Do-nothing Jesus (Proper 11A)

Do-Nothing Jesus

Proper 11 Year A

20 July 2014 8 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass

Parish Church of Trinity Ashland (Oregon)

Isaiah 44:6-8 Psalm 86:11-17 Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh.  Amen

My garden is a bit overgrown this year.  Last year it looked much better, when I weeded and deadheaded regularly.  But I have actually put more time into it this year.  The previous owners had put in a mixed planting scheme, with many beautiful perennial ornamentals mixed with annual vegetables.  I realized late last year that I had weeded out many of my prized plants early in the season because I did not recognize them in their young form.  So this year, I have intentionally let plants grow if I did not immediately recognize them as weeds.  This strategic inaction has been very helpful—I now know to recognize which plants to weed and to let grow next year.  And despite its not looking so great, this year’s  garden is actually much healthier than last year’s. 

To weed, you have to know what plant is good and what plant is bad.  It is a learned skill, as any of you who have tried to keep helpful toddlers from pulling up tomato seedlings have seen.   And sometimes a good plant elsewhere is considered a weed in another setting.  I love blackberries, but cannot have them crowding out everything else in my garden.   Good elsewhere, they’re a weed here.  To know to weed, you have to have a good sense of the overall plan for the garden, and accurate knowledge of the plants in all their stages of development.   

 

Today’s Gospel, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, tells us not to weed.   Jesus is arguing for strategic inaction, not laziness or laxness.  He chooses a particularly deadly weed, sown maliciously by a nasty business competitor, to make his point.  The Greek word for the weed is zizania, bearded darnel, almost indistinguishable from wheat plants.  It produces very little grain, usually infected with ergot fungus, the source of LSD-like hallucinations, convulsions, and death. 

And still Jesus says, “Don’t weed, it’ll ruin the good plants too. Let them grow together.”  The farmer says wait until harvest time, when the good and poisonous plants can be distinguished:  strategic inaction, intentionally doing nothing to accomplish something.    Taoism expresses the idea in the phrase, 無為而治 wu-wei er zhi  “By doing nothing, accomplish everything.” 

It’s always important to ask “what question is this scripture trying to answer?”  The Gospel of Matthew clearly is thinking about the church.  There have always been two conflicting views:  it is exclusive or inclusive?  Is it a gathering of righteous people, screening out bad influences so the righteous can become even better, or is it a kind of hospital ward where all and sundry—the wicked, the mean, the lustful, the morally weak, the heretical, the bizarre—come together to be healed?  If any of this parable goes back to the historical Jesus, it probably is about a larger question, one that theologian Walter Wink said was the biggest of all theological questions:  how do we react to evil?  

The tale ends with a promise that the weeds will be gathered together and burned.  This may lead us to think, “We may not be able to weed as we’d like now, but in the end GOD AND THE ANGELS WILL PULL THE WEEDS AND BURN THEM UP.”   This is about as small-minded as St. Paul saying that we should do kindness to our enemies because by so doing “we heap burning coals on their head” (Rom. 12:20). It misses the point of the story, which is the joy of the harvest after the strategic inaction.    
In this, as in so many other parables, Jesus is taking apart our preconceptions, reworking our definitions, deconstructing our world-view.   The weeds here are noxious, but indistinguishable from the good wheat. Our rules for identifying weeds and wheat may be flawed.  We run too much risk of confusing them. 

That is how it is, isn’t it?  We know who fits in and who doesn’t.  We set up boundaries for our little gardens.  We set up categories and demarcations that label some as unwelcomed weeds.   In our community, we are afraid of those we call “transients.” In our state, at one point we had a law against free people of color residing here.  In our nation, we have borders, and try, with varying degrees of success, to keep outsiders out.  In church, we divide people into categories: saints or sinners, orthodox or heretics, conservatives or liberals. We Episcopalians have a besetting sin of snootiness, so while we may not talk about saints and sinners, we label those with good taste or bad, contributors or ‘the needy,’ those who value ‘traditional and beautiful worship’ or those who ‘prefer the latest fad.’

We are tribal creatures, always wanting labels and markers:  Outsiders or insiders.  Israeli or Palestinian.  Ukrainian or Russian.  Citizens or illegals.  Saints or sinners.  Wheat or Weeds. 

But Jesus says:  your definitions are flawed.  Your boundaries are wrong.  You don’t know the garden’s plan well enough, or the plants well enough.  Let it be.  Let them grow together.  Don’t try to sort this out, let God sort it out. 

So is Jesus a slacker?  A guy who won’t weed his garden or maybe doesn’t believe in weeds?  A “do-nothing” Jesus?  I don’t think so.  Strategic inaction is just that:  strategic. 

He calls us to live in peace, non-judgment, and mutual support.  That does not mean he calls us to not confront and work against evil.  No.  He wants us to fight evil with good, not with evil.  Meet hatred with love.  He sees tribal divisions, factions, dividing God’s creatures into “us and them,” and violence, as evil.   

Implied here is the idea that the division between good and evil is not between different groups of people:  it is not between economic classes, political parties, national armies, people of different nationality or citizenship, different religions.  The line between good and evil runs down the middle of each and every human heart.  Each of our hearts is a field planted with wheat and weeds both.  We do not know enough—either about each other or about God’s plans—to judge the case.  

Look at Jesus’ example.  He didn’t weed out Judas. He never rejected him, but loved him to the end.  He also refused to weed out Peter, as conflicted, impetuous, and changeable as he was.  He counseled against violent resistance of the Roman Imperium and its religious establishment toadies in Judea, yet remained so constantly engaged with it, good and evil alike, and was so effective challenging oppression and injustice that in the end the Roman authorities finally felt they had to kill him as a political rebel.     

When we see evil or malice in front of us, we go into fight or flight mode. But Jesus’ advice is peaceful engagement, strategic inaction.  Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you (Matt. 5:44). Let God decide.  Be a light, not a judge.

We tend to want to avoid the ultimate questions by looking at side issues. We don’t look at the weeds in our own hearts, but want to call other people weeds.  We prefer to be judges—partisans of tribalism, sectarianism, and faction--instead of recognizing in our own hearts and habits what keeps us from being lights.

God knows it is all too easy to point fingers at weeds out there needing to be plucked up and burnt rather than looking at our own heart.   It is hard not to want to fight fire with fire or pray that God fight fire with fire, or just totally give up on someone and withdraw when one of our buttons gets pushed. 

We all have our buttons that people can push that really set us off, that make us want to go running and demand that that weed be plucked and thrust into the fire.  But even the most sterling “righteous” anger in most of us is mixed with self-interest and fear. Think about it carefully. In this messed up world, why is it that only some things cause us to lose our serenity and calm?

A few years ago in Beijing, I became outraged when I saw an Embassy colleague behaving with abusive pettiness toward a subordinate.  I was angry, flummoxed and undone. I wanted bureaucratic vengeance, to beat the person into submission so he would learn to play well with others. I wanted to humiliate and make an example of him.  My reaction was way over the top: a warning signal that something deeper was at work.  My feelings did not tell me so much about the other guy, but about me. 

My spiritual directors have taught me over the years to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart. I had a long talk with a close friend. My friend confessed that where I had a “hurtful behavior” button, he had a “that’s not fair” button. Instead of asking what was wrong with the petty colleague, I asked what was it about me that I so totally lost my composure about this?   At root it was fear of losing my own high opinion of myself: I suspected that it was my own tardiness in some of the related work that had placed my subordinate at risk of attack from the badly behaving colleague. It was easier to rage at him than to admit my own guilt in the affair.

I invite us all this week to identify or review our “buttons,” what really makes us lose it, what really makes us blame and demonize others, and reflect on what it is about us not about them that causes this.  There is little we can do about weeding their hearts, but plenty we can do about ours. 

God loves us, each and every one.  So we must learn to love each other. Not pretend to love each other.  Not fight fire with fire, or practice passive aggression as we continue to despise and judge.  But love.  Despite faction, tribe, party, or sect, we must learn to focus on the weeds in our own heart, and not label others as weeds.   We must learn to love as God loves, which almost always means challenging the beloved and being patient, very patient. 

In the name of God, Amen.