Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth

September 30, 2001

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30

I have never been a farmer, and I’m not much of a gardener either, as my wife Barbara will attest. She has a "green thumb," I do not, and everywhere we have ever lived, Barbara has encouraged me to "go easy on the flowers, the hedges, the bushes and the lawn," lest I might somehow interrupt the growth of God’s creation.

However, one summer while we still lived in suburban Pittsburgh, I ignored my wife’s admonition. We had just returned from our vacation at Chautauqua Lake, and pulling into the driveway, I noticed that, during our time away, the front lawn had been invaded by and infested with crabgrass.

Quietly, secretly, and deliberately without a word to Barbara, I went into the garage, got a hoe, a pitchfork and some weed killer and went to work. While she unpacked upstairs, I attacked that crabgrass with a vengeance. About half an hour later, I heard from the second floor window what could best be described as a gasp when Barbara looked down at what I had done.

The front lawn was totally devoid of crabgrass, but in my compulsion to root out those tenacious weeds, I had left behind a landscape of at least 25 open dirt holes which looked like miniature moon craters.

A few minutes later, the church sextons named Pete Blair and Bill Randolph arrived to survey the situation, and shaking their heads, all they could say was "Oh No! Oh No!" It took six months to repair the damage I had done, and over the past 15 years, I have left the crabgrass alone.

I.

According to the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, when Jesus told His parable about the wheat and the weeds to the disciples and the crowd who had gathered around Him, the story was directed toward people like me – people who wanted to root out the weeds no matter how much collateral damage might be done.

In summary, Jesus said, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But during the night, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. When the plants came up and bore grain, the weeds appeared also. The servants of the householder said "Sir, do you want us to root the weeds out?" He said, "No, lest in taking out the weeds, you will destroy the wheat too. Therefore, let them both grow together, and at harvest time, I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them into bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into the barn.’" (Matthew 13:24-30)

Now although we do not live in an agrarian culture as those first century people did, we city dwellers here in Atlanta don’t need all that much ingenuity to figure out that Jesus was talking about the community of faith on earth and the kingdom of heaven. And I think, if we are willing to listen, that His parable of the wheat and the weeds is an analogy, which hits close to home for all of us who belong to the Christian Church today.

The mystery of this story, which echoes all the way back to the dawn of creation, is that God never promised us a rose garden. The book of Genesis reminds us that the original Garden of Eden was full of goodness and beauty, but it was not a perfect place, because evil existed there from the very beginning. Remember the serpent? We don’t know why that was so or where evil came from, and the Bible doesn’t try to explain it.

And therein lies the mystery – that God never promised us a rose garden of perfection. As His Son, Jesus came into this world, neither did He. In the story we have read from Matthew 13, our Lord did not ignore the dilemma. He acknowledged that an enemy had sown bad seed alongside the good, and when the crop came up, the whole field was full of both wheat and weeds.

But as the servants asked for permission to do some weed whacking, the householder said, in so many words, "Let it be." Why? Because in rooting out the weeds, they might also wipe out the wheat. And my guess is, as Jesus told the story, that many of those who heard it began to wonder which category they were in.

It seems to me that we in the church are still trying to figure that out today. Some of us use labels like "conservative" and "liberal" to describe people who have different opinions about the Bible and theology. It goes a step further when controversial issues arise, as we line up on opposite sides. Before too long, division sets in and folks begin to talk about who’s right and who’s wrong. The end result of this deadly game that congregations and denominations play, is that some of us will leave and others of us will stay.

But that is not the way God wants it to be, and Jesus Christ himself told us so. Judge not, lest you be judged, He said. Take the log out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of someone else’s eye, He said. And when it comes to separating the weeds from the wheat, Let all of that alone and leave it to God, He said. Because, ultimately, it is not up to us to decide who is in and who is out, or what is happening inside the soul of anyone else.

As Alexander Solzhenitsyn once said, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being" (From "The Gulag Archipelago"). Which means that we have both wheat and weeds growing inside ourselves.

Wasn’t that what the evangelist Edwin Markham was trying to tell us when he wrote:

"There is so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That it hardly behooves any of us,

To talk about the rest of us!"

Well then, maybe all of us need to look in the mirror, to focus on our own lives, seek forgiveness for our sin, to forget about the weeds of others, and leave it up to God to sort everything out in the end. That’s what Jesus told us, and I think it’s time we paid attention to what He said.

II.

Now there is another dimension to this story, and it takes us beyond the church out into the world. Jesus said that an enemy came at night, in the darkness, and sowed weeds among the wheat. The reality is, that enemy is still at work on this earth, and it seeks to destroy anything and everything that is good.

When our nation was attacked 19 days ago by terrorists, the darkness of evil exploded before our eyes. More than 5,000 Americans and citizens of other nations have died, and countless others are suffering in grief and in pain. It is impossible to calculate how much it will cost and how long it will take, for our country to rebuild and regain something of what has been lost.

President Bush and the leaders around him have fortified our defenses to protect us at home, formed an international coalition to root out terrorism abroad and they have promised to bring our enemies to justice, all of which is consistent with our Christian belief in a righteous God who continues to call for peace among the nations.

But let us be clear that the enemy which has sown the destructive weeds among the wheat in this world is not a religion called Islam. The vast majority of the one billion Muslims on this planet are people of peace, and together with Jews and Christians, they are the spiritual descendents of Abraham who believe in one God and hold much in common with us. Their faith does not condone violence and many of their leaders are speaking out now against the radical fundamentalists who have twisted their religion into hatred, vengeance and terrorism.

We Christians need to understand that, for it has also happened to us. David Koresh and his Branch Davidian cult group set Waco, Texas aflame "in the name of God" and the Rev. Jim Jones down on a Caribbean island poisoned hundreds of people with cyanide "for the cause of Christ." Those fanatics did not represent our Christian faith any more than the terrorists who flew those suicide planes represented the religion of Islam.

And it could be that the time has finally come for Christians, Jew and Muslims, who all believe in one God and are the descendents of the same father named Abraham, to discover more about each other and learn how to live together in peace.

Going all the way back to Eden, God never promised us a rose garden. Good and evil, darkness and light have co-existed since the dawn of creation. The wheat and the weeds have grown up together in the church, in the world and in every religion. Like it or not, that is our situation, and I think Anne Johnson Flint described it with these profound and penetrating words:

God hath not promised

Skies always blue,

Flower-strewn pathways

All our lives through.

God hath not promised

Sun without rain,

Joy without sorrow,

Peace without pain.

But God hath promised

Strength for the day

Rest for the labor

Light for the way

Grace for the trials

Help from above

Unfailing sympathy

Undying love.

• Anne Johnson Flint

As Christians, we believe that God’s Love has come to live among us, "full of grace and truth." His name is Jesus, and He is "the way, the truth and the life." His light still shines in the darkness and the darkness has not and will never put it out.

So let us proclaim the good news of His gospel, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that He is Lord and that He will lead us toward the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.