Scripture text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Dandelions. The bane of every lawn. Weeds that are nigh on impossible to eradicate. You can’t get rid of these blasted things. Like the mythical hydra, you tear them up and before you know it, there’s three more growing in its place. No matter what you do, it seems, they keep coming back.
But did you know, they’re edible? The leaves on the dandelion are good in salad. I had a friend once who was able to ferment the flowers into a passable wine. Maybe not the best vintage, but certainly drinkable. And, of course, there are the children. Many a wish has been made by a small child blowing on a dandelion gone to seed. And what sight is more precious than a child rushing up to you with a bouquet of dandelions in hand, saying “Here, grandma, I picked these flowers for you!”
Maybe these weeds aren’t so bad after all. Maybe what we don’t know everything about them that we thought we knew.
The weeds Jesus refers to in his parable are called “tares,” and according to my research a “tare” is a weedy ryegrass from the genus lolium. They’re probably not as pretty or as useful as dandelions, but Jesus still counsels against their destruction in his story. Once again, Jesus offers us an agricultural parable that makes little sense. Weeds choke out the good plants. They threaten the harvest by denying the grain the water and nutrients they need to thrive. Would it not be wiser to eradicate them?
Except it’s not always obvious which is weed and which is wheat; particularly in the early stages of growth, they may look the same. Which is precisely Jesus’ point: We don’t always know which is bad and which is good. We don’t always know what is good and what is evil.
According to the Eden story, humanity fell into sin when we defiantly ate of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This act gave us the knowledge to understand right and wrong on our own, and we have been making that judgment call ever since. Problem is, while we stole that knowledge from God, we did not also steal away his wisdom and his compassion as well. And as a result, our judgments of good and evil have been twisted and perverse ever since.
And one need only look at three of the biggest news stories of the past week to see that. Here in America, we are always concerned about the children. We have safety recalls because this product or that product might be harmful to kids. I put together a bedframe this week and with the instructions was this slip of paper that said “Beware! These parts may provide a choking hazard to children.” We have endless debates about video games, movies, sex ed in our schools, because we are divided on when it is appropriate to expose our children to adult themes and realities. And we have amassed armed posses with guns to threaten children coming across our borders.
Wait, what? One of these things isn’t like the others. But it’s true. We have armed militias in Texas and Arizona and other border states, pointing guns at innocent children, who are trying to flee tyranny, oppression, and violence in their home countries. A great American president once said to his opposite in the Cold War, “Tear down this wall” so that freedom and security could spread more broadly. His successors in our government today now demand we build another wall to deny that freedom to those who would seek it. We think we know, but we aren’t even remotely consistent on what is good and right. Are we helping children or not? Are we giving liberty to people hungry for it or not?
In Ukraine, there is an on-going battle between pro-Russia separatists and government forces. One side (and it really doesn’t matter which) this week, spotted a blip on their radar. It must be an enemy plane. Orders were given. A button was pushed. A missile was launched and 295 innocent people aboard a civilian airliner died. We think we know, but we can’t even tell the difference between a military target and a innocent civilians.
Tensions between Israel and Palestine have turned violence once more. This week, amidst all the other reports of conflict and chaos, came the heartbreaking report from several correspondents. Outside their hotel where these reporters were staying were four Palestinian boys, innocently playing on the beach. Then the shelling began, deliberately targeting that beach and those boys. Despite pleas and calls by the reporters for the Israelis to stop their attack, the explosions continued and all four children were killed. We think we know what is good and what is evil.
This past week alone shows that we know NOTHING. We know nothing when we threaten children with deportation back to starvation and death. We know nothing when we murder innocents who wander too close to a pointless conflict about who gets control of a government. We know nothing when we deliberately target children for destruction. And we know nothing when we give silent or even overt support to others who do these things.
We simply do not judge good and evil rightly. Good for us is nearly always “my side,” and we will turn a conveniently blind eye to any and all evils done by the “good guys.” There is no objective standard of good in human thinking, not really. It’s always whatever-benefits-me-and-mine-most, and evidence that contradicts our mythmaking about ourselves is either ignored or disputed. We know nothing, deliberately so.
But we love to pretend otherwise. That’s why Jesus warns us about ourselves in this parable. He knows us well. He knows that despite our biases and blindness, we will all madly rush to destroy what we believe to be evil, and as a result, we would destroy good as well. It’s the story of history: burn the heretic, enslave those different from us, and justify those murders with lies and rumors, because the truth proves too inconvenient or uncomfortable. We, the Church, should have stood against this from the start, but we have been among those most eager for bloodshed. We, the good righteous religious people, are sadly often the quickest to judge and to seek the destruction of others.
It was, after all, the good righteous religious people who thought they knew the difference between good and evil on one Passover sometime during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius. They shouted out to the governor of the land to crucify a troublemaker and interloper. He’s evil. He deserves death. He’s told the truth that we didn’t want to hear. He helped people we didn’t want helped. He loved and welcomed people we demanded to be cast out. Kill him.The governor complied with their demands and ordered that God incarnate be nailed to a tree to die. In our desperate rush to destroy evil, we brought death upon the one thing in all creation that was truly good. But he let us do it.
He let us do it because that was the plan. God’s way is to redeem evil, not destroy it. And while we danced and celebrated how good and righteous we are in destroying this evil, Christ showed us once more what good truly is. “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
Not hate. Not violence. Not retribution. Love. Mercy. Kindness. Forgiveness. These are the marks of true goodness. “They know not what they do.” He says. No, we don’t, do we? We know nothing.
That is why God takes such judgments out of our hands. On the last day, it will not be us who stand in judgment over good and evil, for we clearly can’t tell the difference. No, God will pronounce his judgment. And what he will see is not our blunders and our stupidity. He will not see our cruelty and our viciousness, our bigotry and blindness. What he will see is his son, on a cross, pleading for our forgiveness, showing his willingness to die for our sake. He will see the love he has for us, a love willing to pay the ultimate price for a people so blind and corrupt that they can’t even tell good from evil. Because of that love and that love alone, God will open the gates of eternal life to us. Because of Jesus’ love for us, our evil will be redeemed.
It’s a far better plan than we would have come up with. Our way would have led to death for all of us, good, evil, innocent, guilty, it wouldn’t matter. God’s way leads to life for you, for me, and for all. He believes, in spite of all of our flaws and failures, that there is something worthwhile in our species. He loves us. That’s why he died for us. And out of the ultimate evil came the ultimate good. Amen.
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