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In an education-driven website called "Educational Cyberplayground," the compilers of the website surmise that at least three states are estimating the number of future prison cells they will need to build based on the numbers of children still not able to read by 4th grade. As they say, "Evidence shows that children who do not read by third grade often fail to catch up and are more likely to drop out of school, take drugs, or go to prison." It seems rather counter-productive that a state would be more willing to spend money building prison cells than on improving the education of its children - but I'm sure that, where profit margins are concerned, much stranger things have happened. These three states perhaps need to hear the parable of the wheat and the weeds, which is a cautionary tale about being too quick to pronounce judgment. Remember that Jesus also said in a clearer fashion, "Judge not, lest ye be judged" in case we were to somehow miss the message of this parable. Let's hear it again: The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, but while everyone was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. Later the workers of the field notice the weeds growing up where good seed has been sown and are puzzled by this. They query the landowner. The wise farmer of this land says to them, "An enemy has done this." Of course, hearing that, the workers want to solve the problem right away - but the landowner waits. "Wait," he says, "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." The harvest, as you probably already know, is a working metaphor for the eventual judgment of humankind. The beginning of the parable - "The kingdom of heaven is like this" - tells us as much. So what we're really looking at here is a tool for recognizing the difference between good and evil, heaven and hell. But we are so often tempted, just as the workers were, to pull the weeds too soon, to say that we know what evil looks like and want to eradicate it for the good of the Master. I dare say that judgment comes in so many varied forms, and our snap judgments aren't always the most accurate ones. We avoid driving through bad neighborhoods. We recognize a misguided youth by their orange jumpsuit. When notice three police cars out in front of an A-house - we know there must be a meth-lab inside. We see someone asking for a hand out and assume that they've made up yet another story to con people today. So did pictures of those individuals come into your mind when I was going through those examples? It doesn't take long to start throwing around the statistics for who might fit the stereotype of someone bad and then begin to imagine who will populate the prisons of the future. We think we know what evil looks like. Even for those of us who would try not to judge on appearance alone, we equate the image of the prisoner with poor, uneducated, and quite often with people of color. And from there, it's only a small step really to building more cells for kids who can't read. Jesus teaches us that God's perspective on good and bad is different from our own. We see one small slice of a person's life and make a judgment. We see the seedling and think we can tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds. Jesus reminds us that it takes a full growing cycle to recognize the fullness of the good seed from the destructiveness sown by the evil one. Even then, God gives the reapers some pretty specific instructions on what to do once the weeds and wheat are separated. One of the few things I've been sure of in my theological upbringing is that I am not now, nor will I ever get to be the Judge. That's left for God alone. I'm not even a reaper - though it's not exactly clear from the parable who gets that job. I'm part wheat, part weed most likely. I have growing to do. We all have growing to do. I don't think we're supposed to stretch the planting metaphor so far as to think we are pre-destined from our original seed's make up to be good or bad, but then again. God knows us. God knows us better than we know ourselves. That's the blessing and the curse of the 139th Psalm which happens to be one of my favorites. It's great for either a wheat day or a weed day. It's a reminder that we are inseparable from our Maker, and it's a reminder that God is far bigger than we are on those days that the world seems against us. But even more so than that, taken together, this parable and psalm remind us that only God knows what's buried deep in the heart. Only the Master is absolutely sure what the harvest will yield. In the book "Blink" - which is a study of the snap judgments we make every day, the good news is that we can begin to alter the perceptions that make us quick to judge. It's about information and attitude. To test how people experience gut reactions, a study was devised to flash images of faces on a computer screen and ask people to do word association with the faces. As you may imagine, the prejudices long present in our culture still emerged with clear patterns in the study. The only thing that slowed down connecting a word like "bad" with African American faces was to read more and learn more about the accomplishments of African Americans and have good images in mind fairly close to taking the test. Though our brains have a "reaction" mode that speedily tells us who to trust and who not to trust - we also have within our human capability the brain power to choose a more thoughtful response over a gut reaction. We can educate ourselves to the times we would be quick to point out - weeds or wheat - so that we'll take the time called for in this parable to allow for growth - whether that be someone else's or our own. The psalm reminds us that for God, even the darkness isn't dark. The night is as bright as the day. Whether we associate things that are evil with criminal actions, or with social taboos, or with people we just don't like, the Master wants us to put our judgments on hold. What may be dark in our minds is clear in God's. Through this parable, Jesus calls us to put down our pointing fingers and to wrestle with our own lives. It's enough for us to try to live a fruitful life without looking at our neighbor to see what's growing in theirs. We will still have prisons, and laws, and hopefully discipline in our society - but the ways in which we dismiss others outright as not deserving God's love or our love only works to make us more bitter toward our fellow human beings. An old biblical scholar and professor at my seminary was known for his absolute certainty about his understanding of scripture. A colleague in this Presbytery told me a story this week about Dr. Achtemeier that I found interesting. He was in Doc Ach's Romans class one day when a student asked about whether or not Paul's writing in a certain chapter led one toward universalist thinking. The professor said in a rare moment - "I don't know. What I do know, is this, I'm not as worried what will happen to me on judgment day when the Lord questions me about who I let in that I shouldn't have, I'm more worried about what Jesus will say about who I kept out." Not now nor in the final assessment do we get to be the ones separating weeds and wheat. It isn't our job, and judging prematurely only ruins the whole field. In some way, Jesus is telling us, only at the end point will the weeds and the wheat will be clearly recognizable. But right now, we don't have the eyes or the know-how to see that. We have fallible human eyes. Rather than build more prisons, we can find ways to show God's love to those who statistically seem to fall through the cracks. We can build communities of God's people that are more willing to imagine fields of wheat than fields overrun with choking weeds. We can err on the side of letting in rather than keeping out. Amen. |
