Delivered by Rev. Ellen Brantley

Sunday, July 20

SERMON:       Cultivate the Good

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

          I heard a story once about a prominent young man and woman in Boston who were planning to be married.  They booked a fancy hotel for their wedding dinner and dance with a deposit of $10,000 for the ballroom, the orchestra, and the food.  Well, just a couple of days before the wedding was to take place, the groom called the bride and broke the news that he would not be able to go through with the wedding.  In anguish, she called the hotel.  The manager was sympathetic, but said that, at this late date, he could not refund her money.

          What do you suppose she did?  What would you have wanted to do?  My first temptation would be to demand that the groom take the loss out of his own pocket.  And if he didn’t comply I might consider filing suite.  I’m sure any number of other thoughts would also enter my mind about how he should pay – both for the money lost and for the emotional cost.  Many of us would at least entertain the thought of taking some kind of revenge on this man.  Any woman (or man) who has been through something similar would want him to suffer just as much as he caused her to suffer.  They say there’s a very fine line between love and hate, and I imagine whatever love she had for him probably felt a lot more like hatred at this point in her life.  The person she thought was a good man suddenly lost a lot of his charm. 

          But whatever she may have felt, she didn’t do any of these things that I suggested.  Instead, this abandoned bride decided to go ahead with the dinner.  She contacted some church agencies and invited a couple hundred street people and homeless people to the dinner.  By all accounts it was a grand affair indeed, complete with an orchestra, a sumptuous feast, and guests who literally had the very time of their lives.

          Well, since then I’ve learned that the story is only a fable – it’s not true.  But how cool would it be if it was!  I love the idea that someone, instead of spending all her energy on feeling sorry for herself, hating him and trying to get back at him, would turn a very bad situation into something good.

          In the parable of the wheat and the weeds (or the wheat and the tares, as some of you may remember it), we are quick to identify ourselves with the wheat – the good seed, planted by Jesus himself.  We know we’re not perfect, but we are good people, good church-goers, the children of the kingdom, as Jesus put it.  And all around us are weeds – the children of the evil one.  Sometimes it seems that everywhere we turn there is evil, trying to choke us out, trying to destroy us, trying to defeat what is right and good, violently trying to take control of the world.

          It’s just not right.  It’s not the way the kingdom of God ought to be.  And so we also identify with the servants who want to get rid of the weeds.  When they wake up one morning to find weeds among the wheat they are horrified.  They rush to the Master and ask, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?  Where, then, did these weeds come from?”  It’s almost an accusatory question:  “What have you done?  Are you sure you sowed only good seed?”

          We, too, have wanted to question God at times about why he would allow evil to exist in a world where he created everything and “saw that it was good.”  If God is so good – and so in control – where does the evil come from?  But as the Master explains to his servants, our answer is the same:  “An enemy has done this.”  And, unfortunately, God does have enemies.

          Naturally, we want to defeat the enemy and cleanse the kingdom of all evil.  Let’s get rid of it; let’s fight it; let’s kill it wherever we find it, so that we can be rid of it forever, so that God’s kingdom can be pure and healthy.  That’s what the servants want to do – get rid of those weeds right away.  But the Master says, “No.”

“No!?  What do you mean, ‘no’?  Why shouldn’t we stand up for ourselves, defend ourselves, fight for what is right and good?”  But the Master explains, “In gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.”

          In the parable, the weeds that began to grow amongst the wheat were called “bearded darnel,” and apparently it looks a great deal like young bearded wheat.  Early on in the growing process it’s just too hard to tell them apart.  Trying to separate the two would most surely damage the crop because some good would inevitably be pulled up with the bad.

          It’s true in the world, too.  Sometimes good and evil is not as “black and white” as we think.  Sometimes, it’s hard to tell what is good and what is evil.  For instance, why are con artists so good at getting the best of people?  Because they’re charming, they’re polite, they dress nicely, they always know just the right thing to say to flatter us and make us feel good.  They are, as the saying goes, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Sometimes the most harmless looking ones are the most dangerous.

          Of course, we all think we’re pretty smart about weeding out the good from the bad.  But the truth is, we just don’t know.  We love to gossip.  We love to talk about other people.  And we’ll share stories with one another without taking the time to find out whether or not what we say is true.  Sometimes it goes too far.  Sometimes by our gossip, by presuming the worst, we can end up hurting an innocent person.  Sometimes we think we’re pulling weeds, and we end up destroying good wheat.

          We must not be too quick to judge others – it’s not our job.  Because sometimes in our zeal to stamp out evil, we end up stepping on some good.  Instead, we must let both weeds and wheat grow together, and let God be the One that separates the good from the bad at the judgment day.  In the meantime, our job is to CULTIVATE THE GOOD.

          Martin Luther King, Jr., proponent of non-violent behavior said something very similar to the lessons we learn from the Bible:  “Darkness cannot drive out darkness – only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate – only love can do that.”

          Sometimes the best way to conquer evil is with good.  Those who work in the area of customer service have probably learned (or should learn) that the best way to deal with an irate customer is not by entering into an argument with him.  It should not become a contest to see who can yell the loudest or say the nastiest things.  Instead, the best way to cool his anger is to remain calm yourself; to listen and let him know that you understand his frustration; to apologize and to offer some sort of solution.  We CULTIVATE THE GOOD by being true to what we know is good and right, regardless of what the other person does.

          Someone suggested to me once, and I try to remember it, is that it is better to ACT than to RE-ACT; to act on what we know is right instead of re-acting to another person’s behavior by taking on the same behavior.

          A few years ago in my last church, we had a child in Vacation Bible School who was considered a bad “weed” by most of the teachers and other children.  Both his language and his behavior were seriously inappropriate 90% of the time, despite a number of warnings.  We considered “weeding him out” – sending him home and asking him not to come back again.  But we didn’t.  One day he even asked us, “Aren’t you going to send me home?”  It had happened to him so many times that he expected it of us.  Maybe he even wanted us to send him home.  But we said, “No.  We want to keep you here in hopes that you will learn something.”  Though we removed him from the presence of the other children, he became a shadow and a helper for the VBS director.  I don’t know what he’s like today, as a young man, but I like to think that we cultivated some good in that child by giving him the opportunity to grow with us.

          One of the things we commit to when we take our vows of church membership, is to “work in the world for peace, justice, freedom, and human fulfillment.”  Not only as church members, but as disciples of Christ, as servants of the Master, the One to whom the garden belongs, our job is to do what the Master commands.  Our job is to listen to the Master, to learn from the Master, to follow the Master.  And as we stay close to him; as we seek his wisdom and his guidance; as we follow his example of how to nurture, how to love, how to help his kingdom grow and prosper, then we will know how to CULTIVATE THE GOOD.

          Like jilted bride who offered her wedding banquet to strangers, we often come to the table of communion seeking ways to turn bad situations into something good.  Let us remember that, even with those who murdered him, Jesus didn’t seek to destroy them in return.  Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

          Each and every day, may we come to God in prayers, seeking forgiveness for the evil that may live in us, and let us also seek strength and courage to CULTIVATE THE GOOD with patience and perseverance.

          To the glory of God!            AMEN.