8th Sunday after Pentecost

Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The householder had sown good seed in his field. As the wheat grew, it became apparent that not just wheat was growing there, but also weeds, a lot of weeds.

The slaves are ready to jump into action. They know how to fix this problem: rip out the weeds. As one commentator called it: a weeding frenzy. They are jumping at the bit, and all they are waiting for is the nod of go-ahead from the landowner.

This parable about the weeds among the wheat comes after a chapter in Matthew’s gospel account that is loaded with conflict. The Pharisees criticize Jesus because his disciples had plucked grain on the sabbath. Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, and in response they conspire against him to destroy him. Jesus heals a demoniac and they accuse him of working by the power of Beelzebul, the devil.

Jesus in turn calls the Pharisees “offspring of vipers” and an “evil and adulterous generation”.

So yes, lots of conflict. One could expect Jesus to now gather his disciples and teach them what to do about all those enemies, how to fight against adversaries, how to pull the weeds and throw them into the fire. It seems like the disciples were expecting such a rallying cry to action, because Jesus addresses that expectation in today’s parable.

Why is it that people are so quick not just to judge others, but to expel those whom they have judged? Christians seem especially prone to this. Let me share a couple of examples with you of Christians judging one another.

When Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation with his new understanding of the gospel and of God’s grace, he inspired a number of other new interpretations. One came from a group called Anabaptists, literally re-baptizers, so named because they rejected infant baptism and had themselves re-baptized as adults. The Catholic Church called that a heresy and tried to weed them out. Thousands of Anabaptists were killed.

Some Anabaptists returned the favor when they overtook the City of Münster in Germany and proclaimed it to be the kingdom of God on earth. Everyone who was not on board with them and refused to be re-baptized was killed. After 18 months of being in charge, the former Bishop of the city came with his army (we all know bishops need standing armies) and recaptured the city. They stabbed the three leaders of the anabaptists to death, put their bodies in cages, and hung the cages from the church steeple in the center of town. They left the decaying bodies there for 50 years, as a warning. The cages, empty and refurbished a few times, are still hanging on that church spire.

Another example: My family lived for almost 10 years in a rural part of Pennsylvania where there is a strong Amish community. I learned a lot about them during that time. Among other traditions, I learned about shunning. If a person does not want to adhere to the strict rules of life cherished by the Amish, his or her family is supposed to shun them. That means the person is dead to them. They are not supposed to have any contact whatsoever.

And one more example: Jim Jones and David Koresh, leaders of congregations in the 70s and 90s respectively. They ended up leading their people into isolation, always warning them of the evil world all around them and the dangers lurking there. David Koresh walled his community into a compound in Waco, Texas, and Jim Jones brought his people into the jungle in Guyana, both heavily armed, both unwilling to let followers go, both ready for that final battle of good versus evil. In the end, Jim Jones and over 900 members of his church died after drinking poison; and David Koresh with 75 of his followers, including 25 children, died when his compound went up in flames.

These are just a few examples of people claiming to be disciples of Jesus Christ who are ready to jump into the field and yank out the weeds. They all thought they knew who is good and who is evil. And they all acted on their beliefs.

These actions seem to come in two overall patterns: The believers either withdraw from the world and isolate themselves in order to protect themselves from evil, like the Amish, Jim Jones, and David Koresh. Or they fight against evil in literal battle and try to rot it out, like the Anabaptists and Catholics.

Either way, the result of their approach is the same: pain, anguish, bloodshed, separation, death. People die literally. And people die emotionally. I talked to an Amish woman whose son had left the Amish church in order to marry a Mennonite woman. He became Mennonite. The Amish woman is not supposed to have any contact with him anymore.

This broke her heart. She couldn’t bear the pain. So she sees him secretly. These secret visits come at the price of fear of detection. If she is found out, she, too, would probably be shunned. More relationships would be severed. More people would be in pain.

You can go online and read stories by relatives of Jim Jones’ or David Koresh’s communities. The heartbreak is palpable. Many more people have been hurt than the almost 1,000 who died in the actual events.

This is why, when the servants want to jump in and rip out the weeds, the landowner says ‘no’. Stop it. Don’t rip out anything. Let them all grow.

As the landowner explains, by the time the weeds are recognized as such, the root systems of wheat and weed plants are so intertwined, you can’t rip out one without hurting the other. The damage you would do is much greater than the risk of letting both plants grow side by side.

No ripping out any weeds, Jesus says. No fighting evil with violence. No shunning people who don’t toe the line. No severing root systems that are intertwined and connect people to one another.

Instead, let them all grow. Accept the fact that in this world, even in the church, there will always be wheat and weeds. They will always grow side by side. There will always be evil, in the world and even in the church.

We cannot flee from it by escaping into special communities where the followers are hand-selected and everybody agrees on everything. These kinds of communities never last because sooner or later there will be some disagreement over some rule and the harmony will fall apart.

More importantly, such a withdrawn, isolated group of saints doesn’t do a thing to promote the spread of the gospel. The Amish don’t have any sense of evangelism; they never try to win converts or improve the world. They focus on their small faithful communities and uphold their rules and wait for Jesus Christ to return. What happens to anyone else is not their concern. To me, this does not sound like Jesus’ call to his followers at all.

We also cannot fight evil with violence. It is a good thing bishops don’t control armies anymore. Additionally, we should give up weapons of the word, such as calling followers of other denominations out as wrong or as an abomination to the Lord or as having one foot in hell already.

Fleeing or fighting evil: Either one of these two approaches severs the root systems of intertwined plants. Either one of these approaches severs relationships. And once relationships are severed, you have no way of reaching people and inviting people to change their minds. Once you have cut someone off, the conversation is over.

Martin Luther, watching the bloodshed against Anabaptists and other heretics, wrote this:

“Observe what raging and furious people we have been these many years, in that we desired to force others to believe; the Turks with the sword, heretics with fire, the Jews with death, and thus outroot the tares by our own power, as if we were the ones who could reign over hearts and spirits, and make them pious and right, which God’s Word alone must do. But by murder we separate the people from the Word, so that it cannot possibly work on them, and we bring thus, with one stroke, a double murder upon ourselves, [….] in that we murder the body for time and the soul for eternity, and afterwards say we did God a service by our actions.”

Luther calls out the servants in the parable who are ready to jump in and rip out weeds and say they are doing it for the master. All the examples of religious violence I mentioned today have been perpetrated by people claiming to be doing it for the master.

But Jesus says ‘no’. Jesus wants us to accept that in this world and in this church we will live among wheat and weeds. We are not to escape it nor fight it. We are, instead, to live among it and bear as much fruit as we can. We are to stay in relationship with people we consider weeds, in the hopes that through God’s word or through our witness or service, they might be moved to change their ways.

I am not saying that we should not enforce laws. Criminal behavior needs to be stopped. Yet we should not call criminals evil and sever all relationships, but, according to Jesus’ command, visit them in jail and reach out to them with the gospel. That’s why we have a Lutheran congregation in the Maryland State Prison System.

I told you earlier that Jesus was in a lot of conflict with the Pharisees in the chapter prior to today’s. Yet he did not sever contact with them. And what do you know: it was a Pharisee who spoke up in defense of Jesus when he stood trial before the religious authorities.

Stories abound about people whom the world would label “weeds” but who were reached out to by a caring person. A relationship was built and a mind was changed and the peace of God grew a little. I have heard stories about former gang members who gave up the street life, about former white supremacists who left the Aryan Nation, about troublesome students who were given another chance by a mentor and achieved scholastic success, about former drug addicts who received support to become sober, about people kicked out of a judgmental congregation who heard the message of grace in another church; about cult members who managed to leave because their families had maintained contact and invited them back.

I could also tell stories from my own life when I have behaved like a weed, say during my angry teenaged years. My parents never gave up on me, never severed the relationship with me, and helped me emerge as a decent human being.

As long as we keep the relationship open, change can happen; grace can happen; God can turn around lives. That is the hope of the landowner in the parable. Let that be our hope, as well. Amen.