A More Perfect Union
Scripture Reading: Matt. 13:24-30
About 10 years ago, when I was a few months into my tenure leading the English ministry of a church in South Korea, I attended a retreat for English-speaking mission workers serving in Korea. There were only about 10 of us, but we represented a good chunk of the globe. There were two others from the PC(USA), but also represented were Canada, the UK, Hungary, Pakistan, and the Philippines. I can recount all that only because I still have the program.
In one of the presentations, the speaker gave us an overview of the state of Christianity in South Korea. One number from that presentation has stayed with me ever since. Presbyterians make up the largest segment of Christians in South Korea, but there are (or there were at the time) 120 different Presbyterian denominations! Not Protestant denominations collectively, mind you, but solely Presbyterian! If you search “Presbyterianism in South Korea” on Wikipedia, you can find a list of all of them.
To make matters more confusing, the English translation for most of these denominations is the same: “Presbyterian Church in Korea.” Many of them had once been part of a larger denomination but because of some doctrinal dispute they decided to separate themselves and either join a different denomination or form an altogether new one.
Doctrinal disputes leading to church schisms are hardly confined to Korea. Here in the U.S. Presbyterians have a similar history of disagreeing and dividing. Each century has had its own hot-button issue. In the 18th century it was revivalism. In the 19th century—sadly, tragically—it was slavery. In the early 20th century it was evolution. Later in the 20th century it was the ordination of women. In the current century the source of schism is same-sex marriage and ordination.
Lest you think that church schisms are a uniquely Presbyterian phenomenon, just last month the United Methodist Church, the largest Methodist denomination in the country, announced that 6,000 congregations, one-fifth of the total, will be leaving the denomination due to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage within the denomination.
Nor do the reasons for church schism need to be theological, political, or even all that serious. In seminary I heard of a church that split because the leadership changed the color of the carpet in the sanctuary!
It’s tempting—and as Protestants, far too easy—to break the bonds of fellowship within our churches in an attempt to create a more ideologically pure church, a church free from those who—in their ignorance, foolishness, or just plain wickedness—don’t share our enlightened point of view.
As in the Parable of the Weeds that we just heard, it’s easy for us to imagine ourselves as the good seed and those who disagree with us as the weeds. The weeds offer nothing but trouble. They are persistent and stubborn. They may look like us. They may share space with us. But they are not truly part of us, so the thinking goes. One day they will be uprooted once and for all.
As you might imagine, I’m going to propose a different take on the parable, one that’s more in line with the nuanced view of human nature espoused by the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans. But we’ll get to that a bit later.
The Parable of the Weeds, like the Parable of the Sower that we heard last week, describes the nature of the kingdom of God. However, unlike with the Parable of the Sower, this time Jesus lets the crowd know what he’s talking about. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field,” he begins, “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 word for “weeds” that Jesus uses is not a catch-all but refers to a specific plant, Lolium temulentum, or in English, darnel. Darnel, a plant native to Palestine, bears an uncanny resemblance to wheat but is in fact poisonous. [An unimportant but interesting side note: the Latin word temulentum, meaning “drunk,” refers to the drunkenlike stupor that comes over a person who ingests darnel.]
It’s not hard to imagine why the metaphor of darnel appealed to Jesus. Thus far his message of grace for sinners has met with resistance from the scribes and Pharisees. These religious authorities, who appear to be genuine servants of God, in their resistance to Jesus reveal themselves as being like weeds sown among wheat. They are insidious and destructive, choking grace and mercy like a weed wrapping itself around a stalk of wheat.
I want to bring front and center something that I hope we don’t lose sight of, which is that with this parable Jesus is saying something about the kingdom of God, or in Matthew’s terms, the kingdom of heaven. Jesus isn’t simply making an observation about human nature as a philosopher would. Rather, he’s saying something about the nature of God’s rule. In the kingdom of heaven the wheat and the weeds grow side by side.
In the kingdom of heaven, the wheat and the weeds grow side by side.
Now, you may ask yourself, How can this be? Isn’t the kingdom of heaven a place where God reigns, where God’s peace and love prevail for all eternity? What place have weeds in the fields of the Lord?
As is often the case with Jesus, the answer requires some nuance. By “kingdom of heaven” Jesus doesn’t mean “heaven” per se, i.e., the place where we encounter God’s eternal presence after death. The kingdom of heaven has an already/not yet quality to it. The kingdom is already present in the life and teachings and ministry of Jesus. The kingdom of heaven is manifest whenever he heals someone who is sick, frees someone who is possessed, or forgives someone of their sin.
But there is also a sense in which the kingdom is not yet fully manifest. The kingdom does not yet exist in its fullness to our eyes and ears because the weeds still grow amid the wheat. Life-negating and destructive powers exist alongside life-affirming ones. The power of sin and death may have been defeated on the cross, but it is not yet destroyed.
This holds true not only outside the church but even within the church. The church is not immune to these destructive forces because, as we are all fully aware, the church is made up of sinners.
And this is where I’d like to bring in Paul. In chapter 7 of his Letter to the Romans, with astonishing insight and foresight, Paul diagnoses his own internal dilemma. “I do not understand my own actions,” he writes. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”
Writing some 1,800 years before psychologists began using the term “subconscious,” Paul has effectively identified it. The subconscious refers to mental activities that affect thoughts, feelings, and behaviors without entering our awareness. However, rather than subconscious, Paul uses the term “sin.” Paul wants to do what is right in the eyes of God, but finds himself powerless to actually do it. “I can will what is right,” he says, “but I cannot do it.”
Paul sees in himself the power of sin at work. These aren’t individual sins. Paul is not referring to any specific sin that he committed. He is instead speaking of sin as a power, a force, more like gravity, only not external but internal. Think of this as “Sin” with a capital “S.” It’s a force against which his will (and ours) is powerless. Only the saving power of Christ on the cross can defeat it. Only the sanctifying power of his Holy Spirit in the lives of sinners can resist it.
So when it comes to this Parable of the Weeds, rather than a binary us vs. them mindset, in which we conveniently deem ourselves the wheat and our opponents the weeds, I encourage us to internalize this parable by recognizing that we are all comprised of both wheat and weeds. We have it in us to be saint and sinner simultaneously. Yes, there are some people who seem to make it their mission to sow division within the church. I have encountered one or two during my time in ministry. But they are, fortunately, few in number, and tend to reveal themselves rather quickly.
We have it in us to be saint and sinner simultaneously.
Much more common are Christians of good conscience who take opposite sides of an issue, as Peter and Paul did, as Luther and the Catholic Church did, and as countless Protestant churches have done for 500 years and counting. There is no perfect and ideologically pure church, at least not on this side of eternity. The church remains a work in progress.
Presbyterians know this well. It’s why we’ve adopted a particular Latin phrase as our unofficial motto—Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda: the reformed church always being reformed. There’s always more for the church to learn from the Holy Spirit as it seeks to become a more perfect union.
Although that phrase, “a more perfect union,” comes from the U.S. Constitution, it applies equally well to the church. The preamble begins, “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union….” Please note that it’s not “Weed the people in order to form a more perfect union.” That’s how we’d like it to be. We think, “The church would be better off without this or that group or person! Can’t we just get rid of them?” But as much as we’d like to weed out those who frustrate and annoy us, God has determined that we will grow together, however imperfectly.