Download the essential 100: the teachings of jesus

THE ESSENTIAL 100: THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS
Matthew 13:24-33
A sermon preached at First Presbyterian Church by Carter Lester on
January 20, 2013
Introduction: The prize-winning play, “Inherit the Wind,” tells the story of the historic
1925 trial of John Thomas Scopes, the Tennessee high school teacher who was
prosecuted under state law because he taught the biological theory of evolution to his
students. One of the prosecutors for the State was William Jennings Bryan, an Illinois
congressman and former Presidential candidate, and a lifelong battler against many of
the forces of modern industrial life. The defense attorney was equally famous: Clarence
Darrow. Bryan’s side won the trial and the teacher John Thomas Scopes was fined
$100. But in the eyes of much of the public, Bryan and religious fundamentalism lost.
In any case, Bryan was but a husk of what he had been earlier in his life and he died not
long after the trial. In the play, when Darrow learns of Bryan’s death, he says this of
Bryan: “A giant once lived in that body. But the man got lost – lost because he was
looking for God too high up and too far away.”
“Looking for God too high up and too far away” – what a sad statement to be said
about William Jennings Bryan – or any one of us. Not because looking for God is futile.
But because looking for God too high up and too far away is unnecessary. In Jesus
Christ we have a God who comes to dwell with us and be near. In Jesus Christ, the
Word became flesh, so that we might get a clearer picture and understanding of who
God is and what God is like – and so that we might get a clear picture and
understanding of whom we are meant to be – and be like.
In Jesus, we find ourselves looking at a God whom is neither too high up nor too
far away. And nowhere is that clearer than in his teaching. To see Jesus as a teacher
2
is to see a master teacher at work. He uses the stuff of everyday life – like wheat fields,
mustard seeds, and bread baking – to paint pictures and tell stories that the simplest of
minds can grasp even as the deepest of minds have something profound to wrestle
with. One of Jesus’ favorite teaching tools is the parable and with Jesus’ parables,
there is almost always a twist, a point of surprise, where Jesus takes a turn that no one
in his audience would have expected. Someone has said that with Jesus’ parables we
should particularly pay attention to the surprises.
Today, we are looking at three parables. What do we learn today from the twists
in the story, the points of surprise in Jesus’ telling?
First, don’t pull the weeds. Read Matthew 13: 24-30
“Do you want us to go and gather the weeds?” The question asked by the
servants is a natural one isn’t it? They wake up to see weeds among the wheat and the
next step is almost obvious isn’t it? In fact, you wonder why the servants even bothered
to ask the question.
But to the surprise of all – including Jesus’ audience, the householder says “No.”
“No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” Then the
householder explains: “let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest
time I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be
burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
“Don’t you want us to go and pull out the weeds?” Most gardeners I know think
that a garden full of weeds is the sign of a lazy gardener. Most lawn keepers I know at
the sign of weeds are itching to pull out their Round-up or Weed-Be-Gone and their
trowels and hoes and spray or tear out those weeds with a vengeance.
3
But not the householder in Jesus’ parable – and he is not lazy. Instead, he is
worried that his servants will pull out the wrong plants, mistakenly removing the wheat
as well as the weeds.
“Don’t you want us to go and pull out the weeds?” There are a lot of folks who
want the church to be theologically and morally pure – which is not a bad thing to want.
The problem is when they think that God has appointed them to pull out all of the weeds
so that the wheat will not be contaminated. And so they come up with theological and
moral litmus tests to see whether you are red or blue, wheat or weeds, and politely let
the weeds know that they are not welcome in the church because Jesus has standards
to be lived up to.
In a similar way, there are a lot of people who want to pull out the weeds in the
world. They are pretty sure who the good guys and bad guys are, and they too have
their political, national, and religious litmus tests. And if you are not on their side, you
are on the wrong side. The fields of the world would be a lot better, they think, if we
could just separate the wheat and the weeds and get rid of all of those exasperating
weeds.
But Jesus says, “Don’t pull out the weeds.” “Because as much as you think you
can, you can’t tell the weeds and wheat apart. Only I can.” “I will take care of the
judging and dividing…later.”
Jesus is not saying that whether we live as weeds or wheat doesn’t matter.
Jesus is not uttering a simple, “whatever,” that implies that whatever we say or do
doesn’t matter because it is all of the same in the end. No, as Jesus says elsewhere,
4
we are to be the salt of the earth and light of the world, that is to be useful, faithful, and
fruitful. To be weeds and not wheat.
But we are also not to judge others. Because you and I cannot tell the difference
between wheat and the weeds, between what is useful to God and what is not. We may
see a traitorous tax collector, but Jesus sees the disciple, Matthew. We may see a
heretical enemy, but Jesus sees a Good Samaritan. We may see an ungrateful son
who has thrown away everything he was given, but Jesus sees a prodigal son to
welcome home and throw a party for. We may think that the weeds will choke out the
wheat, but Jesus tells us that the harvest will still be good. Therefore, we are called to
be patient and place our confidence in Jesus the householder and not in our “Weed-BGone.”
The second surprise is that we may be small now but God is going to do
something great with us. God is going to turn us into a giant…shrub. Read 13:31-32
Starting small and ending up as something big. That is something we can all
identify with, both in terms of what we see all around us and what we hope for our lives
and the life of the church. A small acorn turns into a mighty oak. A small baby that you
can hold into two hands, complete with tiny eyelashes and fingernails, turns into the son
a foot taller than you. The church itself begins with Jesus preaching to a motley crew of
12 disciples in an obscure province at the outer edge of the Roman Empire. And then
spreads throughout the Roman Empire, and later, throughout the world now.
What Jesus is reminding the disciples then – and the church ever since then –
is that God’s actions in the world may be imperceptible and hidden, but they are real.
5
That which we see now may be weak and small, but in God’s hands, it will be
something far greater and stronger.
But a bush? Then and now, if you want a symbol for something great to emerge,
you would use a tree. Now we might use the mighty oak, or the stately sequoia, as a
symbol. Then, it was cedars of Lebanon that were used as symbols to talk about the
power and strength of a kingdom.
There are church consultants out there who say you need to apply business
principles to churches and the best way to measure a church is by looking at the “three
B’s:” bodies, buildings, and budgets. In other words, the way you measure a church is
by counting how many people are on the membership roles and attend worship, how
new and big the building footprint of the church is, and how big the budget is. They
think that churches should strive to be cedars of Lebanon, oaks, or sequoias.
But not Jesus. He uses a mustard bush. What he is showing and telling us here
is that greatness, as measured in the Kingdom of God, often does not come in the form
we expect. God can and will do something great, turning us from a small seed into
something much bigger. It is just that what God wants to do with us may be to turn us
into big bushes rather than stately trees. But mustard bushes are useful, Jesus reminds
us. Not only for their mustard, but also for the refuge they offer to birds, in other words,
to outsiders. And mustard bushes in Palestine, are much like mint plants in
Pennsylvania. Once you plant them, they are liable to take over and be hard to root out.
When it comes to the Kingdom of heaven, when it comes to the church, what Jesus has
in mind is a body that welcomes strangers and other outsiders and proves to be difficult
to keep from spreading.
6
Which brings us to the third surprise in these parables. Jesus is telling us that
the Kingdom of heaven and the church are like a rotten apple. Read 13:33
Again Jesus uses a familiar image for his listeners, and one that is fairly simple
and understandable to us living 2000 years later, even if the only bread we eat is that
which we can find on store shelves: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman
too and hid in three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Again we have an image of something little having a great impact: yeast which
enables powdered flower to turn into great loaves of bread. But there is more than one
surprise sprinkled in this short parable, told by Jesus.
First, the yeast is said to be “hid in” the flower, not simply put in there according
to a recipe. Second, yeast was often used in proverbs in the time of Jesus to describe
the negative influence something small could have on its surroundings. The equivalent
for yeast in modern proverbs is the idea that “one rotten apple can spoil the whole
barrel.” And third, the amount referred to here is huge: three measures of flour would
be over fifty pounds of flower and the bread would be enough to feed over 100 people!
What is Jesus saying? Perhaps this: that we in the church, though small, are
called to be “a hidden force, working silently to ‘corrupt’ the world – that is, to corrupt the
corruption or, as the whimsical lyrics of a country song once put it, ‘You’re gonna ruin
my bad reputation.’”1 We are called to corrupt and infect the world with kindness and
justice, love and mercy. We do not overcome evil with evil, but overcome evil with
good.
7
Wheat, weeds, mustard seeds, and yeast – all are growing things in the natural
world. And they all have this in common: they are not products of human abilities and
ingenuity. Instead, they are part of God’s creation.
So it is for the church and for us. Although we may think otherwise, the kingdom
of heaven is not something we build or extend; it is the handiwork of God, and it grows
and spreads by the grace and power of God. And the church is not a human-made or
human-built institution measured by the “three B’s.” It is something that God grows,
whose future is not in our hands but in God’s hands. We are not called to pull out
weeds; we are called, with God’s help, to go out and corrupt the world like hidden yeast.
Friends, we do not worship a God who is too far up and too far away – thank
God. We worship a God who came down to dwell among us and who even now wants
to transform “the bland flour of the world into the joyous bread of life!”2
Let the people say, Amen!
1
Thomas G. Long, Matthew Westminster Bible Companion Series (Louisville: Westminster John Knox
Press, 1997), 154.
2 Long, 154.