SIDE BY SIDE Psalm 139: 1-12, 23-24; Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43.

I could never claim to be a gardener. It just is not me. The very thought of spending an afternoon in a garden makes concrete an attractive thought to me. So you can imagine that I feel rather out of my comfort zone, wrestling with a parable that Jesus told concerning weeds among the wheat. Indeed, my ignorance made it necessary for me to get to some books in order to understand just what is going on here.

What is happening here is that among the wheat that has been sowed are weeds. The weeds referred to here were a real menace at the time of Jesus. They looked like the newly sprouted wheat to the point of being indistinguishable from it. To make things worse, these weeds would entwine themselves around the wheat so that to separate them would mean disaster for wheat as well as seed. And so we find a state of dissatisfaction at the existence of the weeds as well as an instinct on the part of some of the servants to pull up these weeds, only for the owner to insist on waiting until the time of harvest.

Now what is this about for us today? It would be rather neat to suggest that some people are as wheat whilst others are as weeds. The problem with this is that most people in my experience do not fit neatly into categories such as these. Certainly within the church, there is plenty of imperfection. I recall the story of a rather nomadic worshipper. He was constantly on the lookout for the perfect church, the church that would be spiritual enough for him to join. That was until leaving yet another inadequate church, he explained his search to the minister only for her to reply;

Well when you find this perfect church, don’t join it because your presence will take away its perfection.

I know that dear old John Wesley had a thing about Christian Perfection and that his terminology has in many ways been understood, but I for one am yet to encounter the perfect saint. Perhaps, we do well to listen to the guidance of Martin Luther who describes the Christian as being at the same time saint and sinner, or if he is not sufficiently modern, we can listen to that great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn who once commented wisely;

The line dividing good and evil cuts through every human being.

Indeed, the monk, Thomas Merton, has much to teach us when whilst emphasising the need to strive for perfection, he sees a true perfection in learning to accept ourselves with all our imperfections.

For, an adult understanding of this Parable has to be that which appreciates that we ourselves, our church and indeed our nation are at times expressed in a manner of the weed rather than the wheat. To put too high a view as to the actions of self, church or nation, is in short a form of idolatry in which we equate our perspective with God.

But just as we need to be aware of the weed with us and all we hold dear, we should also be alert as to the signs of wheat in unexpected places. Two year ago, I spent the best part of a month working with the chaplaincy team at a Category B prison. On my first day, I was apprehensive yet by the end it pained me to leave the guys who were doing time. Why? Because some had come to feel like friends and in some of those I knew, I sensed the presence of God. And it is this which puts a Christian perspective at odds with the High Priests of the tabloid media whose judgement freezes people in their very worst moments for all time. No possibility of transformation is taken seriously and it is the acceptance of this destructive outlook which is a sign of a nation that has moved from Christianity.

Returning to the story told by Jesus, we find the servants wanting to destroy the weeds. This, they think will purify the field. And here, we come to an important distinction. The Scriptures have plenty to say about confronting injustice which is an imperative. The Kingdom calls us to stands on behalf of the victims of injustice. However, that is different from the weeding which Jesus, here, rejects - namely the destructive weeding which calls damage. Living at a time when around him were strict Jewish groups whose rules were such as to keep most out, Jesus is here restraining an impulse that has resounded down through the centuries to decide who is in or out of favour and to act rigorously on the finding. I feel that in this story, Jesus is warning against a churchmanship that excludes so many. I feel that Jesus is here warning against a tendency to dehumanise those with whom we are uncomfortable. And oh, if only that warning had been heeded, we might have been spared the slaughter of 5 million people in Europe for alleged witchcraft, anti Semitism with its ultimate horror in the Holocaust and a range of conflicts in which people have seen others as less than fully human. Once more Our problem has been not that we take Scripture too seriously but we have not taken it seriously enough - and that of course is a problem that Islam is also facing at this time.

But whilst, all of this warns about us making the judgements that belong to God, there is also the message of God’s judgement. The language on this is rather vivid. Fiery furnaces and gnashing of teeth are the metaphors applied. Perhaps, we need to treat this language of metaphor with care and not to literalise it. I think what is being communicated by Jesus here is that our actions in this world carry spiritual consequences for ourselves as well as others. And perhaps the biggest spiritual test is whether we are able to find joy in the immensity of Jesus’ love being felt in the most unexpected of places. For if the nature of God is consistent and God is ( to borrow a phrase from a former Bishop of Durham, David Jenkins) as he is in Jesus, then God’s love will surprise us.

That love is strongly shown in our reading from the 139th Psalm. It is a love that just doesn’t let go, a love which pursues us however far from God we go.
A poem that expresses this well is Francis Thompson’s Hound of Heaven. Thompson was a man who seemed to fail in nearly everything he tried. He failed to make it to the priesthood. He failed in his aim to be a doctor. And his dissolute lifestyle led him to opium addiction. One of the weeds, I guess, and yet during the four years in which he was able to stay off the drugs before his depression problems led him to succumb once more, he wrote this poetic classic. Here are just a few lines which describe running from God;

I fled him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled him, down the arches of the years;
I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of mine own mind and in the midst of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

But of course there is no escape. Look on in the poem and the poet finds no escape from God and God ’s love;

Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save me, save only me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might seek it in my arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home;
Rise, clasp my hand, and come.

This morning we come to the Communion Table, we come with the prayer that we might be God’s wheat, that we should not exclude nor should we take on God’s judgement. But instead we come rejoicing in the pursuit of the God who as the Hound of Heaven pursues us when we are as weeds. And that is the God who now invites us to meet with him and receive his acceptance at his Table.

This sermon was preached at Bideford on July 17th at a Communion Service
AMEN