I never really wanted 3MT to be a repository of sermons, but I have weakened. This is based on a sermon preached yesterday in St Stephen’s Church, Canterbury, in the light of the meeting of the Lambeth Conference, which is taking place within our parish. So, for this one occasion only (!), we present Eight Minute Theology…!

3MT : Weeds, Wheat and Unity [ 8:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (227)

Do you want to hear a sick joke?¹

So then we turn to the parable of the wheat and the weeds in Matthew 13. It’s very tempting to think that this parable is a direct description of the world and church we find ourselves in: we know that God works all things for the good, and we have a fairly good idea of what the good is that God wants to achieve in our church. And yet, unaccountably, the person in the pew next to us or three rows in front of us, doesn’t seem to share the same understanding: in fact, they are positively antagonistic towards our ideas (God’s ideas!) for what we should be doing next. The only explanation can be is that they are the weeds, sown by the enemy, and we are the children of righteousness, sown by God.

It’s then very easy, and very tempting, to begin to look around the church (the parish church, the national church, the Anglican Communion) and begin to mark out the weeds from the wheat, and prepare for the day of harvest. But, as the parable explains, that isn’t what the Lord of the harvest wants us to do. According to his instructions the weeds and the wheat are to grow together until harvest time, and then, and only then, will they be gathered in, and separated and the weeds burnt off. And it is the Lord of the Harvest who will do the directing; of what needs to be gathered, and what needs to be burnt.

NOT US

I would happily chuck any number of people out of heaven:

• refuse to believe in evolution as a explanation for the development of species differences? You’re out (you’re too stupid to be a Christian)
• do you insist in thinking that being “christian” means nothing more than “being kind and neighbourly” and not wanting to sincerely follow Jesus Christ? You’re out (you’ve obviously never even tried to read the Gospels).
• do you insist on swearing in front of me and then apologising ostentatiously for doing so? You’re out (you’re just showing off, childishly)

Those are the people that I would chuck out, and I bet they could compile a list which would include me; once, twice or a hundred times.

But, guess what?

I don’t have the final say.

That’s God’s job, and curiously, God has a different set of criteria to me.

God’s criteria is that everybody (everybody) has ultimate worth and value, and that everybody (everybody) should be given every possible chance to live their life, to orient their life, according to the values and practices of heaven.

For some people that will mean coming to church, and saying their prayers. For other people, orienting their life along the values and practices of heaven will have nothing whatsoever to do with church: they will have performed works of charity and compassion, that were costly to them and to their standing in society, and at the last, the Lord of the Harvest will say to them, ‘Come in to the place I have prepared for you’ (and in case you don’t believe me, then go away and look up Matthew 25).

There’s a country singer called Lyle Lovett who expressed this difference beautifully:

Who keeps on trusting you
When you’ve been cheating
And spending your nights on the town
And who keeps on saying that he still wants you
When you’re through running around
And who keeps on loving you
When you’ve been lying
Saying things ain’t what they seem
God does
But I don’t
God will
But I won’t
And that’s the difference
Between God and me

So, let’s be thankful that God is different from both you and me; let’s be thankful that the way He judges us and will judge us is different from the judgement we would inflict on each other.

There is a practical benefit to all this as well. If we realise that it’s not our job to judge our brothers and sisters in Christ, then we might actually be able to get on with the task that God has given us, which is living as if we really believed the kingdom of heaven is already among us. We would stop looking for the things that divide us and concentrate on the things that unite us. We would believe that unity is more important than purity. We would believe (and behave as if we believed) that other people, other lives, might have an insight into what it is that God wanted for us, that we didn’t have the monopoly on God’s will.

We would be, in short, Christians.

There is the other way: we can split, and split, and split. Separate ourselves from anyone who disagrees with us in anyway about anything. It doesn’t matter whether it is about doctrine or morality or worship or even whether we should serve Café Direct or organic coffee after church. If you want to split then an argument about refreshments is just as good a reason as an argument about redemption.

And it doesn’t matter how trivial the reason for the split might be if we can use the bible to justify it: if we preface our argument with “the bible says…”, then who is going to be able to argue against us? (and if they attempt then it means that they don’t take the bible seriously, so we can feel free to split from them).

If we work at it really well, you can eventually make our church congregation incredibly pure: tiny, but incredibly pure. We’ll end up like the tiny group of disappointed people playing at being a church in a former wedding dress shop. That’s not the church. That’s pathetic. (But let’s leave God to judge the ultimate worth of the “Anglican Catholic Wendy Church”)

So moral of this talk:

Peace is better than war.
Unity is better than purity.
We are better together than apart.
It’s God’s job to judge, and it’s our job to live as if we believe all these things.

1. an original joke by Emo Philips [↩]