Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Romans 8:12-25
Erich W. Lantz, CLM St. Paul’s
Around 1970 I lived near Elkton, VA in an area called Bryant Hollow. It was really close to the National Forest and the property where we lived was crisscrossed by little streams- unlike any other place I’ve ever lived- and the streams ran into a big creek called Boone’s Run- which itself ran to the South Fork of the Shenandoah River.
Well, that creek was like a playground to me. I’d always like to wade in it and look for wildlife- mainly the Common Water Snake and little crayfish. One day my dad came out to the creek with an old skillet and said he was going to show me how to pan for gold. That sounded fascinating to me, so I watched him immerse the skillet so the current would run over it for a while, and eventually he’d take it out of the water.
He swirled most of the creek water out of the pan, so all that was left was a bunch of silt and little rocks. “What’s that look like to you?” He asked. “Well- looks like dirt!” He stirred around in the silt and scum and then held the pan up toward the sun; little flecks of what appeared to be a shiny metal glinted in the sunlight.
“Well, there’s your gold!” He said. Now, I don’t know if there was actually gold in that creek- the little shiny particles may well have been iron pyrite- Fool’s Gold- but it sure impressed me at the time. Especially because what just looked like slimy creek scum had this stuff hidden in it that gleamed in the sun like it did.
And of course I was left wondering: how did my dad know that “gold” was in there among all that dirt? Had he tried this method before, or was it just a lucky guess to wow an impressionable little kid?
There is a plant called darnel ryegrass. It grows all over the world, and has gradually evolved- through human intervention- to look a lot like wheat. To complicate things, it generally grows in the same areas where wheat is cultivated.
And that’s exactly where the human intervention comes in: since this plant historically has been found around wheat- for all the thousands of years that wheat has been cultivated- people maintaining the wheat fields would naturally pull out the darnel. But… there were always some darnel seeds left behind, and that tricky plant would gradually change to look more and more like wheat, as to not get plucked out again.
So this weed would look more and more like wheat. Darnel- and wheat for that matter, could become infected with a fungus that would make the seeds extremely toxic if consumed. The only way to really distinguish the darnel from the wheat was that the darnel seed pods were black, while the wheat was- well, wheat-colored.
Jesus gives us another agricultural parable in the Gospel reading today, but it has a different twist than the one we heard about last week- the Parable of the Sower. In that story, a farmer scatters seed everywhere- broadcast seeding- and it falls on soil of different conditions, with differing results. Today’s parable is a little more disturbing because it involves both a good sower and a malicious one; the first sows the wheat seeds, but then a bad actor sneaks in and sows weed seeds in the wheat field- agricultural sabotage.
After the plants grow up and go to seed, the farmer’s employees see what’s happened and ask their boss “Do you want us to go root out the weeds?” “No,” says the farmer, “That would just pull up the wheat too; let them keep growing and I’ll tell the people doing the harvest to sort them out.”
It’s very likely that the weed that got planted in the wheat field by the saboteur was darnel. The problem of the similar appearance of the plants, as well as the intertwining roots- that’s the way the wheat-mimicing darnel grows. The crowds that made up Jesus’s audience for this parable would have been very familiar with this problem.
How can you tell the good stuff from the bad? It all looks the same. In the end, the bad stuff will get pulled up and burned, but it still sounds like a lot of work in sorting out those two plants.
The crowds go away, then Jesus’s disciples come to ask what he was trying to explain with this story. The disciples are supposed to have an enhanced level of understanding, so they’re privy to Jesus’s explanation while the crowds are left with the raw story churning in their heads.
Jesus explains that he, the Son of Man is sowing the good seed in the world- the seeds representing people in this case: the children of the kingdom. In contrast, the enemy- the devil- is responsible for sabotaging the world with evil. Jesus promises that the servants of God will purge the world of all manner of evil at the end of the age.
I said this is a disturbing story. Part of the reason for this is an age-old question: how can an all-loving God allow evil to exist in the first place? The parable makes it clear that our flawed world is a mixture of good and evil- often intertwined together and often impossible to distinguish from each other.
And that world consists of societies and individuals and institutions- one of which is even the church. Each one of these factions can and will have good and evil dimensions within it. How can we spot the good from the evil- the wheat from the weeds?
Jesus also explains that the job of sorting the bad from the good is not ours to implement; that is left to God alone. God is patient in allowing all these elements to coexist, and allows for the possibility that all is not as it appears to us; it’s a dynamic, not a static system.
But- justice is coming, at the end of the age. Again, this is a time that is known only to God. That will be a time when Heaven and Earth are reconciled, when all elements of evil are purged forever.
And it will be a time when Jesus’s final encouragement at the end of the parable’s explanation will come to pass: when the righteous- the children of the Son of Man, the good seed- will shine like the sun.
Like those golden flecks in my dad’s pan all those years ago: what seemed to me like creek scum had that beauty hidden in it all along. It’s only through patience and sifting that the beauty revealed itself- shining in the afternoon sun.
Paul wrote to the Roman believers that all who are led by the Holy Spirit are children of God. We are actually obligated- Paul says- to put all manner of sin to death so that we may live.
Paul looks forward to the end of the age when God reigning justice does set things right; as he puts it- creation will be liberated- set free- from its enslavement to evil and decay. That’s the hope that we maintain since we have been saved- adopted- into the kingdom by the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.
And so we evil-doers- simultaneously saints and sinners- wait for the time when all that shines will be gold, when the gracious and compassionate Sower has finished his work.
AMEN