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I am a fan of Thai food.
One of my favorites is a chicken soup with cocoanut milk called Tom Kha Gai.
It’s rich and
filling…and mixed with a couple spoonfuls of Basmati rice…I’m quite happy.
A main
flavoring ingredient in Tom Kha Gai is lemongrass.
Now…I’m not
the best gardener in the world…but our friends and neighbors across the street
have often managed to grow some nice herbs that they’re willing to share.
One time…
Donna planted some lemongrass.
I was
excited.
Especially
because Donna… as a professor at Florida State… has a coping mechanism for that
end-of-semester grading slam.
She cooks. A
lot.
She invites
friends over to dinner.
Grading time
is good eating time in the neighborhood!
I started
dreaming of the phone call…inviting us to come across the street.
Donna was
going to get a hankering for Thai food.
She was going
to see the lemongrass and think,
“I’ll make a
pot of Tom Kha Gai soup!”
It would be
delicious.
We’d all ooh
and ahh…and express our gratitude for Donna…and the grading she was avoiding.
Well…one day…
a friend we had in common stopped by to see our neighbors.
She spotted
the lemongrass bending from the garden and into the walkway.
“That’s a
weed!” she declared.
And without
any hesitation or consultation… this woman ripped out the lemongrass and threw
it aside.
When I heard
this had happened, my heart sunk.
My visions of
Tom Kha Gai…had gone bye-bye.
I suppose one
could easily have mistaken the lovely lemongrass for a weed. It is long and
green…and non-descript really.
The same was
true of the weeds of ancient Palestine, which is probably why Jesus used the
image of weeds growing up with the wheat to tell this particular parable.
In the Near
East…there was a weed called “bearded darnel” which looked exactly like wheat.
The differences between the two plants didn’t become apparent until they had
reached maturity.
The wheat grain
would bend down; the darnel plant would stand straight up.
As one
commentator noted… this is the difference between the properly humble posture
before God versus’ the person so full of themselves that they don’t think they
need to bow before the presence of the Holy One.
Bearded
darnel…also called tares or “cheat wheat”… is a highly destructive weed.
Its roots
encircle those of the wheat… absorbing all the ground water and nutrients.
Its seeds
apparently can cause hallucinations and even death.
This is one
bad boy of a weed.
It makes
sense then that the slaves or field workers in this parable would go to the
landowning master and ask if they should get rid of this bearded darnel.
It also makes
sense that the master says, “Uh-uh; let it be. The time will come, and then the
tares will be bundled up and thrown into the fire.”
There was no
way to simply “get rid of” the bad seeds of the bearded darnel without damaging
the planted good seeds of the wheat.
This week in
the office, Kathy saw the Gospel lesson and exclaimed, “Seeds again?!”
Yeah…again…with
the seeds.
Only this
time…Jesus isn’t speaking so much about scattering seeds everywhere.
This time…
there is more intention… a good field ready for wonderful seeds…and then the
“evil one” comes in when no one is around and laces this good field with bad
seeds of bearded darnel.
Biblical
scholars note that since this is Matthew’s Gospel… and Matthew’s Gospel is
dated as sometime after the second destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem…the
community hearing this is a new fledgling beginning of a church in Antioch
founded by Jews living in the diaspora.
As a “new
thing” with a community that was bringing in Gentile followers in a large more
urban-like area…there were all kinds of tensions between old and new…Jew and
Gentile… as they grew the early church.
The thinking
is that this particular parable was directed at the early church.
In truth…it
could be directed at the church as it began…and as it has been growing… and all
the way to our time today.
In the Fourth
Century…St. Augustine…who… love him or hate him…greatly influenced the path of
the Christian Church… was constantly contending with various groups which had
other understandings of who should be in or out of the church.
One of those
was a group called the Donatists.
During the
very early days of the church… when Christians were getting thrown to the lions
in Roman coliseums for sport… there were Christian leaders who… fearing for
their lives… renounced their Christianity.
Once the
period of persecution ended… and it was no longer a danger to declare their
belief… some did a time of penitence and reaffirmed their faith.
But the
Donatists… named for Bishop Donatus of North Africa…being the ultra-purists
that they were… claimed that anyone who had renounced their faith was not a
“real” Christian.
Furthermore…
anyone who had been baptized by someone who had renounced the faith… was not
really baptized.
Thankfully…
it was St. Augustine who put an end to that heresy.
Augustine was
the one who successfully argued before a conference in Carthage…that baptism
belongs to God…and has nothing to do with the worthiness of a particular clergy
person.
This is still
the belief in the church today.
It doesn’t
matter if the priest… or even the hospital nurse… who baptizes a person in the
name of the Trinitarian God is a “perfect Christian.”
The waters of
baptism are made perfect in Christ and that’s what really matters… thanks be to
God!
Even before
Christianity… we can see in the story of Jacob from our first lesson that the
faith we have inherited from our Jewish ancestry is full of characters who are
less than ideal people.
Why is Jacob
sleeping with a rock under his head?
Because he’s
running away from his brother Esau who is not just a little bit angry at his
younger twin brother not only tricking him out of his birthright…but he also fools
his doddering blind father Isaac into giving him the blessing that was meant
for Esau!
And yet…this
ancestor of our faith has a vision of angels not only ascending…but descending
down a ladder… with God there at his side…making promises never to leave him as
he makes this land his home.
The up and
down… the good and the bad… are both part of the place of God… in the heart of
Jacob.
Which brings
us back to wheat and weeds… the church… and us.
What is the
church but the gathering of the people of God.
Who are the
people of God? Everyone.
A bunch of
everyone’s who have human hearts… hearts which are challenged every day to live
with the wheat and weeds in ourselves and those around us.
While our job
is to spread good seeds everywhere… no matter what ground those seeds land on…
our job in the church and in ourselves is to encourage and cultivate those
gifts of goodness and have patience with those parts that we don’t like about
ourselves or our fellow members.
That is some
of the toughest work we have as Christians…and as the Christian church.
We know that
as we see the various schisms that have grown up as we watch the in-fighting
that continues to plague us in our own denomination as well as others.
The call is
constantly to leave the ultimate judgment to God… and be careful with the seeds
sown in our own field.
In the name
of God…F/S/HS.
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