Monday, January 21, 2008
Psalm 113; Matthew 13:24-30"Let both grow together until the harvest..."
(Matthew 13:30)
Okay, I'm going to try not to use tomorrow's reading (explaining today's parable) to avoid struggling with the parable Jesus tells us today. But first let me share a little bit more about parables and their use.
We heard Jesus' explanation the other day about his use of parables with the crowds. For those who are not following him, who don't understand, they do not clarify, expand, or illustrate understanding but only keep them in the dark, on the outside, puzzled and struggling with what Jesus is saying. But for his followers, who do understand because they are receptive to him and his words, parables are secrets of the kingdom giving insight, deeper understanding and revelation. They also can cause a struggling in his disciples, not from the outside trying to get in, but like sprouts bursting out of seeds, up out of soil, or even having to grow alongside weeds that just won't go away.
The word parable means literally "to throw alongside"; the image a professor once gave us was of a hand grenade being tossed next to you (of course you don't realize it's a bomb) that goes off after the thrower walks away. Or a better image might be of some obscure object, like a ball, in a video game being dropped next to you by a character in the game that surprisingly explodes and destroys you or gives you so many points of energy or resistance to attack or ammunition... The idea is that they sound like an ordinary story but there's a "gotcha", a twist or a punch line that you walk thinking about and pondering. However, sometimes what is called a parable in the gospels is pretty much just a little illustrative story. Sometimes it is more "allegorical" - that is, it's a story where every component has a meaning. But the first thing to address is, what's the "gotcha?" What's the twist? What's the surprise that goes off in your head and heart as you walk away from hearing it?
So, what's the twist or the punch-line here? Just reading this parable of the kingdom, without tomorrow's explanation, leaves me with either the surprise of the servants that weeds appeared with the wheat, or the master's instruction not to go gather the weeds but to let them grow with the wheat until the harvest when the reapers will separate them. Or perhaps it's the second bolstered by the first.
What a bummer for the servants, if they took their job seriously at all, to do all the work of preparing the field for the seed, going to sleep confident that their hard work would be rewarded one day with the sight of "amber waves of grain," only to find lots of weeds. Having been confident that their master sowed good seed, now they doubted - "Master, didn't you sow good seed in your field?" "An enemy has done this," he answers, I think to their surprise (why would naively ask the master if his seed was good?) So the happy "little house on the prairie" scene is painfully interrupted with the reality that there's an enemy who intends harm, willful malice.
They'll just deal with it, heroically asking, "Then do you want us to go and gather them?" But the master says, "No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, 'Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
For today, without Jesus' explanation, I'll conclude with these thoughts and hope they'll stir around in our minds and break up and soften the soil of our hearts:
The context is the kingdom of heaven which may be compared to a man sowing good seed in his field and whose enemy sowed weeds in the field. This kingdom project has an enemy who is planting weeds in its midst. Jesus is proclaiming the word of the kingdom which has been likened to the seed of a sower (cf. v. 19). We are servants of the master. As much as we'd like an idyllic, fairy tale story (not just ending), this field we're in, or we're working, is going to have weeds in it. Our natural response is to get rid of them ASAP. Get rid of the pain NOW. It's clear and simple. Cleanse and restore purity. Destroy the "evildoers."
This may include using substances or other things to minimize the pain in our own hearts. Or it could include simplistic, naive answers to difficult, complex questions and struggles around us - being narrow-minded, judgmental, black and white, and frankly not honest with either the Bible or the reality of the world in which we live. And, of course, it can mean closing our heart and moving away from those, or driving those away, who are struggling with evil or whom we perceive to be sinning.
We have an enemy. Evil is real. It's all around us. The Master, who sows good seeds, has a plan. It doesn't include us rooting it all out now. But does include our being faithful to the Master, trusting him, receptive and obedient to his words.
Praise the LORD!
Praise, O servants of the LORD,
praise the name of the LORD! ...
Who is like the LORD our God,
who is seated on high,
who looks far down
on the heavens and the earth?
He raises the poor from the dust
and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes,
with the princes of his people.
He gives the barren woman a hoe,
making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the LORD!
(Psalm 113:1:5-9)
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