Kingdom: Patience
God Calls Us to Patience
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. July 23rd, 2023
Pastor Phil, before he retired, left me a garden. I am not half the gardener he is, and I have not been nearly as attentive as I ought to be. The garden he left me was full of a variety of fruits, greens, root vegetables, and the like. Varieties that I did not know existed grew in that garden. And all I needed to do was water it. Year two rolled around and I let it lie fallow. Mainly because of my own laziness. Though I justified it to myself by saying the land needs a sabbath year.
But this year I’m taking it seriously. I’ve planted squash, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cabbage, things I’m certain I will put to use. And I’ve been diligent in watering it. But what I have underestimated, what I’m having difficulty dealing with, is the sheer amount of weeds that keep sprouting up. Weeds in the flower bed. Weeds among the rhubarb. Weeds in the onions. Weeds by the peppers. Weeds, weeds, and more weeds. I was generous enough to leave a patch of land for the weeds to grow and help the pollinators. But do you think the weeds appreciated that? No, they grow where they will.
In Jesus’ parable this morning, his parable about the Kingdom, the weeds don’t grow simply because they will. They grow because of sabotage. Jesus compares the Kingdom to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But one night, while his servants were sleeping, an enemy snuck in and sowed weeds among the wheat. Or, literally, he sowed weeds in the wheat. And left before anyone noticed. Over time the weeds that the enemy sowed grew up among the wheat. Perplexing and troubling the servants who knew all the seed they sowed was good.
The owner of that farm knew what was going on. “An enemy has done this,” he said. The servants asked if he wanted them to go and pluck the weeds. The sort of backbreaking labor I have been putting off for days and weeks. But the owner tells them no, because the weeds are so entwined with the good wheat that if they were to pull the weeds they would damage the good wheat too. But when harvest comes they will take it all and separate the good and the bad.
Matthew doesn’t explain all of Jesus’ parables, but we get an explanation here. The disciples ask Jesus to explain the ominous parable of the weeds. And he tells them the one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. We might imagine, given the similarity of the parables, that the seed of this parable is the same of seed from the parable of the sower. It is the seed of the word, the seed of the gospel, the seed of faith that grows in receptive hearts. The field is the world, the good seed is the children of the Kingdom. But the bad seeds are children of the evil one. And the reapers are angels. At the end of days, Jesus says, God will send his angels to harvest, separate the good from the bad. The bad will be burned. The good will go to everlasting life.
This parable reminds us of two things. The first is that we live in a mixed and messed up world. Good is constantly intertwined with bad. It can be hard to discern what is righteous and what is unrighteous. The line between child of God and child of the devil runs through our own hearts as well. Problems we experience in the Church are not new. The Church has always been mixed, always been encumbered by weeds, and has always been handicapped in her mission. If that mission were entirely the responsibility of her members.
But the second thing the parable reminds us of is more important. We don’t need Jesus to tell us that the good can be opaque, evil is all around us, and the Church has a mix of the two. That’s empirical. From the earliest Church we see false teaching, lies, immorality, greed, and so on. What’s important is what Jesus tells us to do about it. And that is be patient.
The workers of the farm are impatient. They want to solve this problem that plagues the crop. And so they ask if they can go out into the field and tear out the weeds. But the owner tells them if they do that they will tear up the good seed too, the two are so intertwined. We might wish for a pure Church. But then we’d have to remove ourselves as well. That line runs deep. And in this age the two, good and evil, cannot be so easily separated. So the owner tells them to be patient. Not lazy. But patient.
Wait. Wait for the end of the age. When all is harvested, when all is sorted, when we will be able to judge the good fruit from the bad, the bad seed from the good. Patience can be hard for us to hear, or hard for us to bear. But patience is a premiere Christian virtue. We can afford to be patient in the midst of trial and scandal because we put our hope in the one who is patient for our sake. Who desires that no one be condemned. Who has given us all the time in the world to spread good seed, and to know his grace.
The Kingdom of God, in this age, is a mixed kingdom. But it is also a kingdom of patience. A kingdom of patient people following a patient God. Relying on him to perfectly fulfill his promises at the end.