This Sunday
finds us moving from our Old Testament focus since Pentecost to a focus on the
Gospel readings set in the lectionary, under the loose theme of Journeying
with Jesus. The readings set for the next few weeks have Jesus talking
about the Kingdom of Heaven/God using the following words to introduce a number of parables…..
Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is
like…..
I would hope
that after 3 years of my preaching, you are aware of the fact that Jesus spoke
more about the Kingdom of God than he did about anything else. His very first
words in his public ministry were:
The kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news (gospel).
What is the
good news……. the good news is, plain and simply, that the kingdom of God is near!
This was
really good news to the Jewish
hearers of Jesus’ preaching,…. they had waited 1000 years for God's kingdom to
come…… and now a man stands in their midst and says: the kingdom of God is
near.
And so it is
that Trevor Hudson in a recent book (Discovering Our Spiritual Identity) says that
the Gospel, the good news, is nothing
other than the availability of the
kingdom of God.
The kingdom
of God is available to you and to me!
Friends, the
good news is not…. that you have been forgiven your sins and will go to heaven when you die. No….. the good news
is, the Gospel is….. the prophesied kingdom of God is available
to you and to me…..now!
So what is
this kingdom that is so near that with one step of faith you can enter into
it?.....Getting back to Trevor, he says: the
kingdom is where ever the loving will of the Father effectively reigns.
Another
writer on the subject of the kingdom of God, Scot McKnight, says this: “the kingdom of God is the society in which
the will of God is done.”
What this
all means is that………
when a
father welcomes back a prodigal son…… God's Kingdom comes and God's will is
done!.....
When you or
I go out and seek a lost sheep and bring him or her back into God's fold…..
God's Kingdom comes and God's will is done!.....
When you or
I stop to help someone beaten up and left for dead on the roadside…….. God's
Kingdom comes and God's will is done!.....
Jesus said
on one occasion, and these words became the job description of the early
Methodists, when you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give the thirsty
something to drink, visit the sick, visit prisoners, welcome strangers,….
whenever you do these things, God's Kingdom comes and God's will is done!
The Jewish
Christian, David Stern, in his Jewish NewTestament Commentary suggests that the kingdom of God is in fact the presence of the future, and I love
that definition and since I first heard it, it has become my favourite
definition of the kingdom of God.....
We know that
a time is coming when there will be no hunger, no thirst, no poverty, no
sickness, and so on and so on…….. so when we do something now to alleviate
these things, the future becomes the present. The promises of God become reality
for the recipients of God's grace in Christ. In Christ we can experience the
future…. now. The kingdom of God is the presence of the future.
Because the
kingdom of God is so important, Jesus told many parables about it, so that folk
could understand it, count the cost of entering into it and living the kingdom
way,…. it's a costly lifestyle Jesus warns,…. and then they can make a choice
and say: “I'm in. I am going to live the kingdom way.”
And when
they make that choice, they are required to repent, which means turnaround from
the world's way of living, and start living the kingdom way of living.
And so Jesus
would often say: the
kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, is like ......... and today
we have one such parable. The parable of the wheat and weeds is what it is
called in newer translations; in older translations it is called the parable of
the wheat and the tares, which is in fact a better translation. To understand
this parable better it is helpful to realise that the weeds that our translation refers to, refer to a poisonous ryegrass
which was common in Israel and which looks just like wheat right up until the
heads appear.
The word translated as weeds in our translation should better be
translated false rye or false wheat, which is what the tares of
the older translations actually means. False rye is only identified when true
rye forms its heads of wheat. It is only then that you realise you've got
“weeds” or false rye, and if you then start stomping through your field, you
cause a great deal of damage, trying to work out which is wheat and which is
weed, and even more damage if you try and pull up the false wheat.
When this
parable is read in the context of a gathering of the people of God like this,
Jesus is really telling us that in the church there will always be wheat and…….
weeds. And it will be very difficult, before the fruit appears, to tell the
difference.
It’s only at fruit bearing or obedience calling time that the fruit
of the Christian life manifests…or doesn’t.
It is only
when the fruit appears that the difference between wheat and weed is obvious.
So,….when
does fruit appear (or not) in us? There are several answers to this:
fruit/obedience appears (or not) in us when
you meet a beggar at an intersection
fruit/obedience appears in us when a
stranger asks you for help
fruit/obedience appears in us when disaster
strikes, or hardship, or suffering, or disease
fruit/obedience appears in us when we are
hit on one cheek
fruit/obedience appears in us when the offertory basket arrives
etc, etc, etc
In all of
the above and of course in many other examples, our response will either be a
Jesus/wheat/fruit of the Spirit response……. or it will be a weed response. It
is when fruit appears that you can tell the difference between wheat and false
wheat.
Jesus says
until the time of really bearing fruit, which leads to the harvest, you won't
always tell the difference between Christians and those who only claim to be
Christians….between the faithful and the not faithful. We cannot tell the
difference here this morning, can we?
Because
wheat and weeds grow together, Jesus is also really saying here that not
everything done in the name of Christianity is in fact a product of
Christianity. Wheat and weeds.
Not
everything done by ‘Christians’ is Christian. And we all know this don't we?
Wheat and weeds.
And we see
this all the time. It's just puzzling that we are so surprised when it happens!
Whenever you
hear someone begin to say: “you know, so-and-so calls himself a Christian,
but…….” you're about to hear of someone who claims to be wheat but acts like a
weed, or so they say.
Our subject
today is wheat and weeds…… which are you?
Let's not
bother with what the person next to us is, that is a fruitless exercise…..popular
amongst fruitless weeds.
Let us ask ourselves: What am
I…….. wheat….. or weed?
One of the
doctrines of Methodism is our doctrine of assurance, we can know before
judgement day, before the harvest, whether we are wheat or weeds. God does not
keep us in the dark about this.
If you are
wheat, praise God! Praise him for his grace and his strength and his redeeming
power, all of which are the only reason that you or I are wheat in the first
place.
If you are
weed……… there is good news for weeds in the Kingdom of God.
As you all
know, parables don't always tell the whole
story of the gospel….they are told to illustrate a particular point about the Kingdom, but
seldom the whole truth of the kingdom, hence there are so many parables. The
truth about weeds in the fields is plain and simply that a weed remains a weed
and can never become wheat.
However, in
the kingdom of God, all things are possible, and especially the conversion from
weed to wheat, from bad to good, from evil to redeemed, from condemned but
repentant prisoner on a cross next to Jesus to citizen of heaven in eternity,
from Saul to Paul and so on and so on. In the kingdom of God, weed can be
converted to wheat right up to the very end. So this parable, like all
parables, doesn't give us the whole the story of the gospel,…. but Jesus does,
and one of the reasons he wants the weeds left is because they might become
wheat. Each one of us is probably praying for a weed that we love to convert to
wheat….. carry on praying, because the Lord is in no hurry to rip up the weed,
and we shouldn't be either. Let the wheat and weed grow together, says Jesus.
So there is
good news for the weeds in our midst today.
There is
good news for those of us who are confused right now. We might be thinking:
I’m……… wheat….. but if I'm honest there is weed in me as well. And this is not
uncommon; many Bible greats show us how weed can be in the life of someone who
is great wheat. Think of King David and learn from King David (and Peter,
Judas, Paul, Barnabas, Mark etc). Confess, repent and let the God who has
redeemed you continue His perfecting work in you.
Finally I
think there is a challenge for all of us: how good are you at living with, worshiping amongst, the weeds that are always in our midst. Let both grow together says Jesus. And
so I think he is saying, let both worship together, let both do Bible study
together, let both serve in the church together, let both be involved in
mission together. How good are you at a living with weeds.
The wheat
might well want to pull itself up and move to the field next door, the one that
looks as if it is full of good soil, one that seems to have no weeds, which usually means that they are weeds that look just like us………..
but……. Jesus says here and on many other occasions: we don't have that choice
when we decide to live the kingdom way. Let's both grow together. We cannot
choose to remove ourselves from those in the kingdom who we find it difficult
to get along with….of course they might decide to remove us from their midst
before we want to be removed from their midst, but that is a weed action and
not a wheat action. Similarly, sometimes wheat has to in Jesus words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet, but not before saying “the kingdom of God
has come close to you.”….but that is not what Jesus is talking about in this
parable either.
This parable
demands that we reflect on whether we are like the people who just want to
remove the weeds, to move away from the weeds, people who want a weedless
environment, a weedless church and a weedless kingdom…………………………………..or are we
like Jesus, who chose to live among weeds and to love weeds, who sought to
welcome weeds like you and me, but who also never forced himself on weeds.....in his hometown he was questioned and doubted and asked to leave by the weeds, so He left. Are
we like the Jesus who actually went out of his way to find the weediest field
and weediest people he could, to visit them, to eat with them, to reach out to them
and to offer the kingdom of God to them? That is the way of the kingdom, that
is what the kingdom is like…………………. do you like this kingdom and its ways?
So, there is
good news (gospel) today:
There is
good news for wheat today: you will survive among the weeds, in fact part of the mystery of the Kingdom is that the weeds are actually good for us and we are good for them;
there is good news for weeds: God is in no hurry to remove you, but stop abusing His
grace…………... choose Him and His kingdom today....repent, and believe the good news;
and there is good news for the wheat that sometimes acts like weed: repent…. turn that part
of your life towards the kingdom.
Wheat and
Weeds………………………….in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
