Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Proper 11 / Year A
An
aerospace engineer designed a revolutionary new aircraft which promised to be a
great critical and commercial success, save for one problem. Every time the plane got in the air the wings
broke off at the fuselage. Attempts to
correct the weakness failed time and again and the designer was baffled. Finally, when all seemed lost, a janitor
spoke up, “I know how to fix it. Drill a
line of small holes across the wings at the place where they snap off.” Since nothing else had worked the engineer
decided to give it a try. He drilled the
holes and the plane flew perfectly.
After the test flight the engineer asked the janitor how he knew this
would work. “If life teaches us one
thing it is this,” answered the janitor, “nothing ever tears along the dotted
line.”
In
a nutshell this is what the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is all
about. Why don’t things go the way they
are supposed to go? Why do bad things
happen in a field sown with good intentions?
Why does the paper never tear along the dotted line? Why are there weeds?
Jesus
makes one clear point in the parable: in this world there is resistance to good. Want proof?
Just ask Joshua Tanner, a freshman disc jockey at college radio
station. The school took exception to
the rap music he was playing sent him a letter.
It stated Tanner could no longer play his music because it was “too
spiritually explicit.” You heard me
right. It seems Tanner was censured for playing
Christian rap music. There is resistance
to good.
But
let’s be honest about one thing. Too
many people use this resistance in order to explain away problems of their own
making. A sign in a New York office
proclaims, “If you want to kick the behind of the person responsible for most
of your troubles you wouldn’t be able to sit down for weeks!” As we heard a few weeks ago, St. Paul wrote,
“The good I want to do, I don’t do. And
what I do not want to do, I do.” Jack
Paar used to say, “My life seems to be one long obstacle course with me as the
chief obstacle.” Several years ago I
transplanted what I thought were wildflowers into the beds around my
house. Turns out they are little more
than an invasive perennial that doesn’t play nice with other plants. The servant asks the master, “How did the
weeds get into the field?” Well,
sometimes we put them there ourselves.
Whether
it stems from resistance to good or simply is a byproduct of our own devices,
life presents us with many difficulties, but the only factor which will
determine if they will grind us down or polish us up is what we make of
them. The philosopher Jean Vieujean once
said, “There is much in us, but it often takes some obstacle, accident, or
hardship to reveal it.” Aldous Huxley observed,
“Experience is not what happens to a person; it is what a person does with what
happens to him.” St. Paul wrote, “The
sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that
will be revealed.”
There
are two options you can take when weeds sprout up in your garden. There are two paths to go down when you face
adversity. One is typified by the old
Jew who had seen everything from the inhumanity of the concentration camps to
present day anti-Semitism. “O Lord,” he
prayed in the synagogue, “isn’t it true we are your chosen people?” A voice boomed back from heaven, “Yes, the
Jews are my chosen people.” “Well then,”
moaned the old man, “isn’t it time you chose somebody else?” This is a path which finds no wheat among
weeds in life. The other path notes
before any bottle of medicine can be used for good, the instructions indicate
it first must be well-shaken. Immanuel
Kant said a dove might consider wind resistance to be a problem, but without it
flight would be impossible. From this
perspective we realize the only path to glory goes not around the weeds, but
through them.
The
path of adversity can be of great benefit and though life may buffet us with the
worst it can offer, we always have the power to choose how we will respond; be
it positively or negatively. A
psychologist did a study on two brothers who grew up in a home ruled by an
abusive and alcoholic father. As adults,
one of the brothers became just like his dad while the other turned out the
exact opposite. The psychologist
privately asked each one why he turned out as he did. Even though their lives had gone in
dramatically different directions, each had the same answer: “What else would
you expect with a father like mine?” It
is not what happens to you in life but how you react to it which makes all the
difference.
John
Claypool was a Baptist preacher before finding his way into the Episcopal
Church. He says of his life everything
came easy to him. He was successful in
his ministry. He had a beautiful wife
and great marriage. They had several
happy, well-adjusted children. Then,
without warning, his little girl was diagnosed with Leukemia, a horrible
disease which eventually took her life.
Claypool’s world took a cruel and devastating turn. This is what he said from the pulpit:
“We
do not get all the answers and then live life in light of our
understanding. We must rather plunge
into life – meeting what we have to meet and experiencing what we have to
experience – and in light of our living try to understand.”
These
are the words of a person who understands both the wheat and the weeds and why
Jesus says to let them grow up together.
When John Claypool wrote a book about his life he gave it the title Tracks of a Fellow Struggler.
I
submit it is only possible to live this way in the light of the Gospel. If Jesus had not claimed to be the Lord of
the wheat and the weeds, if our God was not sovereign over the fields of our
existence, if there was no point to which befalls us, then why go on? Thanks be to God all of life, when offered
humbly to God, is redeemable. Thanks be
to God the trials and tribulations of the world can never overcome us if we
allow the Lord of life to walk with us.
And thanks be to God someday the wheat I plant will be harvested and the
weeds – no matter what their origin – will be removed.
