By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Thursday of Holy Week
Don't pull those weeds
Matthew 13: 24-30
According to Matthew and Luke, much of Jesus' teaching consisted of parables about the kingdom of God. "Kingdom" language is one of the modes in which the early church came to understand and express the saving significance of Jesus Christ. All together, this kingdom language strongly reinforces the double thrust of "already and not yet". Today, the kingdom is fulfilled. God's reign has broken in. The kingdom is in your midst. Yet the kingdom is about to come. The king is absent and due to return at any minute, like a thief in the night, like a sudden flash of lightning.
The parable selected for today's reading points to the "not yet" dimension of the kingdom. Until the final coming of the kingdom, the wheat and the weeds are not to be separated.
There is always the chance that we will make a parable say what we want to hear, but I find the inescapable point of the parable to be some kind of statement about withholding final judgement until the end.
This is indeed consistent with emphasizing the distinction between God's righteousness and a righteousness of our own. If God's righteousness is such that it is not fulfilled until all the world is reconciled (as seemed to be the point of the parable of the Waiting Father), then we cannot always know beforehand what is right. To bring a preconceived notion of what's right to a situation could prevent what's truly right from taking place.
Withholding final judgement until the end is also consistent with the declared remedy for sin. It is as we come to appreciate the insight of the biblical doctrine of sin that we understand the efficacy of the declared remedy to our sin. As the Bible sees our human predicament, evil is not a behaviour or attitude, easily distinguishable from good, that can be eradicated by a remedy like surgery. It is seen as a fault, a flaw, contaminating the upright and good. The Bible sees the call to be upright as a proper
call, but painfully confused with evil. Sin and the law are opposed and at the same time somehow allies.
This doctrine of sin is not meant to be bad news, browbeating well meaning folk into a sense of their worthlessness. It is offered as a breakthrough insight to explain what has been crossing us up all along, to explain why so many of our cures have not been working.
God's remedy for sin is not to drown it in a flood, not to burn it in a fire, but to bear it on a cross.
One of the consequences of that good news is that we are relieved of the burden of passing final judgement.
Petition
Dear God, we want a word with you, even though we sense everyone else wants a word with you, even though we wonder how anything can come of everyone having a word with you.
But that's how it is with us. Our lives get to the place where the only thing for it is a word with you. The world around us gets so out of order that the only thing for it is a word with you.
There are concerns on our hearts that we seem to be able to do little about. We lift them up to you.
We have loved ones on our hearts and we cannot always have our own way with them. We bring them before you and place them in your care.
What is all this compared to the numberless people throughout the world who are homeless and hungry, whose countries are devastated hy war and famine, whose futures are cut off by the rivalries of mighty empires? We remember these before you...indeed it is when we are before you that we remember them.
Dear God, the poor and the hungry, the sick and the lonely, the dispossessed and the downtrodden, the powerless and the oppressed are not all far away in romantic places. They are nearby, among our neighbours. Hear their cry and let their prayers come unto you. We lift their prayers unto you.
Indeed, how can we have our word with you unless all the others do, too?
Amen