In Nomine Iesu
St. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
July 20, 2008
Pentecost 10A-Proper 11
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~
How does your garden grow? I’m glad to report that my garden is doing quite w
ell. The green bean harvest has begun. And if present trends continue, we’ll be up to our elbows in zucchini by this time next week. This has been an exceptionally good year for my garden—plenty of moisture and plenty of sunshine. I’ve outfoxed the rabbits, and the bugs have bugged out.
St. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
July 20, 2008
Pentecost 10A-Proper 11
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus~
How does your garden grow? I’m glad to report that my garden is doing quite w
ell. The green bean harvest has begun. And if present trends continue, we’ll be up to our elbows in zucchini by this time next week. This has been an exceptionally good year for my garden—plenty of moisture and plenty of sunshine. I’ve outfoxed the rabbits, and the bugs have bugged out.But weeds—well, weeds are a perennial problem. The battle is ongoing. There are no vegetable gardens with only vegetables—no flower gardens with only flowers. No grain fields with only grain. The weeds are always there too. I still go after weeds the old fashioned way: I pull them and I whack them with my garden hoe. But if you were to inspect my garden closely, you’d find that the weeds are thriving right up next to the bean stalks—right beside the eggplants—just inside the tomato cages—there, in closest proximity to my productive plants are the weeds. You see, I can’t whack those weeds without also whacking the precious plants next to them. And so I have learned to live with those weeds, not wanting to damage the nearby vegetables.
Weeds have always been a problem; and in today’s Gospel reading Jesus spins out a parable based on the perennial problem of weeds. In this parable, “all the world is God’s own field.” And in this field the Son of Man goes about sowing His good seed. But this very same field—the very same furrows—are tainted, defiled, and contaminated by a weed-sowing enemy. This enemy is the devil, and he’s bold and brazen in his ability to produce weeds in God’s field.
This is the first point that Jesus makes in this parable: Wherever the good seed of God’s Word is preached and planted, right there the devil is lurking in the shadows, waiting to work over the very same soil with a noxious array of bad seed. Always, without fail, right alongside the Word of God something else—something undesirable—is also growing up. The seeds of sin and unbelief are being mixed and mingled and planted right alongside the good, faith-producing seed of God’s Word.
This means that even right here in this holy house, among those who offer here their worship and praise, right here and now the devil is also sowing his seeds of sin and unbelief. It’s not just in bars and brothels that the demonic enemies of God scatter their seeds. No, they would much rather sow the ground between pulpit and pew, in seminaries and synodical conventions. Whenever and wherever the good seed of God’s Word is being sown, there you can be sure that the devil is sowing his seed too.
Martin Luther saw this truth at work throughout the whole history of the church. Wherever the pure gospel was preached and sown, there the devil raised up wicked men to oppose it. Luther laid out the evidence of the devil’s weedy work in a sermon on this very text. He said: “Angels become devils. One of the apostles betrayed Christ. Christians become heretics. Out of the [OT] people of God came the wicked men who nailed Christ to the cross. So it happens still [today]” (Day by Day, p.83). What happens? Weeds happen! Wherever God’s garden grows, the devil is also cultivating a crop of corruption.
The surprise of this parable—the thing that gets the gardener in me—is that God tolerates the weeds! When the indignant servants in the parable ask permission to pull up the weeds, the Master says, “No. Because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.” The weeds in God’s garden will not be pulled. No herbicides will be applied. The weeds are tolerated for now. They are allowed to grow until the Day of Harvest. I ask you, what kind of a gardener—what kind of a farmer—could ever have such a high degree of weed tolerance? Or to put the horticultural in theological terms, why does God allow evil and sin and temptation to sprout up right alongside goodness and righteousness? Why does God permit the ungodly and the wicked to grow and thrive right next to the righteous? Why is the garden of our God not neatly manicured, but strewn with dandelions and thistles?
Beloved in the Lord, this is how God’s garden grows: It grows with the devil’s weeds and the Savior’s fruitful vines intermingled and tangled up. And sometimes, you can’t tell what’s what and who’s who. If nothing else, this shows our God’s incredible patience for sinners—that He wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Unlike some other religions of the world which have no toleration—which teach and preach hatred and death to the infidels—your God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish—but for all to come to repentance and faith. He says, “Let the weeds grow too.”
Jesus Christ is the reason for God’s weed-friendly ways. You see, in Jesus alone is the power to transform the worst of weeds into the most fruitful branches of the living vine. In Jesus, what is the vilest weed today could be the saintliest child of God tomorrow. Jesus has died for all. In Him God was reconciling the whole world of weeds to Himself, not counting our sins against us. Instead, the Savior bore those sins in His body on the cross. Jesus, the sinless Son of God, became like a giant weed Himself, carrying the noxious sins of the entire weed-infested world. And God the Father cut down that sin-bearing weed. He was put to death for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification. He was put to death and raised again so that sinners and unbelievers and the worst of all weeds might one day shine like the sun in the Father’s glorious kingdom.
This just leaves one question: What should we do with the weeds for now? What should we do about the people who by all appearances have separated themselves from Jesus and His church? What should we do with the weeds? It’s clear that God tolerates them. It’s clear that it’s not our job to consign some to hell and others to heaven. God and His angels will handle that at the end of the age. Nor is it right for us to condone their sin in any way. For now, God simply calls us to throw the doors of the church wide open, to give all men and women the chance to hear the Word of the Gospel and take it to heart. Because in hearing that Word is the power to transform the worst of weeds into living branches of the true vine, Jesus Christ.
Before you leave here today, I want you to think of the weeds in your life—the people you know who for all intents and purposes are not growing in the grace of Jesus Christ—people who manifest a spirit that is not the Holy Spirit. Maybe there are weeds among your co-workers, among your friends, among your family. The message of the Scriptures concerning these souls is not just a message of toleration, but of love. God calls us not just to live with the weeds—not only to tolerate them—but to love them. The great writer Dostoevski said that “to love a person means to see him as God intended him to be.” Don’t see the weeds for what they are today; see them as what God intends them to be—see them for what they can be in Christ. In the garden of our God, there is not one living soul for whom we cannot hope and pray. There is not one soul in whom the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot do miraculous, life-changing things. We ourselves can testify to that.
Today you and I—we’re growing in the garden of our gracious God. The seed of His Word has taken root in you. You’ve been watered in the gentle splash of Holy Baptism. There are weeds all around. But the day will come when there will be a separation—when those who reject God’s free grace in Jesus Christ will be cast into eternal fire, and when those covered in the righteousness of Christ will shine like the sun in the Father’s eternal kingdom. Regarding that final separation, the German theologian Helmut Thielicke wrote this: “The last judgment is full of surprises. The separation of the sheep and the goats, of wheat and weeds will be made in a way completely different from that which we permit ourselves to imagine. For God is more merciful than we are, [God is] more strict than we are, and [God is] more knowing than we are. And, in every case, God is greater than our hearts” (p.82).
He who has ears, let him hear. Amen.
Weeds have always been a problem; and in today’s Gospel reading Jesus spins out a parable based on the perennial problem of weeds. In this parable, “all the world is God’s own field.” And in this field the Son of Man goes about sowing His good seed. But this very same field—the very same furrows—are tainted, defiled, and contaminated by a weed-sowing enemy. This enemy is the devil, and he’s bold and brazen in his ability to produce weeds in God’s field.
This is the first point that Jesus makes in this parable: Wherever the good seed of God’s Word is preached and planted, right there the devil is lurking in the shadows, waiting to work over the very same soil with a noxious array of bad seed. Always, without fail, right alongside the Word of God something else—something undesirable—is also growing up. The seeds of sin and unbelief are being mixed and mingled and planted right alongside the good, faith-producing seed of God’s Word.
This means that even right here in this holy house, among those who offer here their worship and praise, right here and now the devil is also sowing his seeds of sin and unbelief. It’s not just in bars and brothels that the demonic enemies of God scatter their seeds. No, they would much rather sow the ground between pulpit and pew, in seminaries and synodical conventions. Whenever and wherever the good seed of God’s Word is being sown, there you can be sure that the devil is sowing his seed too.
Martin Luther saw this truth at work throughout the whole history of the church. Wherever the pure gospel was preached and sown, there the devil raised up wicked men to oppose it. Luther laid out the evidence of the devil’s weedy work in a sermon on this very text. He said: “Angels become devils. One of the apostles betrayed Christ. Christians become heretics. Out of the [OT] people of God came the wicked men who nailed Christ to the cross. So it happens still [today]” (Day by Day, p.83). What happens? Weeds happen! Wherever God’s garden grows, the devil is also cultivating a crop of corruption.
The surprise of this parable—the thing that gets the gardener in me—is that God tolerates the weeds! When the indignant servants in the parable ask permission to pull up the weeds, the Master says, “No. Because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.” The weeds in God’s garden will not be pulled. No herbicides will be applied. The weeds are tolerated for now. They are allowed to grow until the Day of Harvest. I ask you, what kind of a gardener—what kind of a farmer—could ever have such a high degree of weed tolerance? Or to put the horticultural in theological terms, why does God allow evil and sin and temptation to sprout up right alongside goodness and righteousness? Why does God permit the ungodly and the wicked to grow and thrive right next to the righteous? Why is the garden of our God not neatly manicured, but strewn with dandelions and thistles?
Beloved in the Lord, this is how God’s garden grows: It grows with the devil’s weeds and the Savior’s fruitful vines intermingled and tangled up. And sometimes, you can’t tell what’s what and who’s who. If nothing else, this shows our God’s incredible patience for sinners—that He wants all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Unlike some other religions of the world which have no toleration—which teach and preach hatred and death to the infidels—your God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish—but for all to come to repentance and faith. He says, “Let the weeds grow too.”
Jesus Christ is the reason for God’s weed-friendly ways. You see, in Jesus alone is the power to transform the worst of weeds into the most fruitful branches of the living vine. In Jesus, what is the vilest weed today could be the saintliest child of God tomorrow. Jesus has died for all. In Him God was reconciling the whole world of weeds to Himself, not counting our sins against us. Instead, the Savior bore those sins in His body on the cross. Jesus, the sinless Son of God, became like a giant weed Himself, carrying the noxious sins of the entire weed-infested world. And God the Father cut down that sin-bearing weed. He was put to death for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification. He was put to death and raised again so that sinners and unbelievers and the worst of all weeds might one day shine like the sun in the Father’s glorious kingdom.
This just leaves one question: What should we do with the weeds for now? What should we do about the people who by all appearances have separated themselves from Jesus and His church? What should we do with the weeds? It’s clear that God tolerates them. It’s clear that it’s not our job to consign some to hell and others to heaven. God and His angels will handle that at the end of the age. Nor is it right for us to condone their sin in any way. For now, God simply calls us to throw the doors of the church wide open, to give all men and women the chance to hear the Word of the Gospel and take it to heart. Because in hearing that Word is the power to transform the worst of weeds into living branches of the true vine, Jesus Christ.
Before you leave here today, I want you to think of the weeds in your life—the people you know who for all intents and purposes are not growing in the grace of Jesus Christ—people who manifest a spirit that is not the Holy Spirit. Maybe there are weeds among your co-workers, among your friends, among your family. The message of the Scriptures concerning these souls is not just a message of toleration, but of love. God calls us not just to live with the weeds—not only to tolerate them—but to love them. The great writer Dostoevski said that “to love a person means to see him as God intended him to be.” Don’t see the weeds for what they are today; see them as what God intends them to be—see them for what they can be in Christ. In the garden of our God, there is not one living soul for whom we cannot hope and pray. There is not one soul in whom the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot do miraculous, life-changing things. We ourselves can testify to that.
Today you and I—we’re growing in the garden of our gracious God. The seed of His Word has taken root in you. You’ve been watered in the gentle splash of Holy Baptism. There are weeds all around. But the day will come when there will be a separation—when those who reject God’s free grace in Jesus Christ will be cast into eternal fire, and when those covered in the righteousness of Christ will shine like the sun in the Father’s eternal kingdom. Regarding that final separation, the German theologian Helmut Thielicke wrote this: “The last judgment is full of surprises. The separation of the sheep and the goats, of wheat and weeds will be made in a way completely different from that which we permit ourselves to imagine. For God is more merciful than we are, [God is] more strict than we are, and [God is] more knowing than we are. And, in every case, God is greater than our hearts” (p.82).
He who has ears, let him hear. Amen.
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