But why must the weeds remain with the wheat? In recent days, Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13:24-30 is troubling and intriguing me more than ever. This morning I met with a friend that I have the awesome privilege of walking through life with right now and he was, in different terms than mine, talking about this same idea. He was talking about self-absorption and how sometimes in our trek through life we seem to mature and grow knowingly or unknowingly at the expense of others. He said, by our nature we are born and bred consumers as we so often progress while making things difficult for someone else. This deep analytic guy was talking in terms way over my head and so I can't even begin to replicate what he was saying, but we ultimately agreed that he was talking about this ever deepening mystery of the wheat and the weeds.
For most of us who spent our childhoods in conservative christian homes, our parents and our churches spent much energy helping us avoid anything resembling evil or darkness. We upheld this dualistic worldview in which the flesh is bad and the Spirit is good. Then one day we found ourselves in a rut, in the middle of something seemingly so dark and overwhelming and we cried out to God in the injustice of it all. Death, divorce, cancer, a friend's betrayal, something that served to wound our hearts so badly and forced us to face this idea that the world is a hybrid, a mixture of darkness and light. That in our quest for light, we can't avoid confrontation with darkness. What a seemingly impossible place to sit in.
In light of this conversation, I had an interesting learning experience last week during Angie and I's southwest road trip. As we traveled through the land of the Navajo's, i learned that Native Americans do not value this dualsim within their tradition. The Pueblo people create both clowns and kachina's to expose darkness and light together. They had a good mother, the Corn Maiden ready to give blessing and provision typically paired with an Ogre Woman ready to brutally snatch away. It was a similar concept to the Far East understanding of the Yin always being intertwined with the Yang. These people didn't grow up in constant fear and avoidance of darkness or the continual process of carefully attempting to seperate the wheat from the weeds.
So my friend and i didn't come to any resolutions this morning except to further dwell on and find a bit of assurance in the mystery of this parable found in Matthew's gospel. This mystery has been brought to the forefront of my attention recently in reading Richard Rohr's Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation. In it, Rohr says,
"We remain split. Flesh is bad and Spirit is good in our terrible dualism. Yet the Christian religion is suppossed to be incarnation--a love affair between flesh and spirit. It is really quite strange." ... "Ours is the only religion in the world that dares to believe that God became flesh."
So, we are told in the Bible that perfection (wheat) had to dwell with imperfection (weeds) so that order would be restored. And now, as his image bearers, we dwell within the same paradox, seeking to grow wheat while allowing weeds to grow along side it. The two somehow belong together for now, which will always confound me.
The end of the parable says it won't always remain like this. That there's hope for a healthy harvest. And Christ communicates this hope by saying the Kingdom isn't here yet, but it's here already. It's at hand, so choose to live as wheat. Choose to live among the weeds cause you can't avoid them anyway. No matter how much fertilizer is applied they'll still pop up. So, can you let them be for now? Can you let the two remain together? It doesn't make sense, does it? But Jesus says that the parable is like the kingdom of heaven in that we can have hope in an ultimate great and holy sifting, that we can truly be still and know that weeds will one day be an afterthought.
...just every other week?
...too far in between.
...you have much to offer in the midst of all you have to do.
...but also know that this blog is ministry...as much as the new church that is budding from your soul.
...sure good hearing your voice today!
...you've been missed!!!
Posted by: Wes Roberts | May 22, 2007 at 08:23 PM