Homily for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity
Our readings for this morning are found on page 116 which is the fifth Sunday in Epiphany. It is exceptionally rare to have 25 Sundays after Trinity and the prayer book makes an accommodation for the possibility of two additional Sundays by taking from lesser-used propers in Epiphany season.
Traditionally, this is the season of harvest in the United States with the Thanksgiving holiday signaling the end of another cycle of planting and harvest with a celebration of God’s goodness. The cycle is now complete - metaphorically, the grain is now safely in the barn. Our Gospel for today looks forward to the great harvest - tares into the furnace and the wheat placed safely in the barn.
St. Matthew tells us that Jesus “sets before” the people a parable. Indeed, Jesus “sets before” the people another parable just like Moses had set before God’s people the commandments given to Him by God. Even in the structure of St. Matthew’s giving of the parable, we see that Jesus is the greater Moses whose very words are equal with those given on Mount Sinai - absolutely binding on God’s people. Absolute truth about the nature of eternal life. Jesus sets before them another parable. For the parable today comes immediately after the parable of the sower and Our Lord’s explanation to the disciples.
Our Lord compares the kingdom of heaven to a man who sowed good seed in his field. He had given good seed to his workers to sow in his field to bring forth a bountiful harvest.
Then we read of the enemy who sneaks in during the nighttime and plants tares among the good seed. Think about the intentionality and labor of doing such a thing. Apparently, the enemy is not able to remove the good seed that is sown. It would seem that he lacked the authority to do so; much like our Lord’s statement that no one would be able to pluck the good seed out from his hand.” (John 10:29). He tries a different tactic whereby he plants the bad seed in the midst of the good wheat. The earlier parable concludes with the explosive growth of the seed in good soil. There is good soil here and the enemy is not content for it to remain filled with good seed. He has his own seed of his own word - not the word of life but a word of death. He cannot destroy the good seed planted in good soil, he can only pervert by adding his own deceptions, his own version of the word. His hope is that it will choke out the good seed in the proper soil.
St. Matthew describes this bad seed as tares or zizania in Greek - it’s only instance of the use of this word in the Scriptures. Tares are a variety of rye grass and it is the only species of rye in which the seeds are poisonous. This weed looks very similar to wheat in its early stages and can only be identified completely when it is ripe. When the tares black seeds distinguish them from the wheat. If the seeds of the tares are commingled with the wheat it will ruin the flour. As strange as it sounds, there was a body of Roman case law dealing with the problem of the sowing of tares in a neighbor's field. Apparently, it was the sort of thing warring neighbors might be tempted to do.
St. Luke tells us that time passed before the servants recognized the problem. It took time before the tares could be identified.
The servants go to the master - the owner - and ask him if he planted a good seed. They ask if there was a problem with the master’s plan. Did he make a mistake? They seemed surprised that anything other than the good seed should grow in the fertile ground. The master, the owner, clarifies the problem - an enemy has done this. It isn’t the fault of the seed, it is good; it isn’t the fault of the master for he purchased and directed the servants to sow it. It isn’t negligence on the part of the servants who planted the seed and tended to its growth. It is direct sabotage of the enemy who has done this evil act.
The impulse of the servants - those closest to the problem; the ones most directly responsible for the care of the fledgling crop of good seed - was to pull up the bad plants. On the surface, this seems reasonable. How many of us weed our gardens - pull up those plants that compete with what we intentionally planted.
But the master knows the characteristics of the tares: that tares protect themselves by wrapping their roots around those of the wheat and the bad seed that was planted in the middle of the wheat is intertwined with the good. If the tares are pulled up then it would pull up the good wheat as well.
As we take the parable of the soils and the parable of the tares together, if Satan can’t keep the good seed from taking root, which is the point of the parable of the soils, then he tries to overwhelm the workers by overcoming them with the growth of unanticipated evil in their midst. Yet, none of this catches the master off guard. He knows immediately what has happened and what the best remedy will be. He acknowledges that the problem is not the seed that was sown rather it is the action of the adversary. The adversary seeks to destroy good by introducing the bad. Satan would want nothing better than to convert the fields into a battle ground.
Instead, says the master, let them grow together and it will be sorted out in the end. The harvest, the threshing floor, will sort that which is good from that which is evil. At the harvest, they will separate the good from the bad. The tares in their entirety will be cast into the furnace and the wheat will be harvested and put in the master’s barn. Safe, secure.
A few verses later, the disciples ask Jesus for the meaning of this parable, like they did for the parable of the soils. Jesus explains that God has allowed the ungodly to remain and not be removed immediately. We are often tempted to ask why God allows the unfaithful, the ungodly to remain unjudged in the present. He does so to protect the good seed. There is considerable debate on whether the field in this parable is the world or the church.
Modern commentators look at Our Lord’s explanation and his statement and suggest that the field is the world and leave it there, meaning that the unbelieving world is not judged immediately but must wait until the end. It was the consensus among the Church Fathers that the field was the church. First, they noted that Jesus introduces this as a parable of the kingdom of heaven and that the explanation of the parable references the gathering out of God’s kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity and cast them into a furnace of fire (Matthew 13:40-42). Why does this matter? If the field is the world, Jesus is simply saying that God will judge the good and the bad at the end of time. The uprooting has to do with the disruption of society which may result from the bad being uprooted. If the field is the world, then Jesus is not speaking to the danger of pulling up the evil from among the good in the Church. If the field is the Church, then we are called to let God sort God’s visible people. If we are too impatient in this age, it would destroy his Church.
It might uproot the good along with the bad because they have overlapping roots. One could argue that the field is both the world and the Church. Truly, God at the proper appointed time, will judge both the living and the dead. Judgment will come. All will face judgment - both inside and out of the Church. In both circumstances, we await God settling the account. Within the Church, we wait for God to judge - for the wheat and tares abide together. That is why the Church is slow to practice excommunication, expulsion. If every sin of every individual was met with exacting scrutiny, we would be a very small group indeed. Except in the most extreme and unusual of circumstances when the congregation is vexed or scandalized, the Church is patient. It prays, preaches, admonishes and gives opportunity for repentance, so that by God’s transforming grace, the hypocrites, the Pharisee, the tares might hear the Gospel and believe and be transformed.
Not appearing to have a righteousness in common with the Pharisees and hypocrites but a genuine, deep, abiding faith in Christ that transforms their lives. In the most general sense, we need to leave the judgment to God. As we read today, he will sort it out in the end. It should be a comfort to those whose obedience is misunderstood and a disturbance to those who are satisfied with appearance. God is not satisfied with appearances, with fleeting, vacuous expressions of faith. He requires people to be rooted and grounded in love, bearing the fruit of the Spirit, which produces true obedience in the life of the Christian.
Let us not look at others but primarily ourselves. And ask the question: Is Jesus the ultimate authority in my life? Am I eager to please him? Do I obey Him? Do I listen to the Scriptures as though they are the instructions of the true King? Am I satisfied with appearances of righteousness, of belonging in the barrest sense to the Church? Let us seek the Lord while he may be found, the time of his mercy. Let us take the moments before the Holy Communion and meditate on our need for mercy and the God who delights to provide it through Jesus Christ.