of which we have evidence. But it does mean that we can look at this parable with different eyes than Matthew’s. Which we will do now. (Finally.)

One way to think about parables is that they are like poems. They paint word pictures. They are about deep things in the guise of stories about events. They have points and themes. Matthew picks up these themes in today’s parables, and I’m sure you did, too. (Just because Matthew interprets these themes does not mean they are not in there.) This particular parable is more complex than most, and it has at least three themes. Which are: the existence of evil; the impossibility of human judgment; and a call to action.

[Regarding evil.] Martin Luther promised to spit in the devil’s face. And he wrote that we should share the Lord’s Supper everyday to have the strength to fight evil. In the ceremony in which we welcome new members we all agree to renounce the devil and all his empty promises. What is the cause of bad things, vicious and nasty actions, malevolence? We modern types do not often personify evil. Evil seems mysterious and unexplainable. Often more of a corruption or perversion than an active force, or inherent in creation and life, or sometimes just considered a shortage of goodness.

But in this parable, the sower of the deadly weeds is an enemy, a force for badness, purposely causing harm and sorrow. Evil is not happenstance. There is a battle in the background between two forces, competing for the world, and in this battle we are at the same time the victims, the pawns, and the fighters. It is not that there are good people and bad people, but that that goodness which we all desire fights against the evil which we all deplore. All are on the same side here.

[Regarding judgment]. Though Matthew hopes to punish evildoers, in the telling of the parable Jesus is more gentle. Good wheat exists, and evil weeds exist, but humans are not called to figure out which are which and certainly are not called to eradicate the weeds. We are not called to judge. That does not mean that judgment is not real. There are lots of stories in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, about judgment. But the prerogative of judgment and the skill it requires are not ours, do not belong to human beings. Just because we acknowledge evil does not mean we can identify it.

In another story near the end of Matthew, the Son of Man sits on his throne, and separates out the good sheep from the bad goats. But in this scene, first, none of the goats or sheep know which ones they are before they are judged. Which one am I? they all wonder. So people are not able to see very well who is what. And second, it is not clear how many folks end up in the goat pile. If any. Maybe none. Lutherans say that we are all saints and sinners. We are weeds and wheat. It is not even possible to be all wheat, all good. We are not qualified to judge one another.

In the parable, the servants ask it they might pluck out the weeds. But the landowner says “No.” Just “no.” You may not. We are commanded not to judge. It is not just that we are discouraged from making such judgments. We are prohibited from doing so.

[Regarding action]. What, then, are we to do? How shall we behave as human beings in the world. There is a call to action in this story. But not a call to arms. We are guided to be humble, patient, and vigilant. Humble, because we know we are not God’s proxy judges. Patient, because we are not so clever that we can know the future. And vigilant because we are mindful of the devil’s empty promises.

To worry about weeds is not only destructive, it is a waste of time and energy. And it limits our gratitude, joy, and freedom—which seem to me to be good gifts not to be squandered.

Following this guidance, we first of all give God a chance to get a word in edgewise and to do God’s work. And second, we open for ourselves—or maybe better to say we leave open for ourselves—a different way of being than usual, a chance to see things go in an unpredictable and surprising way, to have a larger future.

Like all parables, this one is about something. Many have interpreted this parable as being about the church. (Yet another allegory). But that is a narrow view of things. For this is about the realm of God. Jesus is telling us what the kingdom of heaven is like, he says. This parable is one of a series in Matthew, which all seem to say: there is more to the world right now than you might think, there is a different way to be, and better things are still to come.

Evil and good grow side by side, and it is often hard to tell the two apart. Yet people are called to act with restraint, being mindful of being at the same time saints and sinners, and in the end they trust in God to resolve and reconcile, and are gathered into God.