Toward the end of his
career, my father began a sermon with this story about the church where his
ministry began:
“The
first church I served as pastor after seminary and ordination was in Quincy,
Massachusetts. Soon after I arrived there one of the old-timers told me of an
incident that occurred early in the history of the congregation when the local
bartender applied for membership and the pastor proposed to take him in. This
caused a furor among the ‘saints,’ and a heated debate ensued about the nature
of the church: Was it a pure fellowship, or was there room for persons who were
not altogether righteous? The pastor left no doubt about where he stood on the
matter, for one Sunday when the people arrived for worship they found a freshly
painted sign hanging over the front door that read in big bold letters: FOR
SINNERS ONLY.”
My dad believed that rooting
out supposed “rotten apples” to purify the church could compromise the very nature
of the Body of Christ. He said, “We do
not choose those with whom we are to fellowship in the church; they are given
to us. Left to our own devices we would choose to fellowship with people who
are pretty much like us, people with similar tastes, values, etc. But in the
true church it is not our similarities that bind us together; it is Christ that
binds us together. God populates the church with all sorts of diverse members
who might not ordinarily choose each other’s company, but they are thrown
together as a ‘holy experiment.’ The experiment is meant to prove that God’s
love in us enables us to reach across all barriers and embrace each other in
spite of our differences.
My father’s words bring
to mind for me an issue that was not the particular subject of his sermon –
namely, the ongoing debate over full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in
the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church. What is to be done about
the rift among Methodists on same sex marriage or the ordination of gay clergy?
One side accuses the other of ignoring scripture; the other side lobs
accusations of bigotry. Sometimes, it seems like the only thing both sides can
agree on is their inability to continue living in fellowship with each other. As
the controversy drags on, there are whispers of a coming church split. Could
this be the demise of the great denomination that I call my spiritual home?
In Matthew 13, Jesus
told a parable “about the wheat and the
weeds, or as we used to say, about the wheat and the tares, growing together in
the same field. … Tares were one of the curses against which the ancient
Mid-eastern farmer had to labor. The tares were a weed called darnel. In their
early stages the tares so closely resembled wheat that it was impossible to
distinguish one from the other. By the time both had developed their seed heads
they were distinguishable, but by that time the roots of the darnel and the
wheat were so intertwined that you couldn’t pull out the weeds without
uprooting your grain. Both had to be allowed to grow together until the
harvest, and then the darnel was separated out as part of the winnowing
process.
In
the parable, the servants ask the master the same question many of us ask today
as we look over the church at the trouble-makers, the dead wood, the
free-loaders, the undesirables: ‘Master, do you want us to get rid of the
weeds?’ And still the answer comes back: ‘No, let them grow together ‘til
harvest time; then I will separate them.’
The
parable teaches us not to be so quick with our judgments. The servants wanted to
weed out the darnel quickly. If they had, they would have destroyed the wheat
as well. Often the ‘cleansing’ itself causes more damage to the fabric of the
fellowship than the dirt you are trying to get out. Many churches have been
ruined by people who were ‘in the right’ rather than by those who were ‘wrong.’
The
parable also teaches us that the only person with the ultimate right to judge
is God himself. Now we all know that in order to live every day in this world,
we have to make judgments about other people, about certain practices, whether
they’re right or wrong. You can’t get away from making judgments. But what we
must beware of is thinking that our judgments are final, that our judgments are
ultimate, that our judgments are also God’s judgments. No! The Christian
realizes that any judgments he or she must make are tentative, partial. We
judge of necessity but always do so in fear and trembling knowing that a higher
Judge stands over us.
Only
God is qualified to make the final determination. How glad I am of that! What a
burden that lifts from my shoulders! What new freedom I have because I know
that God will judge and I don’t have to. ‘Man looks on the outward appearance,
but God looks on the heart.’ Only God can see into that part of my fellow
church members that one must be able to see before one can make a correct
judgment. I can’t see past the externals, and so all I can do is patiently love
and forgive and serve those who are given to me in the church, whatever their
type, until that day when God gathers his children to himself.”
Could it be that the
key to a truly United Methodist Church isn’t unanimity on issues of
human sexuality but humility in our judgment of each other? “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you
have love for one another.” –John 13:35 (NRSV)
From: "Wheat and Weeds Together"
Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Preached at Paoli United Methodist Church
