SERMON PREACHED BY
THE REVEREND DR. HAROLD T. LEWIS, RECTOR
CALVARY EPISCOPAL CHURCH,
PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA
ON THE NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
17 JULY 2005

 
 
 
"An enemy hath done this." (Mt. 13:28)
 
 
Finally, let it be known that the Rector believes a new translation to be an improvement over the King James Version. I must admit that nobody knew what tares were, so now, thanks to modern scholarship, we know they are weeds! But not just any old weeds! This weed is the bearded darnel, and its chief characteristic is that it looks so much like wheat as to be virtually indistinguishable until fully grown. This is why it is not wise to try to pull up the weeds while the wheat is still growing --- you have about a 50-50 chance of throwing away perfectly good wheat, thereby preserving the weed. What is more, the weed wasn't merely non-wheat, it was toxic, and could cause drowsiness, convulsions, drunkenness, vomiting and even death. No wonder Virgil called it lolium infelix, a wretched weed. So the Palestinian farmer typically waited until harvest to separate the wheat and the tares. In the process of fanning and threshing, the weed seeds, being smaller, went through the sieve, but the larger seeds of wheat were saved.
 
Now the purpose of the sermon is to throw some light on the lesson, so there will be no sermon this morning, since Jesus very conveniently provided an explanation of the parable to his hearers. He explains everything, and wraps it up in a neat package: "He who sows the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age." What more can be said? "In the name of the Father, and of the Son." Well, perhaps I can add just a little to Jesus' explanation.
 
No matter how we interpret this passage, we must admit that it confronts us with a perennial truth. There is evil in the world. We may not know why, or whence it comes, but we know it's there. The master in the parable knows this when he says, on hearing of the weeds among his wheat, "An enemy hath done this." I'm sure these or similar words were on the lips of Londoners last week when the bombs went off. Our President would have us believe that we are at war to confront, track down and destroy the evil persons --- the enemy --- responsible for 9-11. One of the great myths that we cherish is that enemies are always alien/foreign/other. Fairy tales perpetuate this. It's always the wicked witch from somewhere else, the North or the East, the evil prince or the errant knight from some sinister castle. But our experience tells us otherwise. After the Oklahoma bombing, the police pursued an Arab-looking man all the way to London only to find out later that the perpetrator was a garden variety American type from Montana. As a devotee of "Law and Order," I know that the prime suspects in murder cases are always the spouse or the lover, not some total stranger. Indeed, the Bible tells us "our foes will be those of our own household," and says that enmity between brother and sister, mother and child, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law is to be expected (Mt 10:35-36).
 
How should we confront this evil in our midst? Our instinct is to pluck up the tares right away. That way, we believe, the wickedness is eradicated in one fell swoop. But if today's Gospel teaches us anything, it is that patience is a virtue. Since you really can't tell the difference between the wheat and the tares, it is better to err on the side of waiting (and perhaps to leave judgment in God's hands) than to pluck up instantly that which only appears to be evil.
 
I think this has a special message for the church. History will show that almost every time the church decides to purge itself of some evil, it has lived to regret it. Excommunication is seldom the answer. All it does is create disgruntled, embittered ex-church members and self-righteous hangers-on. In the Episcopal Church, there is a provision for the excommunication of "notorious and evil livers" who have been a "scandal" to their fellow members [Book of Common Prayer, p 409]. What this says, in effect, is that those whose sins are unknown and who have not caused a scandal are let off the hook, not because they are better, but just because their peccadilloes have not become a matter of public record!
 
Those whom the church condemned as heretics were often praised posthumously as prophetic voices. No one looks back with pride on the Crusades or the Inquisition, and yet history seems to repeat itself. I have just written an article for an upcoming issue of the Anglican Theological Review, which will contain essays on the Windsor Report and its ramifications. And I make the point that the Anglican Communion is moving from a default position of inclusiveness, toward a propensity to kick people out who don't walk in lockstep to a new "orthodoxy." Thus, the US and Canadian Churches are suspended from the Anglican Consultative Council, and this very parish lives under the bishop's threat of being cast into outer darkness. I daresay that in the highly unlikely event that such attempts prove ultimately successful, it will not result in a weedless church! Attempts at purity in society have always been abysmal failures --- Hitler's Aryanism, South Africa's apartheid, America's racism being a few examples, and the very church that claims not to conform to this world is sliding down the same slippery slope, as it tries to eliminate from its fellowship non-fundamentalists, non-straights, non-conservatives, to name a few.
 
The Bible would seem to suggest that we should be ruthless with the evil in ourselves, but cautious when it comes to others'. Remember Jesus' words about the mote in your neighbor's eye as opposed to the beam in our own? (Mt 7:3) Remember his words to the crowd about to stone the woman taken in adultery? (John 8:7) (I always wondered what happened to the adulterous man.) Remember his simple admonition, "Judge not and be ye not judged"? (Mt 7:1) Today's Gospel has an even more radical suggestion. Jesus says "Let both grow together until the harvest." I think what Jesus is suggesting is: Let saint and sinner, the righteous and the unrighteous (and even the self-righteous!) the Pharisee and the tax-collector, the Good Samaritan and the bad Samaritan, live cheek to jowl. Maybe in so doing, some goodness might rub off on the bad guys, and the good guys might find out they're not the cat's meow after all. Let them prove that there's a wideness in God's mercy, that our Father's house has many mansions. And if some, in the eyes of God, not us, just don't cut the mustard, they will get their reward. In the meantime, we are called, warts and all, to build up the Kingdom of God.
 
Let us pray:
Come, labor on. The enemy is watching night and day, to sow the tares, to snatch the seed away; while we in sleep our duty have forgot, he slumbered not. Come, labor on. Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear! No arm so weak but may do service here: by feeblest agents may our God fulfill his righteous will.
(The Hymnal 1982, 541)