“An Enemy Hath Done This”— Sermon by Dr. Jean Meade for Pentecost IX
July 21, 2002
Today we read another parable of Jesus, one that he interprets to his disciples as he did the parable of the sower. Continuing the theme of what it means to be a disciple, it also continues the image of a farmer sowing seed and waiting for the harvest.
This time it is the story of a wealthy landowner who has servants - not slaves, as the NRSV puts it. That’s why I read from the RSV today. It complicates everything to translate doulos as “slave,” for the first time in English in 400 years since we today abhor slavery. Roman landowners in Jesus’s time may have had slaves, but not Jewish ones.
They sow the seed in the field and yet tares, or weeds spring up.
An Enemy hath done this is the explanation.
Jesus assumes that there is an enemy in the world. There is evil and it is active. That is a far cry from our ordinary attitude today. We find the existence of evil as an argument against the existence of God. How many people said after Sept 11 that there could not be a God if something that horrible was allowed to happen? I know you heard things lie that – it was reportedly even preached from pulpits. One of the most famous examples of this attitude in literature is from Doestoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan Karamazov told his brother, the monk Alexis, that the suffering of even one innocent child was enough to make him decide to “return his ticket” to heaven – or to belief in God.
But in the terms of this parable, there is an enemy and he sows bad seed among the good in the carefully prepared field.
Then the weeds grow up and co-exist alongside the wheat.
Jesus explains that his followers are the wheat, and evildoers and those who refuse to believe are the weeds.
The landowner tells his servants not to try to uproot the weeds because they might uproot some of the good wheat in so doing. Instead they are to wait until harvest time.
Then it is time for the wheat to be cut down anyway. It bears fruit and is harvested – cut down. Something new will be made of it – grain to make bread. It is not supposed to stand in the field forever. There is another destiny for the fruit of its life.
And the weeds – they will be cut down and thrown into the fire. There is no fruit that they yield. They have no independent purpose to their lives, only clogging up and making things difficult for the wheat, which is what the enemy had in mind when he sowed those seeds.
1. There is evil in the world
2. It has no real purpose other than to destroy and disrupt.
3. We have to exist side by side with evil people.
4. God will, however, come in the end and separate the two.
5. We will die to what we are now in order to become what God has in store for us in his kingdom – that is gathering into his barn.
6. The evil will perish – not out of God’s vindictiveness but because they have born no fruit – they are useless in the age to come. No one puts dried up weeds in a barn.
Now Paul is talking about this idea of new life – labor pains – new birth. The whole creation is groaning in travail awaiting Christ’s coming. The creation is not now what is was meant to be – it has not yet achieved its telos – its purpose. Things here are not right all the time: they are painful and ugly as well as good and delightful. The wheat and the tares grow together. But Paul is saying that creation knows this and is groaning in anticipation of its fulfillment.
Just as a baby endures pain to come through the birth canal and be born, ( none of us remembers that but it is supposed to be just as tough for the baby as it is for the Mom – those of us who are mothers can imagine!) we must endure pain in order to become what God has intended us to be, both in this life and in the life to come. Surely each of us will die and be born to life eternal. But also each time we have a death experience in our lives – when someone we love dies, when we’re betrayed by a friend or spouse, lose our job or our reputation, fail in school, have to say goodbye and move away to a new place – God is promising us that there is new life awaiting us. It is not yet apparent what we will be, but Jesus’s promise to his disciples is that in the end, “We will shine like the sun!”
I have asked the choir to sing “On Eagle’s Wings” because of its refrain. Please join in singing it with them and believe it in your heart.
He will raise you up on eagle’s wings
bear you on the breath of dawn
make you to shine like the sun
and hold you in the palm of His hand.