Podcast of "Them" (MP3)
Genesis 28:10-19a
Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen
John Calvin, the theologian whose ideas about God and the church form the root of Presbyterianism, was a lawyer in Geneva
The first part of the constitution is the Book of Confessions. The confessions are historic documents written to help the church understand the scripture, the church, and their place in the world at the time they were written. They were written to help the church interpret scripture. While they were written for a specific time and place we also understand they still contain truth that is worth learning and using today.
The Book of Confessions has nine confessions; the first two are from the ancient church. These are probably the most familiar to Christians. The Apostles’ Creed, the words we say when I ask us to state what we believe, is one of the two.[1] There are four confessions that make their way to us from the Reformation. These are still important because they were the church’s responses to the great split between the Roman and Protestant churches. The third group is made up of 20th Century confessions. These confessions tend to be more tightly focused toward specific events and challenges to the church. The last of these is called “A Brief Statement of Faith.” It was accepted by the church following the reunification of the two largest branches of the Presbyterian Church at the 1991 General Assembly.
I want to talk about one of the confessions of the Reformation for a moment, the Second Helvetic Confession. What makes this confession distinctive is not its use of what we believe, but of what we don’t believe and how we feel about people who believe differently. For example, only eight paragraphs into the confession (and considering this confession has 259 paragraphs “eight” is “only eight”) we have the declaration that “We detest all the heresies of Artemon, the Manichaeans, the Valentinians, of Cerdon, and the Marcionites,” who didn’t think about scripture the same way the author did in 1566 when this was written.[2]
Throughout the text we detest, condemn and just plain disagree with Monarchians, Novatians, Patripassians, Anthropomorphites, Manichaeans, Marcionites, Pelagians, Jovinians, Epicureans, and Stoics. Individually we detest, condemn and just plain disagree with Florinus, Blastus, Praxeas, Sabellius, Paul of Samosata, Aëtius, Macedonius, Arius, Michael Servetus and dozens of others most people never knew existed. This is before we detest, condemn, and just plain disagree with Jews, Muslims, Catholics and Anabaptists.[3]
So what’s this got to do with the wheat and the weeds?
One of the things that makes the parable of the wheat and the weeds interesting is the way it has been used and misused over the centuries. Its most common misuse is reading too much into it and drawing conclusions it was never meant to draw.
One of the misuses of this parable is to defeat evangelism. There is good seed and there is bad seed. From the good seed comes the sons of the kingdom and from the bad comes the sons of the evil one. This leads to something called double-predestination, the thought that some are destined for heaven, others for hell, and there’s nothing to be done about either. I can see how to jump to this conclusion, but it’s not the object of this parable.
Another is to look at the behaviors of the sons of the evil one and say that they can’t be changed. Some use this parable to say there is no sense trying to influence bad behavior because there is no changing fate. In the same vein, there is a certain conceit among the self-declared sons of the kingdom over the sons of the evil one. Conceit should never be part of the Church. These beliefs are two sides of the same coin and are not the object of this parable either.
Perhaps the worst use of this parable is when individuals and churches try to separate the wheat and the weeds on their own. On this subject Dan Krotz, a friend from the Ozarks who contributes to the local newspaper, a local free advertiser, and The Huffington Post, writes:
A local church is spending time and money bashing Catholics, to what end I can't say, but given everything that is going on in the world it's a bit startling to see. At its best, it reminds one of certain ego-centric tent revivals of the late nineteen fifties; at its worst it cultivates a sense of religious superiority that is done at the expense of both religion and humanity itself.[4]
The author is a light hearted man, a serious thinker, and a member of the First Christian Church of Berryville, Arkansas
He points out how Christians separate the wheat from the weeds every Sunday, but really shouldn't. “In my own view” he writes, “a true spiritual self only emerges after often long periods of succeeding at loving the self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut who sits in an adjacent pew every Sunday for the sole purpose of depressing you.”
He isn’t beyond noting the reason we shouldn't separate wheat and weed is that the shoe is often on the other foot writing, “Frequently, you are the self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut sitting in an adjacent pew, and that is really depressing.”
So, if this isn’t what this parable is about, then what is it?
We begin answering this question with the truth that this parable is about the end times. This parable is about the harvest at the end of the age. Jesus begins the parable with the characters and their props. There is a man who sowed good seed in his field. There is an enemy who came in the dark of night and sowed weeds among the wheat. Soon there is both wheat and weeds in the field. Finally there are servants who call their master a bad farmer. (This is my snarky interpretation of the servant’s question “Didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where did the weeds come from?”)
When the servants ask if the master wants them to take care of the weeding now, he says “no, wait until the harvest because to do anything now will do more harm than good to the crop.” But when it comes time for the harvest, collect the weeds first, burn them, and then collect the wheat into sheaves and bring them into my barn.
Again, like last week, we like to know who we are in the parable. Jesus says the farmer is the Son of Man, the field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The sower of the bad seed is the devil and the weeds are the sons of the evil one. The harvest is the end of the age and the harvesters are the angels.
By the way, our word “angel” comes from the Greek word for “messenger.” So the angels carry out God’s commands; they can only do as God instructs them. They base their decision on what to do with the wheat and the weed on the command of the great farmer.
Before going on, I want to share an old joke, when asked who’s who in a parable, the best answer to the question “Who is God?” is “God.” As much as folks want to cubby-hole God into definitions that come from our own biases and even snippets of scripture; in the end, God is God and God can only be God.
In the case of the parable, we are told the one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man, a phrase Matthew uses to indicate Jesus. It is right to describe Jesus as a sower of good seed in this parable, but for the grand scheme it’s too narrow. God is God and God can only be God. Further, only God can be God.
In the case of the parable, we are told the one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man, a phrase Matthew uses to indicate Jesus. It is right to describe Jesus as a sower of good seed in this parable, but for the grand scheme it’s too narrow. God is God and God can only be God. Further, only God can be God.
The good news is that since only God can be God, we don’t have to be God. What this means for us in this parable is that it’s not up to us to separate the wheat from the weeds in the field or at the harvest. We don’t have to make that judgment. In fact, we aren’t qualified to make that judgment. We just don’t have the information or authority to judge who is wheat and who is weed.
We can see when life is bearing good fruit and when it isn’t, and this is important for us; but even with that we still don’t know enough to judge who will be thrown into the fiery furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The Presbyterian Church has had a time recently reworking its Form of Government. It seems that people who believe one thing are constantly pitted against people who believe something else. Ever since I have been in the pew the big question has been about leadership and sexuality. Before that it was about leadership and gender; and before that it was about leadership and race; and that takes us back over 100 years.
Each time questions of this-or-that and leadership have come up over the last 100-plus years, there have been folks in the denomination on both sides of these arguments who have said that people who believe the other way are dead wrong and should be rooted up like the weeds and burned just like Matthew says.
This is the point Dan Krotz was making when he pointed out that not only do you sit next to a “self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut,” but “frequently, you are the self-righteous, immoral, hypocritical wing nut sitting in an adjacent pew.”
So since we don’t have to be God, we don’t have to judge the differences between the wheat and the weeds. None of us have the means or the authority to judge that anyone is among the weeds, so let’s not even try to make that judgment.
Judging behavior: yes. We do need to say “that’s good” or “that’s not good” for us. But as for judging eternal damnation: no. That’s up to God alone.
The church, from the days before the Second Helvetic Confession has been saying we are not “like them.” Well we need to be more than just “not them.” Being “not them” is a judgment of division. We need to be “us” and we need to be “us” with God. It is unity in Christ, not division, where strength lies.
On the subject of sexuality and leadership, my best friend from seminary and I disagree, and I don’t see anything in the near future that will make us agree. Instead of using this to divide us we have chosen to focus on what makes us “us.” We focus on what we share.
We believe that Christ is the head of the Church (this time with a capital “C”). We believe Almighty God has given the Christ all rule and authority. We believe Almighty God has given Him all power in and on earth in this age and in the age to come.[5]
We believe Christ gives the church life.[6] We believe Christ is the Church’s hope[7] and foundation.[8]
We believe in what the Scots Confession calls the Great Ends of the Church: the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.[9]
These are the kind of things that can unify all Presbyterians. These are the kind of things that can unify all Christians. These are the kind of things that can unify all people. These are the kind of things that can unify the wheat of the field.
There are many things that scripture tells us, but sometimes scripture gets taken to places it wasn’t intended to go. Sometimes scripture is used to separate us from the Novatians, the Sabellians, the Anthropomorphites, the Pelagians, the Stoics, the Jews, the Muslims, the Catholics, and the Anabaptists; and even when it’s right, that’s not what this parable is about. This parable isn’t about us judging the wheat and the weeds. It’s not about the wheat trying to change the weeds. It’s not even about stopping the bad seed from entering the field.
This parable is about the harvest at the end of the age. This parable is about the fact that there is wheat and there is weed in the world. This parable is about God being God and how when the time comes only God has the authority to separate the wheat from the weeds.
Focusing on what makes them “them?” Well, that’s not going to get any of us anywhere. In fact, it always causes problems when mere humans try to do the work that is God’s alone.
So let’s let God be God. Let’s let God send messengers at the end of the age to separate the wheat from the weeds. In the meantime, we are called to be who we are. We are a people who believe God is sovereign above all. We believe Christ gives the church life. We believe Christ is the Church’s hope, and foundation. We believe the Great Ends of the Church make life in Christ worth living. That’s what brings us together. That’s what makes us “us.”
[1] I preface the Apostles’ Creed by saying, “And now let us state what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed.”
[2] The Second Helvetic Confession, “The Book of Confessions, Study Edition.” Louisville , KY ” Geneva
[3] The original text says “Mohammedans” instead of “Muslims.”
[4] Krotz, Dan, “Catholic Bashing.” Carroll County News Blogs, http://www.carrollconews.com/blogs/1250/entry/42453, retrieved July 12, 2011
[5] PC(USA
[6] Ibid. F-1.0203
[7] Ibid. F-1.0204
[8] Ibid. F-1.0205
[9] Ibid. F-1.0304. For more information about the Great Ends of the Church see the Scots Confession, PCUSA Book of Confessions, Section 3.18.
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