The Parable of the Wheat and Weeds

Preached at St. John the Divine, Houston, TX, on July 17, 2011

Romans 8:12-25 and Matthew 13:24-30 and 36-43

The church is not the Kingdom of God. The job of the church is to proclaim the kingdom. We are not the kingdom. The church is not the kingdom because of all its problems. The church, in its history has tried, through force and intimidation and political moves, to be the kingdom, but it is not. One day the true church will be taken fully into the kingdom at the marriage supper of the Lamb. But the church is not the point of this parable.

In this parable, the wheat and the weeds grow side by side. As people come into the kingdom, the enemy deceives others. The kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world coexist side by side. I’m reminded of that bumper sticker about coexisting. Coexisting is not being in the kingdom; it is about being in the world where the enemy deceives people that all paths lead to God. But Jesus himself ushered in the kingdom of God in his message and ministry. The kingdom was present in him and will be fully present in him when he returns for his bride, the church.

The kingdom is established but not fully fulfilled. This echoes our life of salvation. We are saved, yet we still sin. But as Paul tells us in Romans, God is at work within us. His Spirit is purifying us, disciplining us, convicting us of our sins, and gradually conforming us to the image of Christ. And we know this is happening because we call God, “Abba, Father.” “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children, we are wheat and not weeds. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

When the kingdom is finally consummated, in that great day, we won’t sin anymore nor will we be hurt by sin. Yet for now, Jesus says, do not pull out the weeds, leave them. Why? Because in the reality of the kingdom, the dead come back to life. Weeds become wheat. We cannot judge who they will become. As author Jared Wilson writes, “When we see with kingdom eyes, we don’t write anyone off or leave anyone for dead. Instead, we do the radical, revolutionary, counter-cultural thing—bear with the unbearable and minister with grace to those who don’t have what we have. We coexist with the weeds—peacefully, humbly, lovingly—in the hopes that more and more stalks will come into the light and be transformed into wheat.”

Jesus the King promised that the kingdom would spread when he described the kingdom like yeast in bread dough. He promised the kingdom would grow when he described the kingdom of God to be like a mustard seed. This is what the kingdom does. It sets free those captive to sin. It opens the eyes of the spiritually blind to see the glorious grace of the cross, the wrath of God poured out on his own Son rather than on us undeserving sinners.

Living in the tension of the unfulfilled kingdom teaches us that we who are wheat are not to look upon those who are weeds with disdain, with judgment, or with despair. King Jesus is at work, bringing satisfaction and fulfillment to the grieving and victimized and marginalized as he brings them into his kingdom where we all find hope and peace and love. This invasion of the kingdom continues every day as we in the kingdom crucify our flesh and humble ourselves before a world that revels in the flesh and is totally opposed to humility.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you.” The kingdom is in you. It is not something we institutionalize or politicize or militarize. The kingdom of God is Jesus the King reigning in hearts and minds.

Again, as Jared Wilson says, “The actions of kingdom people testify to the kingdom, but those actions won’t work to further the kingdom—they won’t be a true testimony that glorifies God and sets people free—if they don’t flow from hearts ruled by the King. Right behavior must come from right character. Without right character, right behavior is hypocrisy.”

In spite of our hypocrisy—and let’s admit we all have problems with hypocrisy—we also have a gospel promise: Jesus has accomplished what he set out to do. He achieved victory for us. “For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Why do we wait patiently? Because of the cross. The message of the cross, along with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God, testifies that he is for us. King Jesus, like out-going presidents of the United States, is handing out pardons. These pardons rankle people who oppose the president and/or the people he pardons. But this is a comparable picture of what Jesus has done for us. He sets people free who don’t deserve it, and in the process he scandalizes people who don’t get it.

Yet we know that the kingdom of God is manifested in Jesus our Savior, and that it maintains its presence in the hearts and minds of his followers, and we know that the job of his church is to keep proclaiming this message of the crucified Lord until the return of the King.

I care about you because I care about the King. I love you because Jesus has put that love in my heart, transforming me from a weed to a growing stalk of wheat. There is a day of judgment coming, when the angels will come to gather the weeds and burn them. This is not a story. This is true prophecy uttered from the mouth of Jesus. If you have never heard of the pardon offered to you by Jesus, I pray that the Spirit moves your heart today. I pray that he opens your eyes to see that Jesus is the King who brings you into the only kingdom that will last into eternity: the Kingdom of God. And I pray that the Spirit testifies with your spirit today that you are a child of God and a co-heir of his Son, Jesus Christ, the only true King. Amen.

Antidote for Me: The Kingdom of God

Preached at St. John the Divine, Houston, TX, on July 24, 2011

Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52; Trust in the Age of Arrogance by the Rt. Rev. FitzSimons Allison

There is only one antidote for me, and that is the Kingdom of Heaven, or as the other gospel writers call it, the Kingdom of God. I exist in my own self-centered kingdom until I am born again through the Holy Spirit to become a child of God, focused on God, who lives in the Kingdom of God.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple wrote:

When we open our eyes as babies we see the world stretching out around us; we are in the middle of it . . . I am the center of the world I see. Where the horizon is, depends on where I stand  . . . Some things hurt us; we hope they will not happen again; we call them bad. Some things please us; we hope they will happen again; we call them good. Our standard of value is the way the things affect ourselves. So each of us takes his place in the center of his own world. But I am not the center of the world, or the standard of reference as between good and bad; I am not, and God is.

The number one human problem is self-centeredness.

Our self-centeredness, according to retired Episcopal Bishop FitzSimons Allison in his most recent book, Trust in the Age of Arrogance, “creates the need and requirements for laws, locks, police, prisons, and time-out places for children. This self-as-center is the cause of divorce, litigation, corruption, murder, war, genocide, and terrorism. Human self-centeredness ultimately puts us in an adversarial posture not only with others but with God himself. (pp. xiii-xiv)

What is our hope? How can we get beyond our constant need and struggle to be the center of all things? First, one has to admit we are afflicted with this problematic condition. We have to admit that our ingenuity for taking unfair advantage of others, is never tamed for long by rules or rulers. As long as we see ourselves as the standard reference for good and bad, we will always be in conflict with someone else’s standard of reference. Take the handicap parking space at my gym, for example, that is frequently used by the non-handicapped because it is the best parking space! It makes me sick. But then I’ve parked in handicap spaces as well! But these are minor examples of self-centeredness. Tiger Woods, Elizabeth Taylor, and Bernie Madoff are worse. Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Mohamar Kaddafi, and Sadam Hussein are even worse.

Is it really helpful, however, for us to compare ourselves to others when it comes to self-centeredness? Can each of us at least admit that we have a problem with self-centeredness—even if we haven’t murdered anyone?

So, first, we have to admit we have a problem, a problem that required the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the cross to atone for our sins.

Second, it appears that the most workable solution to this problem is the need to commit oneself to something or someone greater than oneself—to get your eyes off of you and focused on something greater. Perhaps you could commit to the Democratic or Republican parties, to Reaganism or Clintonianism. Perhaps you could commit yourself to following Oprah or Gandhi or the Dali Lama. Perhaps you could commit yourself to capitalism or socialism or communism or consumerism! Perhaps we could commit to being green or nice or generous or to just plain “drive friendly,” like the unnoticed sign on 290 I saw on Friday at rush hour. [Hey everybody, look at this sign and be nice to me!]

Two of the great modern hopes of the 20^th-Century to end human self-centeredness, Nazism and Communism, proved to be utterly flawed. Another great hope, Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism, the pursuit of one’s own rational self-interest and one’s own happiness as the highest purpose of life, has proved to be a philosophy that justifies exploiting the weak and disadvantaged, while pushing for one’s own agenda and personal advancement—a very “uncross-centered” way to live.

You see, we are not only born self-centered, but everything we try to do and follow, save one, leads us into rivalry with others and conflict with God, who is the only true center, the only one who can deal with this in-born disease, namely original or birth-sin. This sin is not in the following of Adam as by example, but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every person, that naturally comes into being in the offspring of Adam. All of us are self-centered and inclined to evil, even after we are baptized. Although, as Paul says, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus . . . [because] nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

FitzSimons Allison tells this story to make the point about our problem with sin. In the secular world stealing someone’s pen is merely a crime against its owner but it is a much deeper offense. In God’s world the pen belongs to Joe and if Bill steals it he is attempting to create a world in which it belongs to Bill. It is an offense against the real center: God. If Bill kills Joe it is not simply a crime against Joe. Bill is trying to create a world in which Joe does not exist. The crime, the offense, the sin is an antagonism against God, the true and final reality. (p. xv)

As David says in Psalm 51, “Against you [O Lord], you only, have I sinned.” Preacher Arthur McGill concurs: “I came to understand that sin is not a matter of morality or conduct, but a state or orientation of a man’s entire consciousness which does not make God its center.”

Once we see this truth, that when we sin it is a sin against God, a rebellion against the Creator, then we come to see that the only true center is God himself, and that our need is to be in this center, to be in the kingdom of God. “ME” must be “crossed-out”!

Therefore, Jesus preached about the kingdom of God: “Repent and believe in the gospel for the kingdom of God is at hand.” Then he explained how the kingdom takes hold of a person’s heart, mind, and life in the Parable of the Sower. He explained why his kingdom is now but not yet, how it begins but is not yet fully blown in the Parable of the Wheat and Weeds. And today we hear: "The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." And Jesus said, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened."

The main point of these two parables, along with the parable of the wheat and the weeds, lies simply in the huge extent of this kingdom which began from such humble, unimpressive beginnings with Jesus and his handful of disciples. From a Galilean carpenter rabbi crucified on a Roman cross to a world-wide faith centered in the person and work and kingship of Jesus.


All three parables of growth focus on the paradox of insignificant or hidden beginnings and the promise of a triumphant climax. For the disciples, and I believe for us today, there is the natural impatience to see God’s kingdom in all its glory, and the total eradication of all that opposes it in our lives and in the world. Let’s admit we’d rather have the glory than to suffer in this life by having to pick up our crosses daily. To Jesus’ disciples and to us who expect God to act dramatically and without delay, Jesus points out that the full growth is assured from the moment the seed is sown and the leaven kneaded in. And like the kingdom, our salvation is assured in the commanding verses of Romans 8: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.


There is a reorientation when we come into the kingdom of God. It is a reorientation away from self and toward God. Yet, we are always tempted to revert to me as center. I was talking about our worship music in the Contemporary Service to someone who said: “I love the worship music I listen to on my iPod and wish it were the music we worshipped to on Sundays.” I’m not trying to be critical of this person because I could just as easily have said the same thing. But the thought dawned on me: What if we each came to worship with our own iPods and could listen, on our own earphones, to our own music, what we like best. We could save money by eliminating the band, and if people were late to worship, they could be listening to their worship music as they drove and they wouldn’t really miss out on worship!


Okay, so sarcasm isn’t the greatest tool of communication, but I think you get my point. It is so easy for Christians to be me-centered. We are self-centered by nature and live in perhaps the most self-centered culture ever where best-selling Apple products all seem to have the word “I” in them. Is this connection between Apple and I a coincidence? That’s just a bonus rhetorical question in this morning’s sermon for you to think on!


Did you know that in the Top 10 Christian Songs on Billboard this week, that only 4 out of 10 use the name Jesus for a total of 8 times in 40 minutes of music? And that 9 out of 10 of these songs refer to either “me” or “I” 142 times? If we were to sing those songs in worship, we would mention ourselves 14 times more than the name of Jesus. Now I am not counting the number of times Jesus is referred to as “you” or “he,” but I think you get the point. The name above all names is Jesus, but if you listen to Top 10 Christian songs, you would think that everything Jesus did was about me.


The antidote to me is new birth, new life in the kingdom of God. The antidote to me is for God to work in me through his Spirit, as I continue to die to self and live for Christ. As Paul says, “For we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose [not my purpose—it’s not about me but about Him]. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son [to die to self to become like Christ], in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. [To be conformed to the image of Jesus is for God to recreate me to be not me-centered but Christ-centered.] And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”


Jesus hasn’t done this so you can worship yourself on a Sunday. Jesus has done this because God is for us. He is for the saints whom he locates in Jesus, those who are born not of the flesh or the will of man but of God. It is the work of God to save us from our sins and rescue us from death and the rule of Satan. One of the great days of my growth as a disciple is when I understood that “you” in the Bible is plural. That God isn’t just talking to me, Reagan, but to the plural you people of God. There is a danger in thinking that the Bible is a personal love letter from God to individual Reagan, and that danger is that I begin to think it is all about me and not about what God has already done for all his people: God foreknew, predestined, called, justified, and has glorified his people in His Kingdom. He did it all and has done it all for his people whom he brings into his kingdom to receive eternal life. And one day, Jesus our King and Judge will say to us, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”
Praise Jesus that the antidote to me isn’t some personal improvement plan for Reagan. Instead, it is life in Christ through his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension with the people of God in his kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world. That is the antidote to me: the awesome, everlasting Kingdom of God. Thank you, King Jesus.