Weeping and grinding teeth: July 19

Year A, Pentecost 8                                        Matthew 13:24-30,36-43                                         

There are some weeks when you can almost feel the biblical texts.  This week, trying to see through the smoke to the pinkish sun, I felt those words of Paul in his letter to the Romans.  I could feel creation groaning.  When I heard about a 2^nd person killed by Ice officers in one week, I felt my spirit groaning.  There are times when the words of the Bible just cry out to be felt with sighs too deep for words. 

I considered preaching on that text from Romans, but this parable from Matthew is one that is so often misunderstood and manipulated, I didn’t think I could NOT preach on it.  But I still want to name the groaning of our creation.  God hears our wordless groans.  God is begging us not to forget the need to care for the world that God created—once the smoke clears.  It will clear, but the devastation that is being wrecked on our world has not stopped.  We need to  make sure we don’t forget the smoke.

            So why…why is the parable we heard today important? Any time a reading ends with weeping and gnashing of teeth, I feel like it needs to be discussed. I don’t even like reading it out loud.  However, not only is it in our reading for this week, we hear it again next week. 

Our Gospel readings skip around a bit the next two weeks. If you look at the verses listed for our reading for today, you will see that 5 verses are skipped.  Those verses are another parable that will be read next week.   The second set of verses for today is the explanation of the parable.  There are about 40 parables in Matthew, Mark and Luke.  But only a few include explanations. A lot of Biblical scholars believe that Jesus didn’t provide the explanations. Instead, they were added by whoever wrote the Gospel…usually because they felt that was what the people needed to hear at that moment.   The Gospel of Matthew was written about 40-50 years after Jesus died, so the explanation was most likely for the people living in that time, when the church was just being formed. 

            Thus it’s helpful to look at the parable by itself.  Much like last week, we have a story that was meant for farmers, or people who knew enough about farming to make sense of it.  Apparently it was not unusual at this time for people to sabotage one another’s crops by planting bad seeds in the midst of the good seeds. There are a lot of theories about what these seeds were and how bad they really were, but I am not sure that really matters and it’s pretty hot in here. 

When the plants started to grow, those farming the land realized there were weeds in the midst of the good wheat.  Those workers (referred to as slaves in the text) offered to pull up the weeds. The master (the land owner) told them not to.  He told them to let them all grow together and when it’s time to reap the harvest, everything (the good and the bad) will be pulled up and then sorted.  The weeds will be burned. 

            There are two different ways to interpret this parable.  The traditional interpretation relies heavily on the explanation (that was mostly likely added later). That interpretation is that the wheat represents the good people and the weeds are the bad people. The bad people will be punished at the end of the world and the good people will shine like the sun.  That’s an oversimplification, but again, it’s very hot in here.  The other interpretation is that each one of us has good seeds and bad seeds within us.

That interpretation reminded me of an old Cherokee legend—where a man tells his grandson that we all have two wolves within us fighting an epic battle. One is evil – full of rage, jealousy, arrogance, greed...The other is good – filled with love, joy, peace, courage, humility, and faith.  The grandson asked, “Which wolf wins?” His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

We all have goodness and evil warring within us.  As Christians, we believe that the good will always win…but it does require some effort on our part.  We can’t let the rage, the jealousy, and the hate dominate our hearts and minds, because then we are just feeding that, allowing that seed to grow and choke out that which is good within us—that which is the good that God planted within us.

            I prefer the interpretation that we have both have these seeds within us and we need to tend our own garden by praying and serving God and God’s people. But even if you are going with the interpretation that it’s about good people and bad people, there is still a ray of hope for those of us who don’t like it when people threaten us with weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Those farming the land asked their master to let them pull the weeds out before everything had finished growing.  The landowner told them not to.  In essence he said, “you can leave the judgment to me.” 

I think this parable isn’t as much about God’s judgment as it is about Jesus not wanting humans to think that we should be the judges of who is evil and who is good.  The landowner in this story knew that it’s not always easy to tell the difference between the good crop and the bad weeds.  Maybe something that looks like a weed might not have grown to its full potential.  That is why the landowner wanted to give the plants time. Our God believes that we can be better.

            The other thing I like about the landowner in this parable is that he doesn’t seem worried that the bad weeds will choke the good crop.  The landowner has faith that the wheat will survive. God knows (as the source of all that is good) that goodness is greater than wickedness—that goodness will always prevail.  That doesn’t mean we can all just sit back and watch as the world appears to burn before us.  But it does mean that instead of pointing fingers and assigning blame to anyone who isn’t us, it means that we should seek out the good, in ourselves and others.  We can even foster the good in others. Sometimes that means holding others accountable.  Sometimes it just means naming the goodness you see in others.  Can you imagine how that could change our world if we started every interaction by naming the goodness of the other?

            We don’t know what is going to happen at the end of the world, and frankly, it’s never helped anyone who has spent too much time focusing on that.  Maybe there will be some weeping and gnashing of teeth.  You know what the Greek word that is translated to gnashing can also mean…grinding? Do you know how many people are already grinding their teeth?  And weeping, I think there has been a lot of that going on.  We are already suffering…so I am not going to worry about the weeping and grinding of teeth.  Because I’ve been there.  We have all been there.  Instead, I’m going to focus on all those good seeds.  As Paul says, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”   The glory that is already there—all around us. The smoke will clear and the glory of God will be revealed.