Parables of the Kingdom: Matthew 18:10-14

HOPE FOR THOSE WHO STRAY

 

In the day-to-day rituals of life, it is easy to take God’s presence for granted. The discipline of prayer and seeking God amid routines can become another task to do. And as we feel our relationship with Jesus fading, we find it all too easy to fall into bad habits, sin. Before you know it, you have strayed, wandered from the God who loves you. Do you feel this? 

            Do you think you are the only one who strays from God?  I feel like I am sometimes.

            I am drawn to the words of Robert Robinson in his hymn, “Come thou fount of every blessing.” He wrote, “Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above.” 

            Acknowledging that the human heart is fickle and easily distracted, Robinson asks the Lord to chain his heart to the goodness of God so that he doesn’t forget how much God loves him. Robinson would say we are like Doug in the movie “Up,” a dog who could talk, but was always distracted by squirrels. We too are distracted by the activities that demand our attention. We are like sheep going astray by following our noses to greener grass unaware of how far we wander. 

            How does God react when you stray? Do you wonder if he still loves you? Do you question if he wants you back? Does he abandon you as you have abandoned him?

            Jesus answers these questions in the telling of the parable of the shepherd who leaves the 99 to seek the lost sheep. We all have days where we stray from the shepherd, but there is hope for those who stray. 

 

Who are “these little ones”? (10)

 

Jesus begins our text saying, “See that you do not despise one of these little ones…” (10a). To despise someone is the opposite of welcome in the broad sense. But in a more common sense, to despise these “little ones” is to not take them seriously, to consider them not worth your time and effort. But who are these little ones?

            When we read Scripture and try to find its meaning, we must turn first to context. Context is king in interpretation. Jesus first refers to “little ones” at the beginning of this chapter where we find the disciples arguing over which one of them is the greatest disciple. They did this a lot. Jesus responds by calling a little child to himself and puts the child in the center of the discussion. Then he says, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven,” (18:3-4). 

            Jesus physically sets this child in their view in hopes that the disciples would understand that his “little ones” are like this child who came when Jesus called. But the child also represents the attitude of anyone who comes to him in humble faith, like a child, not boasting of his goodness, capabilities, or status, not insisting on rights and privileges. When the child was called, he came because Jesus invited him. 

            Who is great in the kingdom of heaven? Not the people who are obvious and grab our attention. No, the people who are quiet, unnoticed, but humbly attentive to God. Don’t ignore these “little ones,” Jesus says, and don’t lead them into sin (5-6). Look after them and nurture their spiritual walk. 
[10b speaks of guardian angels – brief explanation]

[What happened to verse 11? Attend my class in fall]

 

God’s care for the wanderer (12-13)

 

Jesus illustrates God’s care for these “little ones” with a story about a shepherd. He begins by asking, “What do you think?” This is an invitation to reflect on the story and ask, “Is this true?” And the answer is a resounding “yes.” “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?” (12). 

            We know what Jesus is driving at: the prophets used shepherd stories in the OT to illustrate God’s care for Israel, especially when they strayed. Jesus builds on that image applying it to his own disciples now. Because God loves us, he will risk everything to search us out and bring us back. 

            One question I have always pondered about the shepherd is this: Isn’t it irresponsible to leave 99 sheep unattended to go and find one lamb? 

            When the communists came to power in China in 1948, Dr. Andrew Roy was serving as a professor under the Presbyterian Church. Dr. Roy chose to stay in China, but he was soon placed under house arrest. He was interrogated for two years. His communist inquisitors kept trying to convince Dr. Roy that the teachings of Jesus were vastly inferior to those of Karl Marx and Mao Zedong. Jesus’ parable of the good shepherd was prominent in those interrogations. The communists insisted that to leave the ninety-nine in order to go after the one was irresponsible because the individual only had value as he or she contributed to the people. Jesus left the herd exposed to danger and failed in his primary task.

            Roy responded that by going after the one, Jesus gave the herd boundless security in that each of them knew “If I get lost, he will come after me.” A failure to go after the one would leave those same ninety-nine with the ultimate insecurity of realizing “If I get lost, he will leave me to die.” Risky? Yes! But the costly love given to the one assured the many. 

            Jesus goes looking for the one. In the Greek, the impression is that he goes on looking till he finds the sheep. It’s a picture that grabs you as to God’s love and compassion for you. The psalmist says, “God does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities,” (103:10). 

            Another question is: If the sheep is still wandering, does he or she really want to be found? I have often thought that it is a lamb that is tired from wandering, caught in a thicket, and fearful of the encroaching darkness of night, that finally cries out wanting to be found. Otherwise, the shepherd is looking for a moving target. Another psalmist wrote, “I have wandered away like a lost sheep; come and find me…” (119:176). 

            Andrew Bonar tells of how in the Highlands of Scotland, a sheep would often wander off into the rocks and get into places they can’t escape. A sheep may jump down to a ledge to get at some grass, but then find it cannot jump back up again. The shepherd hears them bleating but waits until they become faint and can’t stand. Why? Because if the sheep is spooked, they may jump off the ledge and be killed to get away from the rescue rope. 

            Like the sheep, we won’t go back to God until we have lost everything. If you are wandering, the shepherd will bring you back the moment you stop trying to save yourself and let him save you. And when you let him find you “he rejoices over” you exceedingly (13).

 

Sharing God’s concern for wanderers (14)

 

Jesus had one purpose in telling this parable. We can presume from it that God cares for the wanderer, the person who strays because of life’s struggles or the temptations of “greener grass.” God will bring them back if they wander and realize how lost they are. Jesus said, “It is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish,” (14). 

            But the real reason Jesus shares this story is to teach his disciples to join him in caring for the least of these, the “little ones” and pay attention to them. You and I are commissioned in this story to notice when the fellow sheep in our congregation goes missing.

            There are hurting people in our midst who quietly suffer with doubts of faith. We don’t know what their questions are or what they are hurting over. Maybe they don’t talk much or share their hearts, but we can be present with them and let them know they are not invisible. At the right time, we need to ask each other, “How are you and Jesus?” Make sure you have time for the answer.

 

God cares for the wanderer. He cares for you when you stray and will come and look for you. He’s looking for you now. 

            Have you heard the story of Shrek, the sheep that evaded capture and shearing for six years? Carol Palmer relates the story of how this sheep in New Zealand refused to go to the shearing shed and went off and found a cave to live in. Did anyone miss Shrek? He was part of a flock of 17, 000 sheep. So, no. After six years, the shepherd who found him didn’t recognize that Shrek was actually a sheep. His wool was so long it covered most of his face and legs. He could barely see to walk. 

            The shepherd took Shrek back to the shearing shed and gave him his first haircut in six years. What they cut off weighed 60 lbs, enough wool to make twenty men’s suits. 

            We are so much like Shrek’s story, for “we all like sheep have gone astray,” (Isaiah 53:6). You would think that the straying would stop after being rescued by the good shepherd. But we find ourselves straying from time to time. Don’t think that he won’t come looking again. He will. It is in the nature of our shepherd to keep coming after us when we get lost in our desires and distractions. He has made a way for us to come back again, to be forgiven again, “(Christ) himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls,” (1 Peter 2:24-25).

 

                                                            AMEN

            

Parables of the Kingdom: Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43

THERE’R WEEDS IN THE WHEAT!!!

 

When you have a field more riddled with weeds than with wheat, what do you do? Do you spray herbicide over the whole thing and reseed the field? 

            In 1942, Britain was being threatened by Nazi attacks and the threat of invasion. To strike back, the Brits came up with an idea for weaponizing anthrax and using it against German agriculture. The plan would have killed in such an indiscriminate manner that it would have lived up to its name: Operation Vegetarian. 

            Anthrax is an infectious disease that kills at a high rate. The British planned to drop anthrax-infested cattle cakes from bombers onto grazing cattle. The cows would eat the cakes and die while spreading the disease. This plan would wipe out the German food supply, kill many people, and starve the rest. Germans would be too scared to eat meat, thus the name “Operation Vegetarian.” How demoralizing! 

            The problem with this indiscriminate poisoning is that, yes it would kill Nazis, but it would also kill women, children, Christians, the elderly, and any number of non-Nazis. It was a desperate plan. It was a horrible plan. Even the island that the military tested this weapon on remained infected until 1990. Fortunately, Winston Churchill decided not to use the weapon.

            The question is: How do you respond to evil people?

            The Parable of the Weeds is a story Jesus told to illustrate how people who love God coexist with people who love the world. Many of us wonder how we are to respond to evil in our midst. We also want to know what God is doing about the wickedness of our generation. 

            Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God and announced that it had arrived in his very person. God’s kingdom has invaded this world and begun to move. But if the kingdom has already come, and Jesus is at the right hand of the Father reigning as king, why is there so much evil in the world? Why is evil allowed to exist? What is God’s plan for this world? That’s what the Parable of the Weeds seeks to answer.

 

What do we do with the weeds? (13:24-30)

 

Jesus tells a story about wheat and weeds. It’s very simple. A farmer goes out to sow seeds in his field and later that night his enemy sows weeds in the same field. Wheat and weeds grow up together. It takes a while to notice and when the servants do, it’s too late. If the servants pull the weeds, they will tear out the wheat as well. Leave them both, the farmer says.

            Notice how Jesus tells the story. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man…” Hold on! You have to be careful in reading parables. Is the kingdom of heaven like a man? No, we read on, “…a man who sowed good seed…”But don’t stop there! It’s not just a man sowing seed in his field; there’s an enemy who comes and sows weeds in the field. Then there are servants who discuss the problem with the farmer/owner of the field. So, when Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” he means: the whole story I’m about to tell you. You must hear and understand the whole story. What Jesus is saying is: the kingdom of heaven is like two sowers, one who sows good seed in his field, and an enemy who comes along and sows weeds in the field. 

            By the way, this is a rotten thing to do, isn’t it? Sowing weeds in your neighbor’s wheatfield? 

            In Palestine, it actually happened. If you made an enemy of someone, one way they could make your life miserable is to sow weeds in your field. Roman law criminalized this practice, it was so common. 

            Weeds are a pain. At least we can identify dandelions; some weeds are sneaky and don’t look like weeds. These weeds in the parable were likely bearded darnel (like foxtail) and looked like wheat in its early stages. It grows at the same speed. It reaches the same height. If harvested together, it spoils the crop, making the harvest inedible. Only when it matures can you tell the difference. But by that point the roots of the good plants and the weeds have become intertwined. To pull one out is to pull the other. 

            This is why Jesus’ farmer tells his servants, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn,’”(30). Jesus is not concerned with proper agricultural practices; he is making a point. Just so you know, his audience would have been shocked at his instruction to let wheat and weeds grow together. But now he’s got their attention.

            What do we do with the weeds? Let them grow! 

 

Why it’s too soon to use Roundup (36-39)

 

Have you ever told someone a joke that the other person didn’t get? I was visiting with a group of low-German speaking youth in Paraguay who were laughing hysterically. I could tell it had something to do with cheese. I didn’t care. But one my teammates decided to translate the conversation for me. There were twenty sets of eyes staring at me waiting for my reaction. I gave a half-hearted chuckle and tried to disappear. 

            Jesus didn’t explain his parable to the large crowd. Try reading it without the explanation. If you read the explanation, you may to be tempted to forget the main point and focus on how those weedy people are going to get theirs on the day of judgment. We wonder less about what it means to be wheat among the weeds and more about that day when the roll is called up yonder and the weeds are finally burned. 

            When they left the crowds behind, the disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable to them (13:36). “Tell us the punchline of the joke.” There are seven elements in the parable:

The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man (Jesus). In the parable of the four soils, the sower is not identified. But now we know that these parables are about people’s responses to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. 

The field is the world. Not the church. We can safely say that there are weeds in the church, but the seeds are sown throughout the world. Spoiler: the seed is the gospel, and the gospel is for everyone, not just the people who get it. 

The good seed represents the children of the kingdom (sons and daughters). In the Parable of the Sower the seed was the Word of God, and it is powerful enough to change the world. Yet it is also oddly vulnerable in that it can be snatched away by birds, burned by the sun, and choked by thorns. Still, the kingdom is the single most powerful and important reality in the world. It is not flashy or always obvious. Apparently, God would rather work behind the scenes. He changes hearts in a quiet, gracious way rather than forcefully. The growth of this kingdom will extend throughout the world, but it will not exist in a pure state. The weeds will always be there.

The weeds are children of the evil one. And the enemy is the devil, a spiteful being who tries to spoil the good work of the Master and ruin his harvest. He is a spoiler. He is never constructive, but always destructive in his activities.   

The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels who will do the work of sorting out the wheat and the weeds. 

            Now if you take these elements “as” is you may miss the essence of the parable: let the wheat and weeds grow together. It requires discernment in this present age to weed out evil and this is not what Jesus called us to do. That’s why it’s too soon to pull out the Roundup and spray some weeds.

 

Lessons about “Roundup” and the Kingdom (40-43)

 

You may have guessed by now that the theme of this parable is judgment. A day of the Lord is coming when the children of the devil (those who chose to live for themselves and not for God) will be judged. What Jesus is telling us is that the task of judging does not belong to us.

            We may assume that we are more than qualified to start sorting out the weeds from the wheat. We know a weed when we see one. When we are in the presence of certain people, we can tell the good ones from the bad ones. We can tell who’s trying and we can tell when some are in outright rebellion before God. We judge by our customs, by our tradition, by our interpretation of Scripture…But Jesus is pleading with us, “I am asking you not to do this. You will never get it right. Leave the harvest to God.” 

            Our first lesson then is that it is hard for you and me to distinguish between those who are in the kingdom and those who are not. Would you have discerned that the woman at the well, a woman with five ex-husbands and a live-in lover was a candidate for the kingdom? Would you have guessed that a religious zealot who relished killing Christians would end up being an apostle to the Gentiles? Would you have ever imagined that a KKK white-supremacist and murderer (Thomas Tarrants) would one day pastor a multiracial church in Washington DC? Can you tell me who’s in and who’s out?

            We are taught then not to be quick with judgments. If the servants had their way, they would have torn out the weeds and probably damaged the wheat as well. Judgment has to wait for the day of the harvest. A woman may make a terrible decision, and then redeem herself by the grace of God by making the rest of her life a lovely offering to God. A man may live a seemingly devout Christian life and then throw it all away in sin. Who can see the big picture of a life but God? 

            The lesson is incomplete, however, if we fail to recognize that a day of judgment is coming. “Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers,” (40-41). We asked, “Why doesn’t God do something about evil the world?” He will do something. But the Lord is patient, as Peter said, “not wishing that any should perish,” but repent and believe in Jesus (2 Peter 3:9). 

            Judgment will come. We read about judgment in part in the book of Revelation where John records that, “…the city has no need of the sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of the Lord gives it light, and it’s lamp is the Lamb…But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life,” (Rev. 21:23-27). The city is a metaphor for the community of followers of Jesus who will live forever in the presence of God. This is the wheat. But there are no weeds. Men and women who reject Jesus as King of their lives and instead live in the passions of their sins will not live. They are the weeds that are burned up. 

            No one really wants to talk about the judgment. The unchurched don’t want to hear about it. Believers are uncomfortable bringing it up. It’s not a pleasant topic. I, for one, do not want to use it “scare the hell out of people” and into the kingdom, as was the practice of 20^th century crusades. We must focus on the love of God in Christ for men and women. But the truth is, people need to know there is judgment coming for living a life of hell. How we tell them is critical. Is it with vengeance or with sadness? 

            We also want to share with them the hope that we have. I believe that Jesus, in verse 43, took his cue from the book of Daniel where a beautiful picture of resurrection is expressed. Daniel wrote, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever,” (12:2-3). 

 

As we read the Parable of the Weeds, we need to remember what Jesus intended for his audience. The parable is not about having all the wrongs that we have experienced paid for in swift justice. It’s not hoping for the Day of the Lord so that our enemies will get what’s coming to them. The parable is about “TODAY.” It’s about how we react and respond to the presence of weeds in our world. 

            If we consider the farmer in the parable, he seems to believe that the weeds won’t threaten the wheat as the two grow together. The real threat is how the wheat reacts to the weeds. The danger is not being in the presence of sin, but trying to root out all the sin we see. There are enough stories of churches excommunicating people to know that spiritual abuse comes easy to the so-called righteous. 

            The challenge of the parable of the weeds, the challenge to the church, is to resist reacting to sin in a manner that harms someone who is close to the kingdom. No, we do not turn a blind eye to sin. But neither should we respond with anger and rejection. 

            As Robert Farrar Capon points out, in verse 30 the master tells the servants just to “let things be” the Greek word used in this expression is the same word in the Lord’s Prayer for “forgiveness.” 

            Hmmm…forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us? That’s how we respond to weeds.

 

                                                AMEN