Sermons for the Month

Life's Reality and Opportunity
- Good and Evil Grow Together
DATE: 7/21/02
SERVICE: Ninth Sunday After Pentecost
TEXT: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

Jesus is still sitting in the boat that he commandeered in last week's Gospel lesson to tell the parable of the sower, and he still is talking about farming. However in today's parable he addresses a very tricky reality, the fact that evil takes root even in the greatest good.
Did you notice the headline in the Akron Beacon Journal yesterday morning? "WALL STREET UNBEARABLE". The article's focus was sinking stock values and potential recession. Some analysts tie this slide - which touches all of us in one way or another if the economy fails - to corporate scandals at Enron, Arthur Andersen and Worldcom that boil down to lying and stealing. Now I'm sure that there are honest people in those companies, but there also are those who lack moral character. To put it bluntly, good and evil are existing side by side, and the evil has made its mark.
The coexistence of good and evil is something with which we struggle daily, and it is not just a problem outside of religious enclaves. Earlier this week I was listening to an interview on NPR with a gentleman who, in his youth, was a radical Muslim. He described how he twisted the words of the Koran to justify negative behavior. However, because of his father's astuteness, he eventually saw the error of his ways and became a dedicated Islamic scholar, seeking for the truth in his religion's holy book.
Following the events of September 11, we are all too familiar with how religion can be perverted by extremist to justify evil. However, we must be careful not to point at the other faiths and shake our heads because there are more examples of this very thing in the Christian church than I could, or would care to, list. From the Inquisition, witch hunts and forced conversions of native people in the name of Jesus to the more recent Ku Klux Klan activities, the blowing up of abortion clinics and misconduct in the church there is plenty of evidence that bad is mixed with good in the church as well as the world.
It's difficult to face up to that because we would prefer, first of all, that it not be true and second that God would wipe out evil. And indeed, one day, that will be the case. But in the meantime Jesus calls us to patience and faith. We are to be patient with the fact that both good and evil coexist and have faith that God will ultimately deal with the situation.
Jesus makes this clear using a parable in which he paints a picture that would have been familiar to those who were first listening to him. He tells the story of someone who sows good seed in a field, but the field is desecrated when someone else sows weeds among the wheat.
This weed, called bearded darnel, was a curse against the farmer. In the early stages it so closely resembled wheat that it was impossible to tell them apart. By the time one could distinguish one from the other, the roots were so intertwined that the weed could not be removed without rearing out the wheat. Yet, even though the two plants could not be separated while they were growing, it was necessary to do so at the harvest because the grain of the bearded darnel was slightly poisonous. It had to be separated by hand, or the consequences were serious. If a person wanted to hinder someone else, one way to do it was to deliberately sow darnel in that one's field.
Using that familiar illustration, Jesus attempts to explain why God does not put an end to evil NOW. But the disciples want to make sure they understand, so they ask Jesus for further explanation. He then notes that the good seed is the children of God, those who believe in him, who he has planted in the world and who are growing in faith. The bad seed is those people who are influenced by hostile powers or ideas, it's just not that their faith is stunted but that they have refused to acknowledge the forgiveness that Jesus offers them and chosen a destructive path. The harvest is the day when Jesus returns, as promised, when those who believe in him will be separated from those who do not. But, until that time, the two seeds must grow together.
In other words, there are those who respond to the love that God offers us in Jesus Christ, and there are those who reject that love. There are those who allow themselves to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and those who are influenced by hostile powers.
And - here's the important point - it's impossible for us to distinguish between the two, just as the farmers in Palestine could not tell the wheat from the weeds. What appears to be true may not be the reality; only God can tell what is in a person's heart. For that reason, only God (Jesus) is capable of judging who truly is a person of faith. And, thankfully, God has given us the gift of time - time for renewal, time for repentance and time for allowing the Holy Spirit to become our guiding force. There will be a time for judgment, but that will occur in God's time, and by God's hand, not ours.
We must face this human condition - the reality of evil taking root in the midst of good. Now, that does not mean that we are called to tolerate the intolerable, but we also must recall that it is God's desire that all people "shine like the sun in the kingdom of God."
While we want God to rescue us from the evil of the world, the fact is that God wants to use us to rescue the world. We are not to simply tolerate sin and evil, we are to confront it. God is working through us to change the world. We do that NOT by judging or condemning people, NOT by responding to hate with more hate, but by drawing on the power of the Holy Spirit to bring God's love to a hurting world.
There are many, many ways to confront evil. Our congregation is helping to do so in Akron this week. At the Church Council meeting on Monday the decision was made to give the budgeted funds for the Explorer's Summer Camp here, which is not being held, to the city ministry OPEN M for their summer recreation and education program.
In doing so we are confronting evil. How can I say that? The 110 children in that program surly are not evil. No, but sometimes evil is systemic, it is a part of a system, which is the case with poverty which, by the way, is not just an issue of money.
In that program children in first through fifth grades are fed breakfast and lunch, which during the school year they receive through government funded programs. They work on retaining academic skills, on character development - which includes Bible Study and participate in music, art and recreation. They also take field trips. It's an alternative to the streets since 90 of the 110 have working parents who cannot afford child-care and the kids would have been left to hang out on their own.
It is true that evil and good co-exist. It also is true that one day God will put an end to evil, and believers will be gathered into the arms of God. But, as of July 21, 2002 that has not yet occurred. We must to patient and we must have faith, but we must not simply sit quietly waiting. Nor are we to become so wrapped up in our own agendas that we leave the confronting of evil to others. Did no Christian know what was happening at Enron? When the church members do not proclaim the goodness of the Gospel, but ignore or pervert it, is that God's fault? There still is time for people, and our world, to be changed by God's love. As Jesus so aptly said, "Let anyone with ears, listen."
AMEN