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THE CASE OF THE MIDNIGHT FARMER!
Expectations - we hold them as easily as we
hold a handful of cards while playing Bridge. We have expectations of
ourselves and of those around us and we hold them pretty close to our
vest. Most of our expectations have been years in the making,
and though we seldom verbalize them, they are quite well-defined. For
example, when Linda goes to the library I expect her to come home with a half
dozen books; books that will be devoured within less days than the number of
books brought home.
As a second example, suppose I start blowing
up a balloon, holding it with my left hand while I have a sharp object in my
right hand. Immediately, you form an expectation of what is going to
happen. And my guess is that just about everyone has the same expectation;
the expectation that the balloon will soon be popped. But suppose
as the balloon stretches to the breaking point something else happens, then
it is not the balloon that is popped but your expectations.
That's what happened in Jesus' day. The
Israelites, not fully understanding their history, expected the Messiah to
come in glory and power. They expected him to restore the Davidic Kingdom
and in righteousness, with their help, rule over all the nations. But
when Jesus stepped onto the world's stage more as a servant than a conquering
king their expectations were popped.
Furthermore, they didn't comprehend what he
was saying about the kingdom of God. Here was the King himself talking
about the nature of the kingdom and it was if he was speaking in a foreign
language. This kingdom he spoke of had no well-defined boundaries, no
material wealth to display, no readily perceived army to impose its will, and
incentive program to encourage its citizens to promote the kingdom.
No where is this confusion better seen then
when Jesus sat in a boat just off the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee and
gave what could be called The Sermon by the Sea. This sermon,
as found in Matthew 13, consist of seven parables which do not so much depict
the events of this present age as much as they describe the nature of the kingdom
in this age.
When his listeners first heard these parables
they went away with little or no understanding of what Jesus was telling them. They
heard the story, but they failed to understand the real story that was alongside
it.
For example, in the first parable we're told,
in part, of a farmer that was so dumb that he scattered his seed with absolutely
no regard for the condition of the soil. Anyone listening to this story
would make little sense of it. But when the disciples asked Jesus to
explain it he must have knocked their socks off. For in essence he said, "You
expected me, the King, to come with a conquering army. Instead, I've
come with a message and I want you to sow that message with absolutely no regard
for the condition of the soil. When you do, you will find that the seed
has life in it and it will bear varying degrees of fruit."
He then told them a second parable, I call it
The Case of the Midnight Farmer. We find it in Matthew 13:24 - 30. We
read:1
Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom
of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while
everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and
went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds
also appeared.
"The owner's servants came to him and said,
'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come
from?'
"'An enemy did this,' he replied.
"The servants asked him, 'Do you want us
to go and pull them up?'
"'No,' he answered, 'because while you
are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30 Let both
grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First
collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat
and bring it into my barn.'"
The kingdom of heaven is like a large government
bureaucracy where many of you within Israel will serve as ambassadors to other
nations. No! That's what they expected the kingdom to be like,
but Jesus told them, and tells us, that the present nature of the kingdom is
far different from our expectations.
Well the disciples caught just enough of this
message to know that they didn't know what Jesus was talking about in regards
to the kingdom. So, to their credit, they came to him after school and
asked him to explain this parable. In Matthew 13:36 - 43 we read:
Then he left the crowd and went into the house.
His disciples came to him and said, "Explain to us the parable of the
weeds in the field."
He answered, "The one who sowed the good
seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed
stands for the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, 39
and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age,
and the harvesters are angels.
"As the weeds are pulled up and burned
in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will
send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that
causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the fiery
furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the
righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has
ears, let him hear.
This too, is a parable about sowing. But
the sowing is quite different from the first parable. In the first parable
the Good News of the Kingdom was the seed, here a beautiful person is sown;
i. e. the children, the sons and daughters, of the kingdom. This seed
is sown throughout the entire world.
Unfortunately, along about midnight, while just
about everyone was asleep, the devil over-sowed the field with weeds. These
weeds are the children of the evil one. They breathe the same air, eat
the same food, drive the same highways, live in the same neighborhoods, work
in same places we tend to work, visit the same doctors, receive the same amount
of rainfall as everyone else, and enjoy the warmth of the sun as much as anyone
else. They look like you and me, but spiritually they are weeds.
If you were to look at these weeds in the early
stages of their growth, you would have a hard time distinguishing them from
the wheat. For the word translated "weed" is literally the
word "darnel." It's a poisonous weed which looks very much
like wheat. In fact, when it first begins to grow it cannot be distinguished
from wheat. But as it grows, as it sprouts a head, it becomes obvious
that it is not wheat, it's a weed. The Jews called it "degenerate
wheat."
My first impulse, and perhaps yours, would be
to pull the weeds. I would even enjoy pulling the weeds. It's good
therapy for me and it would be good for the wheat. In fact, in the story,
that is what the owner's servants wanted to do. They wanted to pull the
weeds. And maybe the owner would've been all right with them pulling
the weeds had the weeds been off by themselves.
But when weeds are mixed in with beautiful plants
the pulling of them is more problematic. Invariably, as least according
to my experience, a plant or two is pulled up along with the weeds. And
if we simply uprooted a replaceable plant, we would say "Oh well, what
Linda doesn't know won't hurt her." But, in this case we are talking
about people. So Jesus tells us to wait and let him deal with the
weeds at the end of the age.
In the meantime, however, you and I are stuck
with rubbing elbows with weeds! Our natural inclination is to curse
the midnight farmer for ruining our neighborhood while being a little
confused as to why Jesus is making us put up with the weeds. But implicitly,
Jesus is telling us that for the time being this is our rightful place in the
world - right among the weeds. Why?
Because the kingdom of God is revealed to the
hearts of others as you and I go through our daily lives living by the Book. As
we rub elbows with the weeds we can do little things that may make a big difference. For
people see the kingdom of God whenever we show mercy instead of judgment, when
we speak the truth when a lie would be more to our advantage, and when we serve
when it's neither expected nor deserved. It's simply a matter of taking
the initiative to exhibit kingdom behavior to a watching world - and believe
you me the weeds are watching your behavior and mine.
This idea of taking little initiatives in expressing
our love for the King and for others is so important that Jesus told us exactly
how to go about doing it. Let me give you one example that everyone
of us can apply to our everyday world.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:47, Jesus
said:
And if you greet only your brothers, what are
you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?
In other words, Jesus is telling us as children
of the Kingdom mixed in with the weeds to say "hello" to people! He
is saying, greet the people in your daily traffic pattern that you customarily
ignore.
You know how life works as well as I do. In
the course of our day we cross paths with many of the same people - the same
weeds. After all, most people are like us - they live their lives on
a pretty predictable schedule. Some of these we pause and greet - most
of them we ignore. Those are the ones, the ones we ignore, the ones who
don't appeal to us for one reason or another, those are the ones we ought to
greet - that is what Jesus is saying.
You see, Jesus was addressing people who saw
themselves as part of the dominant religious culture. They had erected
walls between themselves and the rest of society and were living their entire
lives with the garage door down. They had the support of their theology
and that was all they needed.
But Jesus told them, and is telling us, to put
the garage door up and say hello to the weeds in our world. He's telling
us to say "hello" to someone we've been ignoring. He's telling
us to keep at it. One day they will make eye contact with us. They
will return our smile as well as our greeting.
Now I know what you're saying - "I'm bad
with names." Me too, that's why I took a course from Dan Carnegie
who taught me to write them down. Yes, I know it's Dale Carnegie - I
just wanted to see if you were still awake. I also brought up his name
because he is the one who said, "Remember that a man's name is the sweetest
and most important sound in any language." What this means is that
when you say a person's name you have their attention.
Now let me close with a story. It reads:
Monday through Friday, Marcie would rise early,
drive to the train station, and board the train for the forty-five minute commute
to Boston. There she would transfer to the subway that took her to her
office. She made the same daily commute for a year. Then she resigned
from her job to train as a physician's assistant. The subway engineer
gave her a free two-week pass for her last weeks of commuting! On the
last day of her customary commute, the passengers on the train threw a farewell
party for her.
How do you suppose that happened? What
would motivate a bunch of commuters to throw a party for another passenger? Normally,
commuters will either anesthetize themselves with their newspapers, paperbacks,
and Walkmans (ipods), or they will escape into their virtual offices by booting
up their laptops as soon as they are seated on the train. What's the
story?
Marcie is twenty-two years old. In her
own words, she's "not a real extrovert." But as a follower
of Christ, she decided she would apply his instructions (about greeting others). She
chose to ride in the same train car every day. Because that's what most
people do, she was riding daily with the same people. She also chose
to be present among the other passengers. She began to greet them. She
learned people's names and got to know about their families, concerns, and
interest. Some conversations would continue from one train ride to another. People
got the message. Marcie was actually interested in them! Because
her faith is a natural part of who she is, that too was a part of her conversations. The
spontaneous party on that commuter train demonstrates the kind of response
Marcie's little initiatives received.2
You see, this is why Jesus sowed beautiful people
into the world. He knew what the midnight farmer would do and he also
knew that this farmer was too smart for his own good. For in the end,
his foul work gave the children of the Kingdom an opportunity to influence
the weeds.
1 Actually, this title is not my idea. I
think I picked up on it from an author by the name of Larry Richards
in a book called The Servant King. I no longer have a copy of his book,
but from some long-ago notes it appears that this is the title he gave to this
parable.
2 Jim Peterson & Mike Shamy, The Insider, NavPress,
P.O. Box 35001, Colorado Springs, CO 80935, pp. 149 - 150.
JESUS & THE KINGDOM OF GOD 03/25/07 1
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