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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.