Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Listening guide
How am I going to treat you?
“Let both grow together”. (verse 30)
“ Let them grow to the harvest” = “forgive them to grow until the harvest.”
_______________, don’t ______________________ your neighbors.
Discussion questions
What’s a humorous story from your neighbors you can share?
Jesus described his own mission in different ways. Read the passages below and discuss Jesus’ mission. Do you have a passage you like that tells Jesus’ mission?
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10)
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17)
In the Bible Jesus carried out his mission in many places: from Capernaum down to Jerusalem and many places in between (see the maps below). In that way, his life and work were very different from ours. He didn’t have only one “neighborhood” or “community” to work in his own life. Still, Jesus conducted very intimate, personal ministry (see below). What do we learn about Jesus’ ministry from these and similar events?
He was in the home of Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31)
He healed a paralytic in his “home” (Mark 2:1-12)
He had dinner with Levi (Mark 2:15)
He was invited into the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42)
He met with Nicodemus at night (John 3)
He drank water with a woman at a well (John 4)
Just as Jesus had a mission, the Bible clearly states his followers will have a mission. From the passages below, how do you summarize the church’s mission? As a follow up to that question, the Bible says very little about how we carry out that mission. Should we tell our neighbor in our front yard or theirs? Should we go to foreign countries? Should we get a YouTube channel? What do you see as your role in the church’s mission?
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)
15 He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16:15-16)
46 He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:46-49)
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
One way that the Bible suggests us thinking of the people we should serve is our neighbor. In fact, he says all of God’s law can be summarized this way: “30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’[a] 31 The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] There is no commandment greater than these.” When he says the word “neighbor”, what do you think that means?
Luke 10:25-37 (the story of the Good Samaritan), specifically verse 29, show us how hard it is to love our actual neighbors. “29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”” What do you think are some of the reasons it so hard to love our actual neighbors?
The Bible shows that wonderful things can happen when we love our actual neighbors. For example, Mark 2:1-12. What wonderful events happen to Jesus’ neighbor?
It’s much easier to love our neighbors when we actually know their names. Below is a tool called a “Block Map”. You can fill in the names of the people on your block. If you don’t have a “block”, you can write out a few networks of people in the next table.
Sermon
During the pandemic and the protests, one of the things I keep asking people – when I get to talk to them, that is – is what are you taking away from this time?
I’ve heard a bunch of different responses. I’ve been surprised by all the people who have said, “People are s-t-u-p-I-d". I don’t want to be crude. That’s just what they say.
First part of me says, yup, sure are. The Bible says we’re sinners. We’re hostile to God and to one another.
The other part of me says, I don’t know what you mean by that. I don’t know if you are for or against masks. I don’t know how you feel about protests. But what do you intend to do with that conclusion?
I asked one of them, so, what are you going to do about that? They didn’t know. And that, that concerns me.
I suppose you could ignore people. Criticize them. Condemn them. Reject them. If you are that person, I might stay away from you or put you down. If the only thing, or even the main thing, you think about people, is they’re s-t-u-p-I-d, I’m not sure you can treat them well.
I know we all find this an incredibly hard time. I’ve got all these thoughts swirling in my head, all these questions and concerns. Then you make a choice. I think, anything but that! How could you be so ….
What should I do with you? How am I going to treat you? Jesus answers part of that question today. For the next few weeks we’ll take a look at different aspects of this theme, “Love our Neighbors”.
Today we have one of the many parables of Jesus. These are really short stories. They try to tell us how God’s world works. They’re always surprising us. You know you’ve got the parable wrong if there is no surprise. And I think this is a pretty good one.
Jesus says, there is a field. We can imagine the field is the world. Wheat and weeds grow together in the field. To understand the story better, I think it helps to know that the weed is zizania, or darnel. It actually looks a lot like wheat. Here comes the first surprise.
Jesus says, “Let both grow together”. (verse 30) I know a lot of you like gardening. If you want to see what weeds and flowers growing together look like, you can come to my house when we’re done. I doubt any of you gardeners leave the weeds in your garden. Jesus leaves them both.
This is not what most religions and ways of thinking to do. Jesus says people are the weeds and the wheat. What most people want to do is, what do most people do? They pull out, they kick out, they separate out, and they remove the “people of the evil one”. Whoever they are.
To get a sense of this, there are lot of examples in history. If you’re a resident of Europe in 1095, the people to separate out are the Muslims living in Jerusalem. If you’re a Spaniard living in the 1470s, the people to kick out are the nonCatholics from the country of Spain. If you’re an Iraqi living in the 2010s, they might be the residents of certain Christian settlements. If you’re a Communist living in China in 1950, they might be wealthy landowners. If you’re a Nazi in Germany in the 1940s, they might be the Jews.
This is nothing new. They saw Jesus as the Messiah. They thought he was this great and awesome king. And maybe you think it is time for me to deal with the Romans, or the Jewish religious leaders, or the Samaritans. He says, I sense you want me to be kind of a Joshua and drive out these other leaders.
This is why there is such a push for tolerance. There is a little oppressor in all of us. Know anyone who has shunned someone from their family? Sure.
Jesus is saying so much more than tolerate.
The reason life has so much misery in it is so much worse than you think it is. You think it’s those people, whoever those people are. Every time, every age, every place, has its those people.
The truth of it is far worse than you realize. Reality itself is broken. At the very roots of reality, there is an evil. At the very roots of the psyche and at the roots of our society and at the roots of reality itself, the roots of the natural and even the supernatural fabric of the universe, there is an evil, a cancer, that’s eating out the guts of the way things are.
The only way to rip it out is to destroy everything. Literally everything. Jesus has to rip out the roots of the natural and supernatural universe to get rid of this evil.
He says, you are not the great revolution of life. I am the great revolution of life. I’m the one who is going to change everything.
It’s not enough for you and I to imagine a new government, new tax code, new non-profits, or new religions. It’s not enough to say, the world would be better if we just got rid of those people. Imagine everything restored. Imagine justice in the courts, mercy on the streets, hope in the homes, and love in the hearts.
That is the judgment Jesus is going to bring at the end of all time. If we hurry to judge now, we’ll just ruin things. We’ll destroy everyone. No one will flourish. There will be no wheat producing a great harvest or crop.
You know what the solution is? It’s not tolerance.
Jesus doesn’t say it specifically, but he hints at it. Let me show you. When he says, “Let them grow to the harvest”, do you know what he actually says? The word “let them” actually means “forgive them”. What Jesus says is, “forgive them to grow until the harvest.” Forgive them. You know what that is? That’s a spiritual revolution.
Jesus is not saying, “tolerate evil”. He isn’t saying “accept evil”. Jesus says as strongly as anyone, if something causes you to sin, cut it out. Get rid of it. If someone sins against you, don’t ignore it. Go and tell them. Call them out. If someone calls himself or herself a believer, yet they refuse to actually follow me, kick them out. Don’t call them a believer. Call them an unbeliever.
But Jesus is the absolute, total, and complete sacrifice for sins. He is dead and risen for each and every sin. The Jews and the Romans oppressed, kicked him out, and pulled him out. Even more, he lost his Father. On the cross, he cried, my God, my God. What does that mean?
Each and every sin is actually paid for, eliminated, and needs to be handled in a way that the person can actually receive forgiveness. I learned about a powerful example from the Holocaust.
“After the defeat of Hitler’s Nazi regime in World War II, Holocaust survivor and Christian Corrie ten Boom returned to Germany to declare the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. One evening, after giving her message, she was approached by a man who identified himself as a former Nazi guard from the concentration camp at Ravensbruck, where she had been held and where her sister, Betsie, had died.
When Corrie saw the man’s face, she recognized him as one of the most cruel and vindictive guards from the camp. He reached out his hand and said to her, “A fine message, Fraulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea! You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk. I was a guard there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fraulein, will you forgive me?” About this encounter, Corrie writes:
“I stood there—I whose sins had again and again been forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place. Could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking? It could have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do . . . I had to do it—I knew that. [The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. . . . ] But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. “Jesus, help me!” I prayed silently.
“As she reached out her hand to the former guard, Corrie says that something incredible took place. She continues:
“The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. “I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!” . . . I had never known love so intensely, as I did then. But even then, I realized it was not my love . . . It was the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Scott Sauls, A Gentle Answer, Thomas Nelson, 2020, pp.19-20)
Forgive, don’t oppress your neighbors.
So what are you going to do what person you feel is so dumb?
Jesus has given us an incredible resource. Let me see if I can show us. Imagine a situation with a friend, a neighbor or a coworker.
One of the things a Christian can always say is, we don’t know, I don’t know, we could be wrong, and I could be wrong. No matter what the topic is – masks, politics, school openings, There is a man in the Bible called Job. He lost his family, his wealth, and his health. His friends all told him, “You must have done something terribly wrong. Curse God and die.” In the end of the book, God tells the friends they were wrong the whole time. He never tells Job if something was wrong. God is the only one with a true outsider’s perspectives.
At the same time, there are so many good and true and beautiful things that we do know, and we should talk about them. Justice should reign. Truth should ring out. Mercy should flourish.
This is what the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus gives us. It lets us avoid both zealotry and passivity. Zealotry is what happens when we say, this is the only way we can be accepted by God and the other people. That’s not true. Jesus says, “let them grow together”. I’ll figure it out. And yet Jesus says, “let them grow together”. Grow into what is good and true and beautiful. Passivity is not the answer. Just as Jesus is risen from the dead, we grow in a new life.
Avoid both zealotry and passivity as you love your neighbor.
Will you join me in loving our neighbors?
Some of you are really great neighbors. You’re living forgiveness with your neighbor whether or not they want it. Thank you. And I hope you get a chance to share your stories.
Most of us frankly aren’t.
Jesus doesn’t say it explicitly in this lesson. What he says explicitly is, “I’m the great farmer and harvester. And someday I’ll get to collect a great harvest.” He hints at the way to get there. It’s letting the weeds and the wheat grow together. It’s forgiving the nonbeliever. It’s growing together with your neighbor.
Will you join me in loving our neighbors? And I bet we’ll see a harvest more awesome than we’ve ever known.
Forgive, don’t oppress your neighbors.