Sermon - Be humble and bold

Originally preached on July 20, 2008 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, UCC.

Genesis 28:10-19 Matthew 13:24-30

Dedicated to Gavin Scott Davis and Finley June Getch, on the day of their baptisms; and always to the glory of God.

When Betsy and I moved into a new home a few years ago, we knew that the previous owners had been great gardeners, and that there was in particular one large bed of perennial flowers in the back yard. But we moved into the house in February, so we weren’t sure just what to expect. In addition, I admit that I don’t know my way around the identification of plants, and there are a lot of different flowers in this large bed. Some bloom early, some bloom late, some bloom for a long time and others come in short-lived bursts.

Perhaps you see the problem. It happens every year. Plants start to grow in that bed, and I don’t know the difference between the ones that will bloom with beautiful flowers that I should allow to grow and the weeds that I should take out. So I let them all grow until I’m sure, and that can take awhile.

There’s another, related problem. Sometimes you are certain about which ones are the weeds and need to be taken out. You have no question. Years ago I heard a minister who was a grandfather talk about the weeds that were growing all along the back fence line of his yard. He’d been meaning to tear them all out, but you know how these things go; something always gets in the way. Finally he was ready to pull them all up one morning but a visit from his young granddaughter took precedence. They talked and played for a while, and then she went to play in the yard while he fixed some lunch. A few minutes later, she came inside, proudly bearing a bouquet of flowers as a gift to her grandpa for the lunch table. He found that she had picked every single one from weeds he had been planning to pull, and he was so glad he’d let them stand. So even when you think you know what needs to go, maybe you don’t.

Religion gets dangerous when we think we know enough to pass final judgment on others, because just like the weeds in my backyard, or the things that we might assume are weeds but to someone else might be valuable, God knows we don’t know enough about anyone else to pass a final judgment on them. God knows we don’t know enough to proclaim anyone beyond God’s love, beyond being good, beyond hope of redemption. Whenever we think we do, we don’t.

The parable Jesus told concerns a wheat field planted by the farmer, which is then also planted with weeds, sometimes translated as tares or most literally as darnel, which was actually a type of weed that looked very similar to wheat, and so was probably a common problem for farmers in Jesus’ time. The impulse, of course, is to go take it out, but Jesus has the farmer tell them no, because in doing so, they will also take out some wheat. When we assume a judgmental attitude toward people, we might be partly right, but we risk passing judgment on the good that is within them.

When Nelson Mandela was imprisoned under the apartheid regime of South Africa, he began to try negotiating with his oppressors. His colleagues in the movement criticized him, saying that negotiations with the enemy were out of the question, and that it was fundamentally wrong to offer any dialogue while being held in prison. Mandela disagreed. He clearly saw the evil of his oppressors, but he knew that in passing complete judgment on them, he would never be able to appeal to them good. He would be digging up the wheat along with the weeds. Mandela led a peaceful resolution to a brutal rule because he saw that good and evil lived side by side.

The genius of his parable is that Jesus recognizes that there is evil in the world. He doesn’t ask us to pull the wool over our eyes and just pretend that everything is happy. Allowing the weeds to grow does not mean pretending that everything is wheat, that everything in the world is just fine. Jesus recognizes evil in the world. At that time, his audience probably interpreted the weeds to be the oppression of the Roman Empire in the midst of the Hebrew people. Indeed, there were many zealots in Palestine (even some of the disciples) who wanted to go to war to throw the Romans out of their land. Talk about weeding your field. In generations since, we have found different ways of interpreting the weeds that grow among us. Jesus does not pretend that there isn’t evil interfering with good. But he cautions us to be humble in our judgment, and to leave final judgment to God. It is sadly too common for attempts to rid the world of evil to do great damage to life in the process.

This is why Jesus did not go along with plans to take up arms against the Roman Empire. When a Roman soldier forced you to carry a load one mile, Jesus said to carry it a second mile, just to show him that love was more powerful than oppression. When someone slapped you on the cheek, Jesus said to turn the other one as well, to show that love is stronger than fear. The importance of love for our enemies in the new testament is not just a naïve ideal, it is actually the only way to avoid the escalation of violence.

Jesus tells us to let the whole field grow, wheat and weeds. When it comes to judgment, be humble. You never know which Roman centurion will join your cause.

Jacob’s nighttime dream teaches the same lesson. On a journey far from home Jacob goes to sleep one night and receives a message from God, a promise, in fact, that was given to Abraham and to Isaac, and now to Jacob himself. When he awakes, he says “God was in this place and I did not know.” What a remarkable statement. God was at work in a place that I did not know. So before we become judgmental about a person, about a nation, or about another religion, let us wonder if we could be like Jacob, not realizing that God is at work in places we don’t know. Think of that in terms of the middle east, or in terms of the person at work or in your neighborhood who has been the thorn in your side.

The title of this sermon is “be humble and bold,” but so far I’ve only given reasons for our humility. If we are to be humble in our judgment people, then when are we to be bold?

I want to tell you a story about the boldness of the early church. This is recorded in the book of Acts, which tells of the early apostles and the issues that they wrestled with in the first generation after Christ. One of the big issues in Acts, which also shows up in some of Paul’s letters, is what to do about all of the non-Jews who are becoming Christians. The very first followers of Jesus were practicing Jews. They observed the Jewish rituals, they ate kosher, and they had faith in Jesus. That’s what the early church looked like at the very first. But then all these non-Jews, called Gentiles, started to become Christian, and they had to decide whether all Christians should start to observe all the Jewish practices. There was nothing in the scripture to prepare them for this. In fact, there was nothing in the scripture to prepare them for the idea of sharing a common faith with gentiles. Their scripture was actually fairly opposed to including gentiles. So what should they do?

In the fifteenth chapter of Acts, it says that all the apostles discussed this matter greatly and prayed about it, and finally decided that gentile converts did not need to follow all the Jewish observances, but simply needed to refrain from meals sacrificed to other gods. And here is the message they sent out. They said “it seemed good to the holy spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following” (Acts 15:28). Did you catch that? It seemed good. That’s how they put it. They had enough humility to know that they might not always make the right judgments, but they also knew they had to decide something, so they were bold in their welcome for gentile Christians.

They didn’t prove their claim by quoting scripture, or act as if they alone were the ultimate authority. But they did boldly say that the outsider gentile were welcome just as they were. They didn’t need to be just the same. The apostles trusted that God’s holy spirit helping them to see something good, and to boldly call it good based on their judgment.

When it comes to the weeds, be humble; don’t pass judgment, because you may do more harm than good. And you may be wrong. But when it comes to the wheat, be bold! Celebrate goodness wherever you find it, because all goodness and all truth comes from God. Be bold in proclaiming God’s love that extends farther than we ever realized. Then perhaps we will one day look back and say, along with Jacob, God was in this place, and I did not know. And we will give thanks.