Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Proper 11 (16) - Year A
Who among us has not offered what we considered to be a pure gift to the world only to have it ignored, discounted, thrown back in our face, or trampled underfoot.
There are enough weeds to do all of this and more to our unalloyed best offerings. Indeed, sometimes, in true Pogo fashion, when we meet the enemy we find it is us.
So what are we to do when we wake to find our originally sown goodness always in the presence of weeds from others and even our self?
The three general rules of the Wesleyan tradition come in handy here. Continue to "do no harm" - say no to evil (but remember vengeance is GOD's). Continue to "do good" - be active in growing the best you can in your particular weedy place. Continue "attending to the ordinances of GOD" - "do not grow weary when you pray" [Sirach 7:10].
In at least these three ways, continue in what you understand to be the enterprise of GOD. "Be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable - Don't ever quit, keep it simple - Do all with patience" [2 Timothy 4:2] for you can still bring forth 30 seeds without worrying about excusing yourself, "If only it hadn't been for those weeds, I could have brought forth 100 seeds."
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/july2002.html
The New Interpreter's Study Bible puts a significant issue succinctly: "Again the Gospel regrettably uses imperial goals (destroying all adversaries) and patriarchal images (13:43) to picture God's empire."
In some sense there is no option. If empire, even GOD's, is going to be portrayed it must be done in terms that identify who is with empire and who is against it. This sense of in and out takes precedence over the sense of bothness so wisely counseled for the growing time.
For a sense of the difficulty, note the elided passages about mustard seed and yeast. Here the smallest (the adversary, the least/lost/lone, etc) grows to be the largest (the last becomes first) and the yeast helps raise all the ingredients.
If you were building an empire of parables, which parables would make it in and which would be left out with the teeth gnashers? Would it be the parable about weeds, seeds, or yeast? Since you are not in this business, might we see one in light of the other and, if so, which will be the organizing parable?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
Enemies happen. We might also say entropy happens. As noted on the website http://www.secondlaw.com/ the Second Law of Thermodynamics is the source of Murphy's Law (of weeds in the seeds).
We tend to get very bent out of shape around things going awry from our intention and our first line of defense is blame. It has to be some enemy. When we mature a bit we can see the bigger both picture.
A Question and Answer from the above mentioned site goes as follows:
Q: You're whipsawing me. A while back you said the second law was the mother of all Murphy's Laws. Now you show me that the second law is a good buddy because we can use it for energy to do what we want. That's double-talk isn't it? What's the story?
A: Come off it. You're not naive. Life is full of stuff that can be either good or bad. But get ready for a shock now: [Remember what I said about the words "second law" -- that they are often code words for what the second law describes, i.e. that energy spreads out, if it can, from being localized or concentrated to becoming dispersed.]
The second law is the Greatest Good and the Biggest Bad to us.
The GOOD: Because of the second law about the direction of energy flow, life is possible.
—> We can take in concentrated energy in the form of oxygen plus food and use some of that energy unconsciously to synthesize "uphill" complex biochemicals and to run our bodies, consciously for mental and physical labor, excreting diffused energy as body heat and less concentrated energy substances.
—> We can use concentrated energy fuels (e.g., gasoline/coal, plus oxygen) to gather all kinds of materials from all parts of the world and, regardless of how much energy it takes, arrange them in ways that please us. Similarly, we can effect millions of non-spontaneous reactions -- getting pure metals from ores, synthesizing curative drugs from simple compounds, altering DNA.
—> We can make machines that make other machines, machines that mow lawns, move mountains, and go to the moon. We can make the most complex and intricate and beautiful objects imaginable to help or delight or entertain us.
The BAD: Because of the second law -- the direction of energy flow -- life is always threatened.
—> Every organic chemical of the 30,000 or more different kinds in our bodies that are synthesized by nonspontaneous reactions within us is metastable. All are only kept from instant oxidation in air by activation energies. (The loss or even the radical decrease of just a few essential chemicals could mean death for us.)
—> Living creatures are essentially energy processing systems that cannot function unless a multitude of "molecular machines", biochemical cycles, operate synchronically in using energy to oppose second law predictions. All of the thousands of biochemical systems that run our bodies are maintained and regulated by feedback subsystems, many composed of complex substances.
Most of the compounds in the feedback systems are also synthesized internally by thermodynamically nonspontaneous reactions, effected by utilizing energy ultimately transferred from the metabolism (slow oxidation) of food.
When these feedback subsystems fail -- due to inadequate energy inflow, malfunction from critical errors in synthesis, the presence of toxins or competing agents such as bacteria or viruses -- dysfunction, illness, or death results: energy can no longer be processed to carry out the many reactions we need for life that are contrary to the direction predicted by the second law.
How's that for starters? You can't get any better for good -- that living is possible due to the second law. And you can't get much worse for bad -- that death is always possible too, due to the second law.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
Yes, let the righteous shine -- but not at the expense of those not yet righteous or deemed never to be righteous.
We have a long-standing tendency to idealism. Somehow or other, we yearn for days to come where all choice is taken from us so we won't even consider an alternative because such might eventually, incrementally, lead us elsewhere, astray. Likewise, we dream of days of non-complicity wherein evil is externalized and we are implicitly innocent.
Truth be told, I hold invasive weed and intentional wheat in tension. Neither can be denied its present reality. So was a first garden and so a future garden already holding an unrepentant thief.
Beware enthusiastic righteousness (even G*D's) rooting out all but itself -- it is unbalanced with only one leg to stand on.
- - -
what's G*D doing
at the bottom of the ladder
while angels climb
up and down down and upangels are a diversion
while G*D sneaks up
as imagination soars
with the ladderangels bring not messages
from above
but store promises
with the raintogether they fertilize
our present
to bring forth much future
growing uppromises spoken
are carried on high
to baptize tomorrow
resurrect a day after
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
A long time ago, early in our faith growth, while yet babes in faith, we dared not pull weeds among the wheat. So it was -- we waited with evil in our midst, drawing nutrients from the soil that would have produced more and more fruit for the "kingdom".
Fortunately we have grown in the faith, always looking for ways to appropriate science to our own ends. Finally we have mastered the art of targeted herbicides. We can now get rid of those weeds when they poke their heads out of the ground. It won't be long before we will be able to treat the very soil itself to, again, finally rid our fine wheat of those nasty weeds. Yes, finally, a final solution.
Having accomplished this leap for "mankind" we will soon be able to apply it to other contexts. Immigrants will be banished and forbidden. Little pre-evident gay and lesbian children will also be done away with without the need for such public events as weed burning. We will quietly care for these and other matters. Finally, our ancient gift of knowing good from evil will be applicable. We will return to Eden to aid God in ridding this world of sin. With sin gone salvation will be present, with or with out a Jesus intermediary.
So goes a re-telling of this out-dated story. Aren't you glad to be alive in this time so our dominion might be complete? Dominionists arise! Get those weeds now!
Oh, fair warning, those who live by herbicide, die by herbicide. None are pure enough to escape an ever-stricter accounting of who is a weed this week. This is a lesson often too late for the learning.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
Again with the explanations! For the crowd that loves explanations - particularly explanations that can be used as a weapon against particular personal identities, who sowed Adam into an early garden? Somehow, while Adam was asleep, a weed grew - Eve. See how easy it becomes to blame women, the weeds of the world.
I’m intrigued with the image of an “enemy” that does the dastardly deed of sowing weeds among the wheat in the dark of night and slips silently away. Every identity issue comes with this same sort of “enemy” that can never quite be identified, but is always on the other side (for G*D is always on our side).
As you look back over a variety of identity politics such as class, race, gender, orientation, aliens, ... pay attention to the shifting excuses that are used to keep the weedy other in their place. More closely identifying this guerilla enemy would more easily help us see that we are talking about ourselves and not another.
The presence of G*D is clarified a bit when we intend to sow good seed and find there are unintended consequences that arise alongside. It is not a matter of some decision to allow the two to grow together, there is no option. This seems to be built into a universe, even one where we attempt to give G*D all the power and wisdom and goodness that is available. From James Weldon Johnson’s poem “Creation”, after G*D has created all the fiddley bits, we hear:
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.
Then God sat down —
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!
. . .
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image....
And still a self-image is as shadowy as an undefined enemy. And still G*D is on the side of our best intentions and some enemy must be involved with the blowback from our intended best (however it might be disguised from ourselves).
There seems to be no out here regarding explaining or not. Should we risk not going to an explanation, simply leaving it with a parabolic image, the dangers of being misunderstood or leaving folks confused, open to distilling an unhelpful response, will rise up and cannot be avoided by trying to come up with a univalent explanation. Should we risk giving the latest excuse in a long series for how we are going to cut this Gordian Knot, we will find, like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, that an impending flood has only been sped up.
Blessings on “Let It Be” and not being able to “Let It Be”. You’ve paid your entrance fee, might as well take your chance.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/matthew-1324-30-36-43.html
Because the presence of heaven come on earth is so elusive, there is parable after parable to try to clarify how much of it is present and how much yet to come. It is almost as if such a state were a constructed new element, present for a moment but O so evanescent. It is as elusive and temporary as John Wesley’s sense of “perfection”—here but for a moment before knowing that even a mature wholeness presages yet more to come.
So, once upon a time there was a sowing and in days yet to come there will be a harvest.
In the meantime we don’t go about purifying the field for to do so will leave it barren. Those who attempt the impossible task of stopping growth will ultimately be disappointed for the impetus of creation is always onward.
It is worth a moment of time to reflect on healthy and unhealthy seed—that which we differentiate by “seed” and “weed”, though both come from seed. In today’s church there is no more important overcoming of differentiation than that of that seed called “sex”. This gets us into an important category of “us”.
In every expression of sex there are healthy and unhealthy behaviors. It is a false split to name one expression healthy and another unhealthy. This is an attempt to turn relationship into technique and is bound to eventually be seen for the falsity it contains.
When we finally get around to the healthy/unhealthy distinction we will find our definition of who is in and out is broadened. It will have an effect on all the other discriminations of gender, race, culture, language, national origin, signage (cross, crescent, star, yin-yang, etc.), and the like. Regardless of who won the first World Cup or that latest, we can learn a larger “us” of soccer fan beyond support of any particular team.
High on the list of important scriptures hidden inside larger units is verse 30a: Let both of them grow together. This runs the short-run danger of weeds entirely choking out the non-weed seeds. It relies on a promise that health and wholeness will come through.
Without getting into the burning, which is not ours to do this early in the harvest game, let’s focus on being the best seeds we can be regardless of our degree of male, intersex, or female genitalia or affectional preference within any of those physical realities. How can we be the best seed available within whatever racial, cultural, national, language subset we happen to begin in. This is what we have to work with, not judging harvests.
Blessings on growing together—within yourself and between yourself and another and others.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/07/matthew-1324-30-36-43.html