Sunday, July 19, 2020 Sermon

July 19, 2020       Sermon                                Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43   Rev. Peter Hofstra

                Our parable today takes us back to the farm.  In it, the Son of Man sows the good seed, the wheat.  The evil one sows the evil seed, the weeds.  They grow up together.  Rather than risking the wheat to pull up the weeds, the two are harvested and then separated.    

                What does it mean?  It is the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one, mixed together.  It is the end times.  The angels will come to gather everyone so that judgment may be rendered.  At that moment, the weeds, “all causes of evil and evildoers”, will be sorted and tossed into the fiery furnace, a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.  What we commonly call ‘hell’.

                In the cultural narrative, how often is hell actually the fun place?  Jokes like, “Heaven doesn’t want me and hell is afraid I am going to take over”.  In a spin on the end times, tt is like all the fun is there and the children of the kingdom are just, well, boring.   

                Repeatedly in the cultural narrative, hell is fun and interesting and the place you want to be.  That is why one Lucifer gets his own television series and why another Lucifer is one of the most entertaining characters on the show “Supernatural”, and why “Michael”, with John Travolta in the archangel title role, comes to earth one last time to enjoy the sin and the fun.

                The interesting thing about these characters is that they are not strictly “evil” or “from hell”, but do good but without all the “rules”.  Some ‘hellish’ characters, like Ghost Rider or Spawn, if you are into comic books or comic book movies, again, evil in their basic incarnation but struggling for redemption by battling the ‘real’ evil-as bringers of justice.

                For the younger crowd, my favorite is Disney’s “Wreck It Ralph”.  There is a support group for the video game villains, including, not surprisingly, “Satan”.  But it is not pronounced “Satan”, it is pronounced “Saaa-tan”.  And the take away is that just because you are a “bad guy” doesn’t mean you are a “bad guy”. 

                This is not to say that all demonic characters are redeemable in some way.  Certainly not.  Some of the most creative make for the scariest horror movies.  And that is not the kind of thing to share in a family friendly worship service, except for one observation.  Their power is portrayed as on par, or even superior, to the powers of heaven.  Why share this at all?  Because these movies are so popular and I believe they filter, even skew, how we come to this incredibly important passage in the lives of Christians.    

                Because unlike last week’s parable, where seeds landed in different places, with different results, this one describes an intentional process of undermining the kingdom of God.  Jesus sows the word, the metaphor is as the wheat seed, into good soil.  Then the evil one comes and sows in weeds to intentionally choke out the wheat, to intentionally undermine the kingdom of God.  In the end, punishment falls upon the evil.

                And Hell here is not some kind of nightclub, catering to the excesses of a sinful world.  Nor is it a fiery breeding ground for the armies of the devil just waiting for the moment to take their shot at heaven.  It is the fiery furnace of punishment, of weeping and gnashing of teeth, a place one does not come back from, a place of eternal torment.

                But the MOST important thing to realize from this parable is the time scale.  The sowing of good and the sowing of evil, intermingled with each other, will NOT be sorted out until the day of judgment.  In that moment, Jesus takes charge and only then is everything neatly divided between good and evil.  

                This is so important because the sorting hat is NOT NOW.  In the cultural narrative, “Good vs. Evil” is like some kind of game.  But in this parable, up until the moment of the Final Judgment, the game is NOT dividing good from evil.  The game is “Redemption of the World” through the sacrifice of Jesus against the thwarting of the evil one.  It is “Love for All”, in God, versus “Love for Me”, in the Evil One.  And it was never a game.  God is in control.  It is a foregone conclusion.     

                Where we are now, there are two things that we ARE NOT told.  Who is the wheat and who are the weeds?  Who, at heart, is good and who is evil?  We can make some good guesses, sometimes.  But the second thing we are not told, whose lives are changed by the love and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ?  Jesus will separate the wheat and the weeds at the END.

                This is why Lucifer gets his own television series.  Because what is interesting is not evil unto itself.  Its redemption, the ‘antihero’ doing good things by bad means.  Maybe that is why the memorable heroes have some kind of flaw in their makeup, something to be redeemed.  There is growth in the character, there is the possibility of hope.  It is something we can connect to.

                Doesn’t that wrap up nicely?  Good and Evil, redemption and hope.  But the cultural narrative is not so neat and tidy.  The evil one is sowing weeds there.  If the idea that Love overcomes all cannot be undercut, how about attacking the one who is love?  What do I mean?  My favorite example is “Good Omens”, first a book then cable series.  It is about the End Times, but a final battle between heaven and hell, with humanity getting destroyed as a consequence, unless an angel and demon working together can work things out.

                So love and hope and redemption are present, but the idea of a game takes aim at the provider of our love and hope and redemption.  In this case, heaven and hell are some how on equal footing.  And the twist in “Good Omens” is that the Game of War is more important to heaven than humanity.  We are left with two reflections on our passage today, on the one hand, heaven could lose, and on the other, God never cared in the first place.

Those two critical diversions from God’s truth are corrected in our passage.  It is NEVER a possibility that the power of evil competes with the power of God’s love.  And the whole point of God’s plan in the world IS humanity, is restoring us as God’s children. 

                Our passage is very clear.  In the end, the children of the kingdom “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father” while “and…(angels)…will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

                The means of the cultural narrative, of the game of Good VS Evil, presumes violence.  But have you ever realized that there is no violence in the plan of God?  This is something I had to wrap my mind around this week.  So the preferred ‘means’ of the cultural narrative, the violent encounter, is not a part of the Christian way of doing things.  Another way of saying this is that when we imitate Jesus, violence is not a way of doing things. 

                But what about Jesus and the money changers?  It is the one gospel account that brings us into possible consideration of violence.  Jesus got mad, Jesus overturned tables, Jesus was certainly in active protest.  But did Jesus strike someone?  There is no hint of that in the gospel.  It demonstrates what Paul writes in Ephesians 4:26, be angry, but sin not. 

                How did Jesus react to his enemies?  Jesus played word games, Jesus defied, Jesus challenged, Jesus even walked through a crowd who were gearing up to throw him off a cliff.  But he never struck them down.  Violence came only from the other side, and only when he gave himself into their custody and allowed them to humiliate him, torture him, insult him, put him through a show trial, and finally kill him horribly.  But then he rose again, every ‘weapon’ of the evil one overcome by the power of God.

                In our passage today, we get a clear distinction between good and evil only on the Day of Judgment.  Up until that moment, figuring out what is good and what is evil is an impossible task.  But it one that is powerfully on our minds and in our hearts as human beings.  I think all the different ways that the cultural narrative, in the popular media, talks about angels and demons, heaven and hell, the end of time and humanity demonstrates that.  And these portrayals ring true too often because they draw on Christian themes of good and evil, Christian themes of the end of time.

                But until the Final Judgment comes to pass and the children of the kingdom and the children of the evil one are finally separated, the plan of God, not a ‘game’, is “the Redemption of the World”.  It is the process by which love, divine love, flowing from the children of the Kingdom, flowing from us, from the salvation we have received in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is taken into the world.

                Now there is something to connect to in the culture narrative, in the portrayals of antiheroes and ‘bad guys’ now working for good, for hope, for redemption, that we can use.  It is their drive, their purpose to bring about change.  Because that is Jesus’ plan, that is the reason for his death and resurrection, that is who we are as His children, witnesses to the power of love and hope and justice and forgiveness.

                Call it evangelism, call it being missional, call it demonstrating gratitude for that which we have received, we can call it whatever we need to.  It is the hope to which the world is called, it the witness that we are called to bring, it is the non-violent sharing of the gift that we have received.  To return to the parable, it is the wheat constantly pushing on the weeds. 

                Because we don’t know who the weeds are.  God has not seen fit to share that information with us.  We do not know what work we do in the journey of faith may reveal that the one we thought was a weed, a doer of evil is, in fact, wheat, a doer of God’s work.  So there is no one that we “don’t have” to reach out to.  I think that is why Jesus says ‘love your enemy’, because they may end up your friend.  And we are the heroes (or antiheroes) that the Lord works through.  There is a day that is coming when good and evil will be identified and separated for the final time.  Until that day, may we assume that everybody is open to redemption and to the hope we have received in our Lord Jesus Christ.  And may the Lord use us as the tool to touch their lives for change.    Amen.