Westwood Presbyterian Church

      Human beings struggle with the question - Why do people do evil things to one another? And then comes the next question: What should we do about the evil people in the world? Jesus in the parable of the weeds takes on exactly those questions - and so it is worth carefully reading this passage. Now a word of warning - Jesus' approach to this problem does not fit into the neat preconceived notions we have of the way the world should work. There may be some bumps along the road.

      Jesus told this parable about a landowner who planted his wheat field and then waited for it to grow and produce a crop like any good farmer does. One night, before the seeds had germinated - when everyone was asleep - an enemy of the landowner came and sowed weeds in the field and then went away.

      When the wheat started to come up - so did the weeds - but they looked very much alike and it was not until the wheat started to head that it was clear that the field had both wheat and weeds in it.

      The slaves of the landowner came and said - "You planted good seed in the field and look there is not only good plants but there also weeds."

      To which the landowner replied - "An enemy has done this." And then the landowner gave instructions about how to care for the field. And we will get to those instructions a little later - but there is stuff we need to see at this early point in the parable.

      Jesus in his explanation of the parable says that the field is the entire world - some people have argued that this parable is about the church - but Jesus says that the parable is about the entire world.

      Notice that the landowner who is God plants good seed - God is not responsible for the evil that happens in the world. Jesus is clear, God did not make evil. There is a struggle between God and the evil one - the devil. One planting good in the world, the other planting bad in the world.

      We in Western society have great difficulty with this. We have become so immune to seeing the struggle between good and evil - God and the devil - that we shy away from any clear statement that there is an evil one who is seeking to wreak havoc and destruction in the world. We have either turned the devil into a cartoon figure - with horns and a tail- or we have said the primitive people of the Bible times and tribal cultures today were and are unsophisticated - in our more enlightened times we know that there is no evil one. Jesus will not let us do either of those things. The evil one is real and is no cartoon.

      But there is something else Jesus will not let us do - dwell on the evil one. Notice how quickly the landowner/God deals with question of who did this - "An enemy did this" ­ Jesus in the explanation spends no time explaining where the devil came from, why the devil does these things, or any of that.

      This landowner is obviously not a Canadian. Because if were a Canadian, he would have set up a royal commission with a five year mandate to study the way in which the weeds were sown, and why it was that people were asleep, and how wheat could be made to grow so that the weeds would appear more quickly, and whether or not it was appropriate to talk about someone being an "enemy" and so on and so on. This landowner does not care about how this situation arose - he is interested in what to do about it.

      We can become so interested in how a situation arose that we never get to the business of doing something about it. We can spend so much time determining blame that we never respond to the challenges around us.

      The landowner/God knows an enemy did this - and that means we have to deal with a world that has wheat and weeds in it.

      I realize that we want to ask a bunch of questions - but Jesus invites us to put those questions on hold - because we have a more important task to be involved with. More important than getting answers to the questions we have about evil - is bearing fruit for the kingdom.

      So how are we to go about bearing fruit in a world where there wheat and weeds co­existing?

      The slaves of the landowner have a plan - weed the field - sure it is time consuming and very hard work - but they are slaves they have the time to do such things. They know that if the weeds get removed there will be a better chance for the wheat to produce a good and bountiful crop. Weeding is the answer.

      The landowner - remember this is the same crazy farmer we met last week - the landowner says, "No, let the wheat and the weeds grow together - because if you go through the field pulling up the weeds - you are doing to pull up some of the wheat as well. No, we are going to let everything grow together until the end - and then when the harvesters come they can cut the weeds first and burn them - and the wheat can then be gathered and brought into my barn."

      Remember when we read a parable we are looking for the surprise - the thing that is the twist in the story. This is the twist in the story - the thing that catches us off guard. The landowner is going to let his weedy wheat field grow without weeding it - without spraying round-up - without cultivating - he is just going to let it grow. I told you he was crazy.

      So what is the point -let's follow Jesus' explanation - the wheat are the children of the Kingdom and the weeds are the children of the evil one. If we start trying to eliminate evil people from the world - innocent people get hurt. Hear what I said - "If we" - we human beings - there is a judgment coming - weeds and wheat get separated - sheep and goats get evaluated - but that is not our job. That is God's.

      When human beings start eliminating evil from the world the innocent suffer. "Our mission is clear, we must rid the world of evi1." - in Iraq the consequences of that attitude has been tens of thousands of people including children dead. I am not saying that Saddam Hussein was good - but the attitude that says we, human beings, can remove evil from the world is the height of folly - and is extraordinarily arrogant.

      During the struggle against Apartheid - a terrible evil - churches gave money to the revolutionaries on the basis that the church had been called to eliminate evil from the world. Churches buying guns - the witness of the church to be different than the world collapses when we use the world's weapons.

      There is a powerful line in The Declaration of Faith Concerning Church and Nation which is a creed of The Presbyterian Church in Canada - "The Church must remember that the weapons of her warfare are finally out of this world."

      The Berlin Wall came down because of a prayer meeting. A group of lay leaders in a church on the East German side of the Berlin "Vall started praying for God's Kingdom to grow and for the freedom to live the Christian life. The prayer meeting grew and grew ­meeting every night. And without violence, without the loss of life, the Berlin Wall came down.

      When the church takes it into her own hands to eliminate evil from the world, there is a price to pay. The crusades of the Middle Ages were based on a belief that the church was called to remove the evil of the Muslims controlling Jerusalem - and to this day the Crusades are one of the things that Muslims throw in the face of Christians as a reason for not believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news.

      I can hear the objections - does that mean that the church should never support the use of deadly force to deal with evil in the world? Does that mean that Christians who fought against the Nazis in WW2 were wrong?

      I can't give a simple answer to those questions. Do I believe that the church must stand up for the truth and the rights of the oppressed? Yes, I do. But Jesus said, if someone slaps you on one cheek let them slap you on the other as well. The parable of the weeds forces us to think about the limits we should put on how we stand up for the truth, for the oppressed. And we need to be especially wary of any claim that such and such a program (may I call it a campaign - or even a crusade) will remove a given evil from the world.

      While those big questions are important - we must not miss the fact that this parable speaks to our personal realities as well. It is not our job to eliminate evil from our communities; it is our job to bear fruit in our communities. That may mean that we seek to right wrongs done - but we are not to go weeding. We need to take very seriously that saying we love the sinner and hate the sin - means we don't get to eliminate the weeds from the neighbourhood Of from our lives. We may be called to find ways to limit the impact of the weeds - but we don't get to remove them from the field.

      There is another angle on this parable we must not miss. The world is full of wheat and weeds growing together - good and evil together. Just as we are called to not go weeding the field - we are not called to separate the wheat from the weeds. We cannot start a transplant movement to create a corner of the field (the world) where there is only wheat - and so that we can turn our back on the rest of the field. This passage challenges any attempt to create a "holy huddle" - the world we are called to live in - the world in which we are called to be part of the Kingdom of God - is a world that has wheat and weeds. We cannot run away from that fact.

      Yes, we need to have the encouragement and support of other Christians - we need to have Christian friends - but if the only people we are friends with - the only people we have significant interactions with are Christians then we need to think seriously about having more interaction with the weeds.

      Chuck Congram, a now retired Presbyterian minister, says that every Christian need to have at least three non-Christian friends - as much to keep the Christians real and aware of the realities of the world - as to have an impact on the non-Christians. To be clear, Congram believes that people need to make a personal decision to follow Jesus - but his point is that we need non-Christian friends so that we don't forget that that is what we are supposed to be about as Christians.

      Now to land this - the parable ends with the harvest. There is justice coming - all the causes of sin and all who do evil will face judgment - that is a certainty. That is God's job at the end. It is not our job. In joyful anticipation we wait for the coming of the harvest. For we know that while at times - as the psalm said - we are going out weeping - we are living in the midst of this world weeping at the evil that we see - that all of that weeping will be but a distant memory when the harvest comes - when God comes and takes the wheat - into his barn.

      Justice is coming, God will keep his promise. The harvest day will arrive and with it joy and celebration. While we wait for that day - we do so living in a world where the wheat and the weeds grow together - where good and evil exist - we wait knowing that the Triune God will be victorious - and we look forward to being able to celebrate that day.