GOSPEL: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

He put before them another parable: "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.'"

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

In the opera Radamisto composed by Handel and first performed in 1720, good and evil are found intertwined one with the other.  Set in the year 53 the lives of Zenobia and her husband Radamisto, who is heir to the throne of Thrace (the ancient region that spread over northern Greece, southern Bulgaria and Turkey) are threatened by the Armenian King Tiridate, who goes to war hoping to gain possession of Zenobia.[1]

Tiridate is a most evil cruel person who intention is to make anyone who disagrees with him suffer.  He is quite willing to kill for a mistress and only the intervention of his own faithful wife Polissena and the convenient mutiny of his army (who in a delightful scene throw down their weapons in unison and run away) turn the day around.  But in the end, love wins, and in true Baroque style all major characters on stage sing profusely (and somewhat endlessly) that it is a joyful day when everything turns out this way.

If you go to see Radamisto (currently playing at the Santa Fe Opera) be sure to watch for two things:  the rather large stuffed deceased leopard shot full of arrows which hangs from the top of the ceiling in the final scene.  I’m certain it is there to symbolize the futility of anger, hate, and war … but you might have a different interpretation; and the other thing to watch for, or rather listen for, are the persistent statements of selfishness and greed which not only seem to make up the evil nature of Tiridate, it is what feeds his tyranny.  

And even more than that, notice in Handel’s opera how good and evil are intertwined, how they contend with each other, and how they stay together in melodramatic tension until the end when love triumphs and evil is burned away, or in this case sung away by all the players on stage.

I was thinking about today’s Gospel portion from Matthew as I was going to and coming from this Opera.  Today’s portion is from the 13^th Chapter, the “seedy” chapter of Matthew … because it contains two parables, the one we heard last week – the Parable of the Sower, and the one we hear this morning – the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (or as it was entitled when I was growing up “The Wheat and the Tares” … tare being a weed that grows among wheat and other grains).

Once again Jesus finds sacred text in daily life and experience.  When you plant wheat, weeds are what happen.   And if you go into the wheat field and root up the weeds, you destroy the wheat plants.  So, agriculturally, don’t do that … let everything grow up together until it’s harvest-time and then you’ll be able to separate the good wheat into one pile and take the weeds and use them for your fireplace.

So, he says, God’s kingdom is like that.  Someone sowed good seed in a field, and when everyone was sleeping, an enemy came and threw weed seed into the field and when the wheat grew, so did the weeds and the workers asked the owner of the field, “What happened?”  And the owner explained that it was the work of an enemy, and no don’t pull up the weeds because you’ll destroy the wheat, let everything be until the harvest and then we’ll go to work.

Later on, the writer of Matthew informs us, Jesus goes into a house away from the crowds of people and his disciples follow him into the house and ask him to explain to them what he was talking about.  And he does.

It’s an allegory.  The Sower is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom [of God], the weeds are the children of the evil one, the enemy who sowed the weeds is the Evil One himself, the harvest is the end of the age, God’s final triumph, the reapers are God’s angels.  Evil will lose, Love and Goodness will triumph. If you have ears on your head, listen!

And as we sit in that house with Jesus (or in this house with Jesus) we have a lot of questions: so why is there evil?  Why is there the enemy?  And why should we not go to battle?

For some people that’s an overwhelming issue today.  It comes out in the so-called debate about human sexuality.  This last week was the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church in London, the gathering of all the Bishops of the Anglican Communion together with the Archbishop of Cantebury. 

One Bishop was not invited, rather dis-invited (an interesting concept in itself … it’s like hosting a party and then sending out not an invitation card, but a card telling someone “I’m having this party, but be sure not to come, I don’t want you.”).  That Bishop was Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.  Bp. Robinson, you will remember was the first openly gay Bishop with a life-partner to be consecrated in the Episcopal Church USA.

I was blessed two weekends ago to hear Bp. Robinson at the biennial gathering of Lutherans Concerned in San Francisco.  And last Saturday we were blessed here in our congregation that we were able to show to the public the film For the Bible Tells Me So, in which Bp. Robinson’s story is told. 

What Bp. Robinson told us in his lecture at Lutherans Concerned was that not only had he been dis-invited to Lambeth, and not only has he been accused of splitting the church by conservative fundamentalist biblical literalists, but … the death threats have begun … again. 

Death threats?!  Let me see if I can understand that.

There are conservative fundamentalist biblical literalists who find that 7 verses in all of Holy Scripture give them the authority not only to condemn homosexuality, not only to be homophobia (or rather heterosexists) but somehow are convinced that the thing to do is to kill a Bishop … not let God judge in God’s time, not follow Jesus and refuse to be exclusive (remember love God, love neighbor?), but to take judgment into one’s own hand and “execute justice.”

It’s Tiridate in the opera.  He appears in the next to final scene with the executioner’s axe in hand, ready to lop off Radamisto’s head and so steal his wife.  It is the length to which he is willing to go to root out his enemy.

Why is there evil in the world?  Jesus never answers the question.  For Jesus it simply is a fact, maybe part of the human condition … but the real thing that Jesus teaches is what to do with evil … and that is: live with it, try to teach it, try to redeem it, and above all overcome evil with love.

It is evil that will kill Jesus, but it is love that overcomes that death [the Resurrection]; it is evil that makes war and selfish anger, that seeks to destroy the good seed that is sown … but it is love that will in the end be victorious. 

It is to love, that we are called.  May it be so.

+ Deo Gratia
The Rev. Benjamin Larzelere III