My wife, Kate, is immensely keen on gardening. She spends a lot of time each Spring planting seeds carefully, one-by-one, in little plastic tubs. Until
they’re tough enough to plant out, they live on the conservatory window-sill.
She feeds them, and waters them, and any weeds that hitch a ride in the compost
are pinched out the second they appear. Now, if I was to suggest to Kate that
she leave the weeds to grow up with the flowers, I imagine she would give me
one of those looks. But that’s exactly what the landowner tells his labourers
to do in the parable we heard earlier. What are we meant to draw from that?
In these
weeks leading up to Advent, the Church focuses on the idea of the coming
Kingdom. It’s a massively important topic, and one that was central to Jesus’ teaching.
But it’s not an easy concept to understand, and it’s not one that plays well to
the 21st century mind-set. In
short, Jesus tells his followers over and over again – in stories, lessons or actions
– that the world will not always look the way it does now. On the contrary, he
makes clear that history is heading towards an unimaginable climax, a time when
all of creation will see the victory of God’s rule and God’s values.
It’s that
final victory, and the journey towards it, that we think of each year in the
month before Advent. But it’s not an easy doctrine to assert with confidence at
this point in history. Gone are the centuries in which it was deemed foolishness
to challenge the teaching of the Bible. Gone even are the clear battle-lines
between religion and science that I grew up with. We are at a point in history
where most people don't know what to believe or whom to believe in. The
media, the scientific community, the public services, the government.. all are struggling
to retain the public’s trust. The Church has taken blow after blow to its
credibility. And the greedy and the wicked seem ever less unaccountable for
their actions. In a spiritual and moral vacuum like this, how can we
confidently proclaim that God is in control, and that the world is moving
towards the establishment of his Kingdom?
There’s nothing new in this kind of confusion; in fact many
historians have commented on the parallels between our own cultural mood and
the world Jesus was born into. And as Jesus addresses the doubts and fears of
his 1st century followers, he throws light on our own chaotic times.
The first question that Jesus’ words help to illuminate, is
this:
Is God really working
his purpose out as year succeeds to year?
Or has morality
broken down too far to believe that he is in control.
Jesus reassures his followers – then and now - that God is
in control of history. He won’t allow the wicked, the oppressors, those who oppose
his rule, to escape justice forever. It’s an important reminder, because it’s
become fashionable in some Christian circles to play down any concept of divine
judgment. But to leave judgment out of the picture is to portray God as unjust.
Jesus makes clear that his Father knows what’s in each person’s heart, and that
he will act. Far from being too uncompromising a message for the modern world, it’s
a message of hope that the modern world desperately needs to hear.
But that leaves the
way open for a follow-up question: If God is in control, and knows the hearts
of men and women, why is he letting the wicked get away with it for so long?
It’s a fair question, and Jesus wants to reassure his
listeners that God has a good reason for allowing evil to continue unchecked
for the time being. In the story, the landowner allows the wheat and the weeds to
grow up together until harvest-time. His main concern is avoiding damage to tender
young plants. Infant shoots look much the same, but when they grow up and bear
fruit it’s very easy to tell them apart. This revelation of God’s patience is good news for those
budding Christians who are still unsure whether they fully belong to him. But I
think the people Jesus most wants to hear this are the spiritually proud, those
of us who think we know who is of God and who isn’t. It’s so easy to be judgmental,
to presume that we know who is in tune with God, to draw up a mental list of
those we should or shouldn’t work with. Jesus’ words call us to leave the
judging to God, and to work with whom we can to push out the boundaries of the
Kingdom.
The third and final
question is a very practical one: In this age of spiritual and moral confusion, when there is such ingrained suspicion of authority figures and truth claims, how should we go
about sharing the message of the Kingdom with the outside world?
The answer sounds obvious, but surprisingly few churches do
it: We should look at the way Jesus himself communicated the message to a
spiritually and morally confused audience. And the first thing we notice is
that he doesn’t expect the public to accept a set of beliefs. Rather, what we
see him doing is planting seeds of doubt and hope in their minds. We see him
telling stories with a twist, performing actions that turned their normal way
of thinking on its head. And then, once they had been drawn into his community,
and wanted to move on… then he took them somewhere quiet and unpacked the theory
behind the stories and the actions. In a similar way, we can’t expect outsiders to the church to
be attracted by beliefs and traditions that they’ve been conditioned to regard
as primitive or irrelevant. But we can draw people in by being Christ for them,
letting Jesus live through us, telling them stories with a hidden meaning, serving
them in the way Jesus served while he was on earth. As they are drawn in, they
will learn the meaning of the stories and begin to understand all that Jesus
Christ has done for us. But the starting point is speaking their language,
serving them, defying their expectations.
In summary
- We’re living through a time of spiritual and
moral chaos, but God is in control. Precisely because he is merciful and just,
people will be held accountable. Jesus himself tells us so.
- It’s tempting to jump to conclusions about
people, but only God knows who is his. One day all will be revealed, but for
now it’s not our place to judge.
- And finally, we’re being called to proclaim the
Gospel in a way that makes sense to the world. To be Christlike, and save the
theoretical unpacking, like Jesus himself did, for those who are ready to hear
it.
Taken together, Jesus’s words should give us a renewed
confidence in the relevance of the Kingdom of God to a confused world, and a
patient willingness to keep engaging with the community in loving outreach as
we entrust God with the outcomes.
DID THIS HELP YOU? DID IT ANNOY YOU? PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT.