Fr. Troy Beecham
Sermon on Proper 11
20 July 2014

The heart of the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds would seem to be that we multiply evil when we try to identify evil and weed it out. This is the central point, but the explanation for how we arrive at that conclusion will require that we are willing to look with new eyes at this challenging, and I think commonly misunderstood, parable.

Typically, we read this gospel text as a verification of the ages-old perspective that bad people will get punished in the end. Is that what Jesus is teaching us, though? Does the death dealing god that is so common in our judgment narratives faithfully agree with the God that Jesus reveals to us, the God who is Love? I think not, and I will endeavor to explain why God’s judgment is different from what we normally understand it to be.

How does Matthew present judgment language and imagery? What insights can we gain from considering how he presents the teachings of Jesus regarding judgment?

The dramatic judgment scene in today’s gospel is not easily read with the God who is Love in view if we stick to the conventional interpretation. In our standard reading, the death dealing god of our darkest fears looms large, and we inevitably experience a frisson of excitement because that god is going to consume all the “bad” people of the world, especially all the people who have wounded us or those whom we love. The problem with that image of God is that you and I are inevitably the “bad people” of someone else’s narrative, and they are feeling that same excitement at the prospect that we are going to be consumed by flames. You see, our language and imagery of judgment recasts God as the monsters out of our deepest, darkest selves, calling to mind the “monsters of the id” of ‘Fantastic Voyage’ fame. If you recall that iconic film, those monsters destroyed their world, leaving it a desert.

One verse for understanding judgment in Matthew's Gospel is found at 11:12: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force." Jesus uses the conventional language of judgment, but turns it upside down through metaphor and points out that the kingdom of heaven is represented most clearly through those who are suffering violence and yet refuse to reciprocate. Another example for understanding Matthew’s use of judgment language can be found in the parable of the Wedding Banquet for the king’s son, in which the man without the proper wedding gown is thrown out in the darkness where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth". We can easily see that Christ uses this parable to foreshadow his own crucifixion, identifying himself with the man who was thrown out in judgment. The most important use of judgment language and imagery is to be found, of course, in the crucifixion itself. We may interpret today’s gospel in the larger context of Matthew's use of judgment imagery, in the light of the
crucifixion and of the other parables, wherein Jesus becomes the one whom we declare to be the judged 'of God', and who himself suffers the fires of judgment.

Let’s look more closely, then, at the parable of the Wheat and Weeds. In the narrative, the crucial verse is 13:42: "and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Who does "them" refer to in context? In a more conventional interpretation, we typically assume that the "doers of lawlessness" are the ones who are thrown into the fire by the angels after having their scandals exposed. Look, however, at 13:41-42 again: "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they 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 text allows, and I would say points out, that we may read this parable rather as identifying the angels of the Son of Man as being the ones who are thrown into the fire where there is a weeping and gnashing of teeth in penalty for having exposed the scandals of the evildoers. In verse 42, “they” are the evildoers, and “they” throw “them”, the angels, into the fire because their lawlessness has been revealed.

The self-righteous violence that we visit upon each other is the very evil that is judged by the Son of Man, suffering on the cross in order to expose our lawlessness. With the cross in view, how then do the angels gather the weeds? Do they do it through walking amongst the wheat with scythes and use violence? No, judgment is rendered by refusing to return the violence that is the inevitable result of exposing lawlessness. The angels are judged to be weeds, but their trust in the God who is love highlights what the life of the kingdom is actually all about, and clearly shows what does not belong to the life of the kingdom. By allowing themselves to be judged by evildoers, and to be thrown into the fire as the Son of Man first was himself on the cross, the angels offer their witness (martyrdom) of the judgment that the evildoers pass upon themselves, whose violence shows that they are in fact the weeds.

Remember the story of the three Hebrew men thrown into the fire in the book of Daniel? It was only after they had been thrown into the fire that the glory of the Lord was revealed, a glory which also revealed the bankrupt and corrupt judgment of our human kingdoms. It is often only in the fire that the righteous will shine. If we do read the "angels of the Son of Man" as those martyred in human fires of judgment, then they are also the resurrected righteous who shall someday shine like the sun.
This is admittedly not a conventional way to read this parable. I think, though, that it is faithful to the story of salvation in that we see Christ as suffering the judgment first for us; not God's judgment, but, in the terms of the parable itself, our human forms of judgment that multiply evil and end up identifying ourselves as the doers of evil, who have murdered the Son of God.

We rush headlong to bloody judgment and execution.  God rushes headlong to give us mercy and grace. Matthew's Jesus tells us how God works, quoting Hosea 6:6 "For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings". Jesus repeats this teaching regularly: "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have come to call not the
righteous but sinners" (Matthew 9:13); and, "But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. (Matthew 12:7)

In the parable of the Wheat and Weeds, and throughout the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is teaching us that our habit of condemning the guiltless and using any form of violence to pass judgment on others must be unlearned and ultimately overthrown by learning God's mercy, grace, and love. We only perpetuate the very evil that we seek to destroy when we become judges. The Son of Man and his angels sift out the kingdom precisely by suffering the fires of human judgment willingly and without returning violence. This parable shows God's judgment on our human judgment. It also shows that we are given the blessed assurance that we will know mercy and grace through suffering violence if we will not return that violence. We are given the blessed hope of the resurrection, if we are willing, with Jesus, to allow God to use us as witnesses to the life of the kingdom.

Amen.