Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

July 19, 2020

Deliver Us from Evil

Saint Matthew 13:24-30

Summer Splendor Series:

The Teachings of Jesus – Deliver Us From Evil.

A story:  In his novel, An Infinity of Mirrors, Richard Condon tells a tale that takes place during World War II.  It is about an unbelievably beautiful Frenchwoman.  Though Jewish, she is married to a monocle-twirling Prussian general.  He cannot see the evil of Hitler until their adored child dies in a Jewish concentration camp.

They retaliate by seducing the guilty SS officer, getting him drunk, dressing him up in concentration garb, and putting him on a train to Auschwitz.   As the train leaves the station the Prussian general exclaims to his Jewish wife:

“We have killed a monster!” 

To which she replies, “No, we have become the monster.”

Deliver us from evil.

In the chapters before this parable we hear the Sermon on the Mount.  Jesus is a wisdom figure – a sage and his teachings are like those of the Zen Masters full of stories and riddles and wise sayings.  We hear the wisdom Jesus speak in Matthew:

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.’

It is in this context that Jesus teaches his followers about evil.  He uses the story of the wheat and the weeds.  I purposely did not read the second half of the Gospel for today.  It is Matthew’s interpretation of the parable for the church of the 1^st century and that would be another sermon. 

Suffice it to say that Matthew was writing to a fledgling church in the midst of confusion just around the time Jerusalem was destroyed.  He interprets this story of Jesus in that context. 

Back to the original parable:  Jesus compares the Kingdom of heaven that is the Kingdom of God to a field that gets sown with good seed – wheat and with bad seed – weeds.  The good seed was spread by the farmer, the bad seed by the enemy.  The slaves want to do some weeding.  The farmer says, “No, it is too hard to tell the good from the bad plants.  We will take care of that at harvest time when we will collect the weeds first and burn them and then gather the wheat into the barn.”

That is the parable – that is it!  God’s loving rule is like this story of a farmer who has a field and lets good and bad grow together and at the harvest makes a decision and naturally burns the weeds and harvests the wheat.

That is it - that is the core story and we need to hear it unencumbered by Matthew’s interpretation.

Like many wisdom figures Jesus presents a dilemma in the parable.  Who can tell good from evil? How do we deal with evil?  How is evil dealt with under God’s gracious rule?

There are no easy answers to these questions.  But Jesus poses the dilemma of evil in the midst of good and gives us a story – an image to ponder and learn how God’s loving rule works.

Here is one way for us in the 21^st Century to speak about this image and enter into the dilemma and question of evil in our lives:

Think of the field as one’s heart – the human heart both individually and collectively.  Our hearts are open to be sown with good seed and with bad seed.  The reality is that both kinds of seeds are in our hearts.

The weed that Jesus is talking about is the ‘bearded darnel.’  It mimics wheat and it is almost impossible to tell the two apart until they grow out at harvest time.  Bearded darnel is a weed that is poisonous and can have a narcotic effect when ingested.  Wheat on the other hand is good for our health and wholeness. 

What does this tell us about evil?  It tells us that evil can appear in the guise of good.  That the distinction between good and evil is often a matter of the choices we make. 

Remember we humans have a capacity for both…both good and bad seed are in our hearts.  And it is not always apparent; we may be blind to our own capacity for evil.  It may suck us in and convince us that what we are doing is good. 

The story is told of a grandmother, a master gardener, who once transplanted some flowers from her garden into her daughter’s front yard as a surprise.  Two days later she frantically came over to her son-in-law in a panic:  “I made a mistake!” she said; sweat dripping from her 80 year old face.  “These are weeds, not flowers like I intended.  Quick give me a hand before your wife gets home!”

Her story and the parable underscore the challenge of distinguishing good from bad, wheat from weeds, loyal opposition from heresy, healthy conflict from destructive antagonism. 

We dare not ignore the human dilemma that evil can fool us and suck us into the very thing we oppose. 

Richard Condon talks about his novel An Infinity of Mirrors:

“What I wanted to say was that when evil confronts us in any form, it is not enough to flee it or to pretend that it is happening to somebody else. But though evil must be opposed, when it is fought with evil's ways it must ultimately corrupt and strangle the opposer.”

In the Harry Potter saga Harry, a young wizard of mixed blood both human and wizard, discovers that he has similar powers to the sinister evil figure Voldemort who is out to destroy Harry and all the non-true blood wizards.  Speaking with Professor Dumbledore, his mentor and head of the school, Harry worries that he will become like Voldemort. 

Dumbledore agrees that Harry shares in the powers of the dark evil Voldemort – but the difference is in the choices each make to use their power. 

Might that be the lesson in the riddle Jesus gives us today?  We have both wheat and weeds in us and in our world. 

Evil has a sinister way of bringing us into its realm and we mirror the evil.  We try to rid ourselves of evil in the world and all too often we take part in and do the very thing we despise.

Each of us is some mixture of wheat and weeds, of holy and unholy, of potentially fruitful and potentially destructive.  We are both saint and sinner and we are capable of both deep compassion and dark hate!

That is why several chapters before Jesus teaches his disciples to pray:  “Deliver us from evil.”  We pray it every Sunday in the Lord’s Prayer.

‘God – deliver us from getting sucked into the ways of evil.  Save us from mirroring evil and its sinister guise of good.’ 

That is the original sin – hubris – or pride – being so sure of ourselves that nothing dare get in our way.  Hubris is the pride that comes before the fall.  It is the tragic flaw of the human heart.  Centering in ourselves we take an absolute position and justify our actions.

Hubris is puffing one’s self up to an inordinate size, overestimating one’s own importance.  Groups often puff themselves up to an inordinate size overestimating their importance and causing conflict in society because they think they have a monopoly on the truth!  It is the ‘my way or the highway’ approach – an utter refusal to recognize our own weeds – evil in us.

There is evil in the world, too.  Do we remain silent or say and do nothing?  Jesus does not suggest that we ignore evil or let the ‘Hitlers’ of our word do whatever they want. 

No!  Christ calls us to center ourselves in the living God.  When we encounter evil we have to be very careful not to get sucked up into its sinister schemes.  So we approach it in the grace that God gives us.  So we constantly ask God to deliver us from evil, from self-deception and pride.

We begin each day in the covenant of our holy baptism.

Luther puts it this way: [See page 1165 in the back of ELW]

What is the significance of such a baptism with water?

Answer: It signifies that daily the old person in us with all our sins and evil desires is to be drowned through sorrow for sin and repentance, and that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Where is this written?

Answer: St. Paul says in Romans 6:3-4, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."

In the face of evil God puts us in Christ.  In Christ we discern a response constantly aware of our own capacity to become what we despise.

That is why baptism is done once – but to be remembered daily – so that we die to the old self and live in the image of Christ.

Remember that the man telling this parable, Jesus Christ, will take himself to the cross to forgive all of the seeds planted into the field.  God delivers us from evil in Christ.  God has the last word on the weeds and the wheat in us and in our world.

Amen