Keawala'i Congregational Church, Kahu's Mana'o

Kahu's Manao

Keawala‘i Congregational Church
United Church of Christ (USA)

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, July 20, 2008

The Rev. Kealahou C. Alika

“Wheat and Weeds Together”
Matthew 13:24-30 & Matthew 13:36-43

I live in an old section of Wailuku town. Most of the homes in the neighborhood I moved to about three years ago were built in the 1940s. The houses were built in those days when sugar was king and work on the plantation was at the heart of Maui’s economy.

All of the houses of that era were built with single-walls. Most are three-bedroom, one bath homes. The lots themselves are fairly small. There is a certain simplicity and charm to the old plantation houses and over the years I’ve come to appreciate them more and more.

The house I bought was built in 1945. The lot is barely 3,000 square feet which is fine with me. I do not look forward to spending my retirement years doing too much yard work.

The interior of the house had to be re-done including the bathroom and the kitchen. Most of the exterior walls of the house have been remodeled with new siding. But there is still work to be done on the back side of the house as well as the outdoor area opposite the laundry room.

As a consequence I’ve decided not to work on the yard and the fencing and landscaping that will need to be done. For the last two winters I have watched as the seasonal rains are greeted with great delight by the seeds of numerous weeds that have laid dormant.

Within a few weeks after the first rains green stems and leaves quickly break the surface of the ground. The weeds proliferate and soon the brown, dusty ground turns green with the arrival of a host of unwelcomed weeds.

I made a decision the first year to pull out all of the weeds but by the second year the work proved more formidable. While I was reluctant to spray the weeds into oblivion it became clear that there was little else that I could do.

I knew even before I began spraying that other less invasive plants would be affected by the spraying. Regardless of the time of day there would always be the risk that the summer trade winds would carry the spray away from the weeds and end up indiscriminately destroying other plants.

I know that there will come a time and moment when I will need to clear the entire yard of every plant and every blade of grass and to begin over again. But until that moment comes I am faced with the uneasy prospect of destroying other plants.

When Jesus told the disciples the parable of the weeds among the wheat he was profoundly aware of the dilemma of those who were anxious to separate the weeds from the wheat. He was aware that any effort to separate the weeds from the wheat would result in the destruction of both.

Some say the weed was probably darnel, a type of rye grass. It harbored a fungus that was both sleep-inducing and poisonous. In Jesus’ time, it was thought to cause blindness.

The darnel and wheat were similar in appearance and it was only when the plants became mature that one was able to make a clearer distinction. It was said that the roots of the darnel plant would knit itself together with the roots of the wheat plant, so pulling up a darnel plant meant that a wheat plant would also be uprooted and destroyed. It is clear from the parable that it was best to separate the wheat from the darnel at the time of harvest. (Seasons of the Spirit/Congregational Life/Pentecost 1, Year A, 2007, page 90)

Our reading from The Gospel According to Matthew was written during a time when there was a growing hostility among the people towards the emergence of the disciples as followers of Jesus. That same hostility foreshadowed what was to come from those to whom Matthew was writing in the early church.

We know that the writer of Matthew was an unknown Jewish Christian of the second generation who wrote around C.E. 90 in or near Antioch of Syria. His bitter criticism of the Pharisees in Jerusalem (Matthew 23) and the distance from which he spoke of the Jewish community (Matthew 4:23) indicated that the Christian groups he addressed were no longer part of the Jewish community. (Harper’s Bible Dictionary, Harper & Row Publishers, San Francisco, 1988, page 951)

All of this suggests that there were people in Matthew’s community who were opposed to the mission to the Gentiles and people who wanted them ousted from the church. The writer of Matthew sought to remind those in the early church of Jesus’ teaching of the parable of the weeds among the wheat.

The answer to their dilemma was “Let both (the Jewish and Gentile Christians) grow together until harvest time.” (Matthew 13:30) Until then the church was to remain a mixed body of wheat and weeds. One may have wondered about whom it was that lived a righteous life and who it was that fell short, but there was never any question that both were to remain together.

It would seem that the application of the parable to our own lives today is apparent. Yet we too may find ourselves wondering the same of one another. We want to assume that we are the wheat and others the weeds.

Because we say we are disciples of Jesus Christ it would be preposterous for anyone to assume that we are anything like the Pharisees. We believe ourselves to be wheat and others to be weeds.

But the parable of the weeds among the wheat cautions us not to be so quick in making any conclusion about who is in and who is out of the church. Any speculation on our part places us in the position of presuming we are the ones to make that judgment.

The writer of Matthew reminds us in a forceful way that Jesus is clear. We are not the ones to make that judgment.

We are called to be the church to all people.

In recent weeks the United Church of Christ, of which our congregation is a member, began a national ad campaign called “Steeples.” It is currently posted on the United Church of Christ web site and features the ad that will be aired to a national audience this fall.

It is a simple ad based on what I’ve always considered a Sunday School rhyme. “Here is the church” includes the faces of those who are a part of the church. A little girl appears on the screen with her fingers clasped together:

Here’s the church.

Here’s the steeple.

Open the door, and see all the people . . .

And it continues:

all the people . . .

God accepts all the people . . .

all the people.

So do we – the United Church of Christ.

No matter who you are

or where you are on life’s journey,

you’re welcome here . . .

all the people.

No doubt there will be those who find fault with the ad given the media attention and challenges over the last few months that have been directed at the United Church of Christ. For a time it seemed everywhere we looked someone in the news had something to say.

But whether we belong to the United Church of Christ or any other Protestant denomination, Orthodox communion, or Catholic parish, the church will continue its mission and ministry long after the television cameras and newspaper journalists have moved on to the next story. God accepts all the people – wheat and weeds together – and perhaps reluctantly but faithfully so do we.