It would seem that the negative things in life grow of their own accord, but that the good things, positive things, take a lot of work. If you are at all a pessimist, you will agree that bad things, destructive things, just happen. Nobody has to make them happen. They happen on their own. But good things, constructive, positive things ... well, they take work.
Take dirt, for example. Dirt just happens. Every housekeeper knows this. Dirt just gets there, on its own. Nobody tries to grow dust bunnies under the bed; they just happen. Nobody puts a dense film across glass windows; it just accumulates until in order to see whether it’s raining outside you have to rub a little hole in the haze. How did it get there? It just happened, that’s how.
The negative things in life grow of their own accord, but the positive things take work.
Take knowledge, for another example. Knowledge, I suppose we all agree, is a good thing. But it takes a great deal of study to accumulate knowledge. Ignorance you can pick up on a moment’s notice, in the twinkling of an eye. Ignorance just happens. I think I have a pretty good education. I believe that the schools I attended did a good job with me. But I am amazed at how much I have forgotten! I looked at my bookshelves the other day and saw some of those old textbooks. Did I ever really know anything about solid geometry, trigonometry, differential equations? Did I actually study something called metallurgy? Did I ever really grasp Hebrew grammar? Why, I wouldn’t know a Hebrew grammar today if it grasped me, or, for that matter, a Hebrew gramper!
Ignorance just grows. Every day I forget what I used to know, and even forget that I used to know it! Education takes work. Ignorance is easy. The negative things in life grow of their own accord; the positive things take work.
Jesus certainly knew that. He spoke of weeds and wheat growing together, aware that the weeds grew without any help from anybody, but that the wheat needed to be nurtured and cared for. In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, there are a couple of basic ideas about what is happening and can happen within us when both weeds and wheat, good and bad, are growing there.
I
First, notice that in this world and in our personal lives, the good and the bad grow up together. In fact, they even depend on each other, they need each other. Good and bad exist together, and without the one you would not even recognize the other. Like a fine painting which uses shadows in order to made light appear all the brighter, good and evil are here together and even belong together.
" …Someone sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well …The servants said to the householder, ’Do you want us to go and gather them’?’ But he replied, ’No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest time. "
Good things and bad things, positive and negative actually need each other? They depend on each other. And if you totally destroyed the bad, you would destroy the good as well. You psychology buffs will suspect that I’m talking about codependence, where a sick person needs a well person to make it okay to be sick, and a well person needs a sick person to make him feel self-righteous!
Good things and bad things often need each other. If you could cure every disease and eliminate the cause of every illness, then the medical professions would dry up. There would be no need for them. Now do we really want that to happen? Do we want to miss the joy of healing or of being healed?
If you could give everyone in the world enough to eat, clothing to wear, shelter and the other necessities, then there would be no charities, no welfare organizations, no need for anybody to give anything to anyone else! Do we really want that to happen? Do you want to miss the joy of giving and receiving?
And, in the most extreme case of all, if every human being were perfect, if every person were able to be in a completely harmonious relationship with God, then there would be no need for churches, no need for forgiveness, no need for the gospel. In fact, there would be no need for Christ! If everybody could get it all together with the Lord, there would be no need for Christ to have come. Would we really want that? As someone has put it, we human beings are more fortunate than the angels, because we have experienced forgiveness, and the angels never knew what that was like!
Good and evil live side by side in this world, and the master says, “Don’t worry about it. Don’t be anxious about that. Don’t let that reality get to you.” For when the servants ask the master, “Shall we tear out the weeds,” and he says, "Don’t do that,” I think he is saying, “Don’t be a perfectionist. Don’t imagine that somehow you can be transformed into an instant saint. Don’t expect that in your life you can easily select what you’re going to get rid of and what you’re going to keep. It’s not that simple!" We will have to live with ambiguity. We will have to accept our imperfections. If you gather the weeds, the Lord says, “you will uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest time.”
Friends, we cannot answer all the "why" questions. Some of us are in great pain because of the things going on in our lives: illness, loss, unemployment, legal battles, broken relationships, struggles of all kinds. We want to know why this is happening to us. That’s natural. I’m afraid there isn’t any air-tight answer. There isn’t any formula that I can use to explain it to you.
All I can say is that the weeds are sown with the wheat, the evil is laid out there with the good, and in some sense they need each other. They reinforce each other.
If you are struggling and suffering now, just think, what a day of rejoicing is around the corner! If you are troubled today, just imagine, what a song you will sing tomorrow. “Weeping is but for a night, but joy comes in the morning." Good and evil are within us, together; the more evil we overcome, the greater the rejoicing we will have at harvest time.
II
But now I want you to think some more about harvest time. That day of rejoicing. Jesus’ image is a day of harvest, for both weeds and wheat, for both evil and good.
And on that day of harvest, there is not only joy, there is also judgment. Our God is a God of mercy, but He is also a God of justice and judgment. There is a day coming when the answers will be revealed, when the accounts will be settled, and the wrongs will be made right. That’s harvest day.
“Let both [weeds and wheat] grow together until the harvest and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ’Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Harvest time, when the Lord of truth brings into perfect focus both good and evil, positive and negative, barns and burning.
God is a God of justice. The justice of God will not let right be forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. By no means. God is a just God and a harvesting God. What we sow, that we shall also reap. For the day will come when he will gather all this world’s injustice, all this world’s impurities, and will destroy them. It may not be a pretty picture, but there it is. Some of us do not feel very comfortable thinking of a God whose mind contains judgment and hell, but there it is.
But now, don’t jump to conclusions about either heaven or hell, either goodness or evil. Remember that these things live side by side. And remember that evil grows on its own, but goodness takes work. And so before we begin to shout about going to heaven and consigning others to hell, remember, “Everybody talkin’ ’bout heaven ain’t goin’ there." And neither is everybody worrying about hell without hope.
Because, you see, the power of Christmas, wonder of wonders, is that God in Jesus Christ has come to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Our God in Jesus Christ is coming into this harvested self, this ravaged heart of mine, and is offering a way of escape. In Jesus Christ, his birth, his life, his death, and his rising, we see the love and mercy of God working right alongside his justice. We see our God gathering into his own life the sin and the evil of this world.
Oh, I wish I knew how to say this to you with the precision that it demands! I wish I could muster the passion and the eloquence this calls for! I’m trying to say that, while God is just and God must exercise judgment on all evil, in the Christ who comes and is born and lives and suffers and dies and rises again, in Christ, God is taking that judgment into himself. God is suffering what we are supposed to suffer. God is judgment, but his judgment falls hardest on himself.
Behold the cross! That cross where the sinless one, the one in whom there was no ambiguity, in whom there was no growing strain of evil, died for us, the godly for the ungodly. Jesus Christ is being formed in us, so that we will not have to suffer that terrible day of judgment.
Even at Christmas time, you see, the shadow of a cross falls over the manger. The cross.
The Appalachian carol says it well: “I wonder as I wander out under the sky, how Jesus the savior did come for to die ... for poor ornery sinners like you and like I … I wonder as I wander out under the sky.”
Maybe today you feel like a harvested self. Maybe you feel defeated and discouraged. The forces of evil that just grow on their own are overwhelming you. You can’t get ahead. You can’t win. There is something good and positive inside that you want to express, but you just can’t quite make it happen. Like the apostle Paul, you feel that the evil you do not want is what you do and the good you do want you cannot do. Wretched self that you are, who will deliver you from this body of death?
Or maybe today you feel tense, you feel ambiguous … that is, you feel as though inside of you there is this great battle going on between what you’d like to become and what you have been. Then I invite you to this table and see with our own eyes and taste with our own lips what God is doing. Here see him whom all the angels adore, broken and bleeding, for you and for me. See him in whom there is perfect justice, become sin for us. See him in whom all the fullness of God came to dwell bodily, cut down in the prime of life, for us.
Is this justice? Or is this evil in charge? Are the negative things taking over again? Is this the defeat of everything good? No, it is not. Not at all. Christ has come in the rags of defeat, but He leaves in the robes of victory. He has come to die, but he comes to us, harvested selves and ravaged hearts that we are, He comes to be formed in us.
“ ... at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ’Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Harvest time. We are gathered to his barns.
Ain’t-a that a great day?! Ain’t-a that great day?!
A day when every valley shall be exalted.
A day when every mountain and hill be made low, when every rough place shall be made plain. Ain’t a that a great day?
And a day when the crooked shall be made straight …even a thing so crooked as my own heart … every crooked thing shall be made straight. Every harvested self gathered into his barns. Ain’t-a that a great day?
