Zeal or Patience

The Wheat and the Weeds.

Matthew 13: 24-30 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”

So many ways to take this parable; so many directions that could apply. Well, scanning some of the resources at The Text This Week I came across a sermon from Dr. Eugene Winkler that had a challenging thought:

So the householder answers, "No, let them grow together until harvest." The question and answer reach out beyond first century Palestine, and beyond the problem concerning unfaithful members in Matthew's church to whom the evangelist directed it. The questions have to be asked of so many decisions that life forces upon us: What shall we do about evil that unexpectedly appears alongside the good? What shall we do about the contradictions in our own personalities? How does one distinguish between a hypocrite and a genuine person?

The dialectic is between quick zeal and faithful patience. Not an easy distinction to make.
--Dr. Eugene Winkler on 30 Good Minutes

Zeal and patience. What a way to bring one up short. Aren't we supposed to be filled with zeal for the Gospel? Aren't we supposed to be passionate? So what's all this about letting the evil live along with the good? What's this idea that we should let the evil grow right along with the holy?

As if we could separate them. I'm not even sure that we would like what we found if we got rid of the weeds in our midst- we might discover the weeds in our lives. If we eliminated all the evil others we would then have to confront the evil in our own selves. In fact sometimes I think our zeal to point out the evil in others can be a way to ignore or move attention away from our own evil. Or to point out how pious and good we are in comparison.

Patience, however, doesn't have the excitement that zeal has. Patience sounds boring. Patience sounds like compromise. Patience sounds like neglecting what we think God wants us to be doing. It sounds like ignoring evil or even accepting it if only by not opposing it.

We need only look at the extremes to which this can be taken to see how dangerous and harmful it can get. Take the zealot who insists that a divorced person can't serve in the church because they are committing adultery by getting remarried. Take the person who has discovered the tendency to evil in their own life and they can't get rid of it. The first can tear apart a community. The second can end up taking their own life since they can't win over the sinfulness.

Yes, I am being simplistic. But so was Jesus. It comes down to the question underlying the parable itself... Can any farmer (in the days before herbicides) get rid of the weeds in any gardening plot. Of course not. To root all of it out would take the good with the bad. Better to wait till the harvest.

I have no real idea what the harvest means in the whole picture of the Christian life. The basic is of course what happens when we die. Whatever the final judgment will look like. However Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats and how we can be ready for it. There are no easy answers. Which is good or we would probably mess them up, too.

In the end I just have to let the idea remind me to be patient instead of zealous. Trusting God is another way of describing patience. Maybe that's just what Jesus meant.