Wheat & Tares Together

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