Wheat or Weeds?

[Our readings were Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 86:11-17, Romans 8: 12-25, and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.]

“Let anyone with ears Listen!” What wonderful words to hear right before a sermon!

In our reading from Genesis, we have the story of Jacob going to sleep and using a stone for a pillow. I recently heard a recording of a sermon by our Presiding Bishop where she said that it was not only amazing that Jacob could sleep on a stone, but that he could sleep at all, considering the evil things he had done! But there, despite all this, Jacob does sleep and he has a dream in which God promises that land for Jacob and his offspring, who “shall be like the dust of the earth.”

While God is making this promise, Jacob sees a ladder stretching from the earth up to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. Over 30 years ago, I had the chance to see this visualized on the West Front of the Abbey Church of St. Peter in Bath, England. There, carved in the stone walls, are two ladders with the figures of angels on them. Some of the angels are upside-down, with their heads closest to the ground. As our guide explained to us, how else could you show in stone that angels are descending?

Jacob’s ladder has an important meaning to him and to us. That ladder which connects heaven and earth is there for us. It connects humanity with heaven. When we say we want to be part of the Kingdom of God or heaven, we are claiming the role of the angels in Jacob’s dream as we connect the world in which we live with heaven at the other end.

Climbing is hard work. In this case, it involves doing things to bring God’s love to the world. When we do things which support the Millennium Development Goals, we climb that ladder. This Thursday, the bishops of the Anglican Communion and their spouses, along with other religious, will march through the heart of London to urge our governments to live up to our promises to fulfill these goals. But they do not march alone. We will be with them in spirit, and even more, as God told Jacob in his dream, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

God’s choice of Jacob has another meaning to us. We sometimes think of those whom God calls as being different, more holy perhaps, than the vast majority of humanity. God’s choosing Jacob shows that this is not so. If God were looking for a perfect person, He probably would not have chosen Jacob, who did some pretty despicable things to his brother Esau. Most of us would have probably decided that Jacob wasn’t good enough.

That leads us to Jesus’ parable of the weeds. I have never planted wheat, but I can visualize the problem. In the early stages of growth, the wheat and weeds are indistinguishable to the human eye and their roots are intertwined. If we do what the householder’s slaves suggested and try to pull the weeds up now, we’ll pull up the wheat and the weeds. The thing to do is wait for the harvest, when the harvester will be able to separate safely the weeds from the wheat and only the weeds will be destroyed.

There are a lot of people these days who are willing to do the sorting now. In the Anglican Communion, we have people, some of them in high places who claim the ability to tell the wheat from the weeds right now based on gender or orientation or many other characteristics. But we aren’t called to be weeders. That’s God’s job. If we try, and some are willing, we’ll pull up a lot of wheat. If God can wait until the harvest, why can’t we wait?

Churches aren’t called to be museums for saints, but hospitals for sinners. If we try to purge every sinner out of the Church, we’ll be like the congregation that purged itself down to the last couple. “Only John and I are left,” said Alice, “and I don’t know about him.” Instead, let us trust in God’s ability to choose, not ours.