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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Those of us who do not garden might use as one of our excuses for not gardening that we do not like the work of weeding, removing from the garden or field unwanted plants that conflict in some way with the plants that we are trying to grow. Especially in the Texas heat, weeding is hard work, and then there is telling the plants apart. Somone has said that the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not the plant that you are trying to grow is to pull on it: if it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. Or, another has said, in order to distinguish weeds from the plants you are trying to grow, pull up everything, and what grows back are weeds. (www.sermons.com.) In what Jesus’s disciples called “The Parable of the Weeds of the Field” in today’s Gospel Reading, telling the weeds from the wheat was especially complicated by the particular kind of weed mentioned, which weed in its early stages of growth reportedly is especially hard to distinguish from the wheat. The Parable seems to call for patiently waiting until “The time to gather weeds and wheat”.
But, like the servants of the master of the house in the Parable, people are not always as patient as they should be waiting until “The time to gather weeds and wheat”. In Jesus’s day, different groups of the Jews—such as the Pharisees, Essenes, and Zealots (or their precursors)—may have wanted immediately to separate those whom they regarded as ungodly from those whom they regarded as godly (Gundry, ad loc Matthew 13:29-30, p.265). And, throughout Church History, there have been others who failed to heed Jesus’s teaching: for example, the king of France attacked the Cathars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, against whom a commander gave the order that has been paraphrased, “Kill them all, and let God sort them out”; the king and queen of Spain carried out the Spanish inquisition in the fifteenth century; and the radical reformer Thomas Müntzer in what today is part of Germany in the sixteenth century, called for the deaths of unbelievers and false Christians and played a role in the 1525 “Peasants’ Revolt” (Pietsch, CPR 33:3, pp.5-6, 38-39).
Interestingly enough, the impatient servants of the master of the house in the Parable are not given an equivalent in Jesus’s explanation of the Parable that we heard in the Gospel Reading. Rather, Jesus arguably focuses on the reason that we should be patient: that “The time to gather weeds and wheat” will come, that the sons of the evil one, all causes of sin and all lawbreakers, will be gathered out of the Kingdom and be burned eternally in hell, and that the sons of the Kingdom, the righteous, will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.
To at least some extent, the Parable of the Weeds of the Field” can call us both to repent of our sin and to trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake. The Son of Man sowed good seed, the sons of the Kingdom, in His field, the world; but, His enemy, the devil, sowed weeds, the sons of the evil one. In the context of the parable, there is no free will (confer Luther, Postil Sermon for Epiphany 5, Matthew 13:24-30, AE 76:304): we do not make ourselves either good seed or weeds, but our Holy Spirit-enabled repenting of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin—apart from which repentance we deserve temporal and eternal punishment—our repenting and our trusting God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake distinguish us as good seed, the sons of the Kingdom, from the weeds, the sons of the evil one. From eternity, God chose us in Christ Jesus and brought about our salvation. At “The time to gather weeds and wheat”, the sons of the evil one will depart into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, and we sons of the Kingdom, the righteous, will inherit the Kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:41, 34).
We sons of the Kingdom, the righteous, inherit the Kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world because God gives it to us in His great love, mercy, and grace for the sake of Jesus Christ. His righteousness is given to us! He declares us righteous, and so we are righteous. The Son of God in human flesh, Jesus in the Parable is not only the Sower of the good seed, the sons of the Kingdom, but He is also the commander of the angels who reap His harvest, and thus He is the One Who executes the Last Judgment (confer Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Matthew 13:37, p.30). The Lord is aware of and in control of all that goes on, from beginning to end, and He, as it were, patiently waits for “The time to gather weeds and wheat”. As we heard in the Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 44:6-8), only the Lord is God. And, as we sang in the Introit (Psalm 66:11-15; antiphon Psalm 86:6), the Lord is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—that is, mercy—and faithfulness. Jesus lived the righteous life that we fail to live, and, on the cross, Jesus died for our unrighteousness, in our place. As we believe, teach, and confess in the Small Catechism (Small Catechism II:4), Jesus has redeemed us lost and condemned people, purchased and won us from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. So, when we repent and believe, then God forgives us, and God forgives us through His Means of Grace.
In the Gospel Reading, the master of the house tells his servants to “let” both the weeds and wheat grow together, and Jesus “left” the crowds, but, most importantly, Jesus “forgives” us: in groups such as this group, through His Word read and preached, and individually, through His Word with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us in the Sacrament of the Altar. At the Baptismal Font we are made sons of the Kingdom. Wherever we might be, we privately confess to our pastor, our father confessor, the sins that we know and feel in our hearts, for the sake of Holy Absolution. And, at this Altar and its Rail, Christ’s Body and Blood give us the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
The Parable of the Weeds of the Field that we heard in today’s Gospel Reading is sometimes wrongly used to argue against a congregation’s excommunicating open and unrepentant sinners (confer Smalcald Articles III:ix). However, in the Parable, Jesus says that the field is the world, not the Church (confer Apology of the Augsburg Confession VII/VIII:19; Luther, Third Sermon at Eisleben, AE 58:445-446; ad loc Matthew 13:30, AE 67:201-203). The Church through Her ministers endeavors faithfully to use Christ’s authority within the Church, but the Church leaves the world, as Christ directed, until “The time to gather weeds and wheat”. And, we might even say, that the Parable does not apply to excommunication because those who need to be excommunicated are not a weed that has the appearance of the wheat but a weed that can be distinguished from the wheat before the harvest! Some of those weeds that do have the appearance of the wheat may have fellowship in the outward marks of the Church, but inwardly they are not truly of the Church. With Her Lord present until the end, the Church patiently waits until the end, knowing that there will be an ultimate separation of and judgment between good and evil. In the meantime, we know both that we will not be harmed by evil in the world and that we are obligated to endure it, and we live in God’s forgiveness of our sins when we fail in those or any other ways.
That coming separation and judgment warns the unrighteous and gives hope and joy to the righteous. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 8:18-27), the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. As our Lord was resurrected, so, if need be, will we be resurrected. And then, with our Lord, we will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of our Father.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +