Sermons
Gardening
July 17, 2011
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 28:10-19a; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The Reverend Stephen P. Bauman
A number of years ago a man came to speak with me about what he referred to as his “split personality”. He was basically a good man he said to assure me as well as himself, I suppose. He was a family man who loved his kids, a successful businessman, a good provider, in fact, a great provider. Though not especially pious, he said he believed in God and wanted to do good in the world.
But, he quietly added, for all of that, he was an abuser. At certain times an explosive rage welled up inside of him, which might cause him to lash out in a vicious manner towards the people he most cared about. It was the worst at home, but he had a reputation at work as well. With glum resignation he reported that for many years he rationalized that his rage was actually a strength to be employed as a weapon from time to time. But he never controlled it—it always controlled him. He came to fear himself, what he was capable of doing.
He shared how he fought with himself over whether or not to speak of this to anyone. At times he said it was as though two persons lived inside his head, battling for supremacy. Ultimately a scene with his young son brought him to his senses—actually, to his spiritual knees—and to the stark recognition that he had to do something. He could pretend no longer. With further conversation he agreed to do some hard spiritual and psychological work.
Several years passed and once more he came to my office and reported that his life had been transformed. Not perfect, but certainly far more honest. He had submitted himself to God in a way he had never understood was possible, or desirable. At work he had become something of a mentor. His wife, once ready for divorce, recently asked if they could renew their vows.
The church had become a place for practicing patience and humility. He had learned sitting in the pew here that no part of his life or personality was beyond the loving gaze of the man pictured in the golden field up there. And he was deeply grateful. His sense of fragmentation lessened. The old rage reared up once and a while, but he no longer focused on it. Instead, he focused on all that promoted healthy outcomes. That’s the way he put it… all that promoted healthy outcomes. As a result, he was no longer a victim of his own worst self.
Kathleen Norris writes in her book, Amazing Grace, “[I am] not a ‘good person’ nor notably ‘evil’ on the human continuum, but one who struggles with ordinary yet dangerous temptations to anger and revenge, to pride and greed, the fool’s gold of vainglory, and the improper manipulation of other people to further my own ends. You name it; it’s all there. I don’t know much about how to deal with my own evil, but I have learned enough to recognize that sometimes all I can do is pray.”[1]
Her words capture my experience exactly… “I don’t know much about how to deal with my own evil, but I have learned enough to recognize that sometimes all I can do is pray.” That’s close to what the man in my office confided. For what is prayer but to sit in God’s presence knowing that God knows me better than I know myself, and that in God’s knowing, I will find my help, even salvation?
One day Jesus said that “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. So when the plants came up and bore grain, the weeds appeared as well…” While I don’t know about a specific enemy who snuck into my life to sow bad seed, I do know something about wheat and weeds growing up side-by-side, sometimes seemingly indistinguishable from each other. I have seen it in myself, I have seen it in others, and I have seen it in the church and in the wider culture. This seems a ubiquitous human condition.
The literal weeds of Jesus’ parable were one of the curses of Palestinian farming called bearded darnel. Only after the heads of grain appeared would their difference be noticed, but by then the roots had intertwined so that to pull the one was to pull the other. Jesus’ point has nuance. Good and evil exist side by side. Sometimes they’re hard to distinguish.
I was recently reminded that in the referendums of 1933, 95% of the German population, which, as you know, was overwhelmingly Christian, voted approval of Hitler. The author of our beloved civil gospel who wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” was a slaveholder.
Paul told his friends in Rome, “the whole of Creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit.” Perhaps in some ways we have advanced in our understanding of our common humanity, yet evil’s debris still litters our world, there’s no doubt about that, even, as news headlines reveal.
While certain evil cannot be tolerated, Jesus’ little story adds a cautionary note. The farmer must be careful not to pluck the weeds too soon for in pulling the weeds, the wheat, too, might be destroyed. It’s one thing, I suppose, if a field is largely weeds. But it’s another story when the two are closely intermingled. The story of another man from America’s turbulent history might help us understand.
For all of our vaunted American religious freedom, the early centuries of our land were actually years of great religious intolerance. In New England at that time some fifteen offenses called for the death penalty, including idolatry, witchcraft, blasphemy, and desecration of the Sabbath… That’s death penalty stuff… These laws had been passed to protect and enforce the integrity of the religion of the majority. Many religious groups were severely persecuted.
Long before our Constitution was written, Roger Williams understood that true religious conviction could never be coerced. In 1636 he was banished from Massachusetts for his opposition to these rigid laws and for his outspoken advocacy of the rights of Native Americans who he ultimately joined at Narragansett Bay, founding the Providence Plantation, what became the heart of Rhode Island.
William’s term for religious persecution was “rape of the soul” and one of the Biblical texts he used to advance his case was none other than the parable of the wheat and the weeds. He reasoned that we must find a way to live and let live, for religion could not be authentic without liberty and those who enforced their own beliefs upon another might just be plain wrong. In other words, in the name of good, they could destroy the good.
That still sounds rather up-to-date, doesn’t it? You see any evidence of those who in the name of good are willing to destroy the good? See any arrogant, destructive posturing in our world, across our land?
If we agreed that good and evil grow together inside all of us, then we would also agree that from time to time, each one of us will be wrong… sometimes very wrong. It is a benevolent God who doesn’t tear out the bad willy-nilly. Who among us could survive? What culture could survive?
Now the parable doesn’t let us off the hook. The reckoning does come, but in the meantime we’re given ample opportunity to grow up into those persons whose fruits are love, justice, righteousness, freedom, hope and faith. As followers after Jesus’ way in the world one of our occupations is to help garden each others’ lives, and the gardening instructions we’re given tell us to do everything in our power to promote growth, mindful of the weeds, but not fixated on them, recognizing our primary task is not rooting up and pulling out, but instead, tilling and watering.
Friends, let’s agree on a few things. First, let’s agree that we will be committed to the truth—to seek it, to own up to it, and to share it as best we can—especially the truth about ourselves. Let’s agree to hold that quest for the truth with humility recognizing that the harder we grip what we think we know the more likely we are to be wrong. Let’s agree that our world, our nation, our city, our church and each one of us have good and evil growing side by side and that sometimes we see this, other times we’re blind, willingly deceived or willful deniers of the first order.
But then let’s also agree that having acknowledged these first things, we’ll promote a generous spirit of gracious hospitality among us, where we genuinely seek to nurture the very best of one another. As the man in my office put it, let’s be focused on everything that promotes healthy outcomes. And let’s bask in the golden light of the one up there knowing that he knows us far better than we know ourselves, and still he loves us. This is the source of our truest hope. How did the psalmist put it?
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts;
see if there be any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!”
[1] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, New York: Riverhead Books, 1998, p. 179.
