Don't Fear the Reaper

The Kingdom is Near

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near!” Those were the words of John the baptist, as he went about baptizing Jewish men and women in the Jordan River. As he was baptizing, a number of Pharisees came down to the river, perhaps to see what all the talk about town was about, or perhaps they truly intended to be baptized. Either way, John’s words to them were certainly less than welcoming. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near!” Those were the words of John the baptist, as he went about baptizing Jewish men and women in the Jordan River. As he was baptizing, a number of Pharisees came down to the river, perhaps to see what all the talk about town was about, or perhaps they truly intended to be baptized. Either way, John’s words to them were certainly less than welcoming. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”

Whether the Pharisees knew it or not, John’s baptizing was an announcement of God’s kingdom. This baptism was for repentance, because John really did believe the message he preached. “Bear fruit worthy of repentance!” he warned, “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

This vision of an end time harvest doesn’t just come from John. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and many of the other prophets foresaw a final Harvest, when God would restore Israel and set the world right. This was the day John hoped for. You see, while “judgement day” often inspires fear in American Christians, it was not so for the Jewish people of Jesus’s day. That is because, as a people who had been oppressed by evil empires for their entire history, the Jews longed for God’s judgement. This is certainly a perspective we could stand to learn from. Judgement day is not bad news, it is the best of news! Perhaps we have come to see judgement day as something to be feared because we are so used to corrupt judges. But on this day, judgement day, the judge is truly good. This judge truly stands for justice, this judge cares for the poor and the oppressed. He cannot be bought off by rich kings. On the day that God judges, justice will “roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”

So when John says, “His winnowing fork is in his hand,” all the people should shout “Glory!” “And he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary”, “Hallelujah!” “And the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” “Amen!” Judgement day is the day the world is made right again. It is a day we should hope for, above all others.

This is why, after all, the Jews awaited the Messiah with so much anticipation. When the Messiah comes, so comes God’s kingdom. And when God’s kingdom comes, so too comes the judgement. And When the judgement comes, back to the garden we go!

And this is precisely what John the Baptist claims is happening. “The kingdom of God has drawn near!” Notice that, even in our English translations, this is not future tense, nor even present tense. This is past tense: the kingdom of God has drawn near. This has already happened! And if God’s Kingdom is stepping through the door, then judgement cannot be far behind!

Of course, we know that judgement has not come yet. Perhaps, we might think, that John was wrong. Maybe he got a little carried away, and maybe the kingdom hasn’t drawn near just yet after all. This might be a safe assumption to make, if just a little while later Jesus didn’t initiate his ministry with the exact same announcement: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near!” Notice, again, the past tense. The Kingdom has already come. It’s here, waiting at the door. And this was not a one time pronouncement from Jesus. Again and again, Christ preaches that the Kingdom of God is here, right now. He has ushered in the kingdom. It’s not some distant future anymore. The kingdom arrived at the same time as the king, Jesus. And unless we think Jesus was mistaken, he says it again before ascending to heaven in , “All authority in heaven and on earth has been give to me.” Has been. Already. Jesus is king. He is on the throne. The kingdom has arrived, we don’t have to wait any longer.

It is this affirmation of the kingdom that brings us to our parable today.

The New Revised Standard Version The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat

24 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field;

Many translations, as mine does, say “The kingdom… may be compared to...” This is close, but not quite right because, once again, Jesus is using the past tense here to talk about God’s kingdom. What he really says is, “the kingdom of heaven has become like...” The Kingdom is already here, and this is what it has become like.

“But wait!” We might say to Jesus. “If God’s kingdom came when you did, where, then, is the judgement? And why is the world still so wrong, when God has said he would make it right?”

Weeds Among the Wheat

This is, no doubt, precisely the question Jesus had in mind as he set before the crowds another parable:

The New Revised Standard Version The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 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?’ 28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 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.’ ”

Where is the judgement? It would appear that, for the time being, God has allowed wheat and weeds to grow together. The Jews had long expected the Messiah, the kingdom, and the judgement to happen together, almost over night. The surprising message of Jesus, however, is that the Messiah and the kingdom had already come, but the judgement will have to wait.

For whatever reason, God has decided it best to allow the weeds and wheat to grow alongside one another. God is allowing evil to coexist with good, sometimes outwardly almost indistinguishable from one another, until the harvest comes. This is, truthfully, not as satisfactory an answer as some of us might like to hear. Like John the Baptist and his Jewish contemporaries, we might very much like for the kingdom and the judgement to be wrapped up neatly together. Instead, we’re stuck in the messy middle, proclaiming that “Jesus is Lord” while recognizing that sickness, death, pain, and suffering still prevail in our world.

In fact, in the midst of the growing season, it may at times appear that the weeds will overgrow the wheat! Yet, God in his wisdom, still allows the weeds and wheat, the evil and the good, to grow alongside one another. The reason why might allude us at the moment. I like to think that it has something to do with God’s will “that all shall be saved.” Perhaps God allows the evil to grow with the good in the hopes that evil people might turn from their ways and be saved at the harvest time. The most we can be certain of, however, is that God’s wisdom will prevail.

The Eschatological Promise

And also that Christ’s kingdom has not failed. Because, though it may appear that the weeds will overgrow the wheat now, the harvest is coming. Jesus is saying to the crowds and to us as well, that a delayed judgement is not a cancelled judgement. The harvest is still sure to come. The weeds and the wheat will be separated, in fact, they have to be.

Not every translation picks up on it, but Jesus actually talks about a very specific kind of “weed” here. The plant, known as darnel, is a common weed that grows up among wheat. When the plants are young, they are almost indistinguishable from one another. When they grow up and produce fruit, however, they are much easier to tell apart. What makes darnel dangerous, however, is a certain kind of fungus that often infects the seeds. This can make darnel poisonous, and even lethal. A good farmer, then, knows that they have to deal with darnel before they can harvest their wheat.

For God’s plan to work, the wicked and the good must be separated from one another. Evil is a poison, it cannot coexist with the good. If justice is to “roll down like waters,” then injustice necessarily has to go! If the world is to be set right, then the wrong must be dealt with as well. The weeds cannot be allowed to coexist with the wheat, or else they’ll poison the whole harvest. So, while his timing may have been a bit off on the judgement part, John’s message is no less relevant to us, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Bear fruit worthy of repentance...” The good fruit and the bad will be separated at the harvest. Jesus has come, and his winnowing fork is in his hand. He baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire, and one of those baptisms is a lot more desirable than the other!

The coming judgement, however, is really a message of hope. For those who cling on in an evil world, for those who have seen what sin and wickedness are truly capable of, the winnowing fork is a banner of hope. For all who suffer, for the sick, the dying, the grieving, for the poor, the needy, for the refugee, for the widow, the orphan, for the victims of violence, war, and oppression, the judgement will come, and they will be blessed on that day.

And so, while we dwell in the field of weeds and wheat, Christ offers us hope. Perhaps we won’t understand why God has allowed it to be so for now, but we must cling on to hope that it won’t be so forever.

D- Calling down fire?

E-

But what do we do in the meantime? What does it mean to us that God delayed the judgement? It means as much, I think, as the fact that we worship a crucified Lord.

So often, like the slaves of the master, we are prone to ask, “Do you want us to go and pluck up the weeds?” “No,” says our Lord, “for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest...”

This is a difficult teaching Jesus! Because, as the Church, we are also called to to take a stand against injustice. As followers of Jesus Christ, we cannot sit by and watch evil prevail in the world. And, as Moses said to Israel, and Paul later to the church at Corinth, “Purge the evil from among you.” The Church is called to be holy. The Church is called to fight against all forms of evil and injustice in the world. How, then, do we carry on that task without “plucking up the weeds”?

The Biblical message always leaves us dealing with tension. And when the Church fails to properly address this tension, disaster prevails. When we do nothing about evil in the world, we risk becoming irrelevant, tarnished, and just as unholy as the rest of the world. The Church did this in the early church, as bishops and elders sat by and let heresy run rampant in the church. The Church did this during the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham jail, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice.”

Worse than the few white Christians who lynched innocent Black men and women were the millions of white Christians who sat by watching and did nothing to stop it.

Worse than the Christians serving in Hitler’s Nazi army were the Christians who heard the wailing Jews outside their churches on a Sunday morning, and sung their hymns louder so as to ignore the evil on their doorstep.

Not taking a stand against evil is no sin of the past either. It is a sin the church still commits to this day. Child molestation, the rise of white nationalism, the caging of refugees, drone strikes with countless civilian casualties, and a willingness to abandon holiness in order to appease the larger culture.

Doing nothing about evil is dangerous, and disregards the high calling Jesus has given to his Church.

But there is just as much danger in responding to evil in the wrong way. The church has done this too. The crusades are a painful reminder of what happens when the Church’s zeal for holiness and deep desire to see heaven on earth are carried out in the wrong way. Even our modern situation in the West is a result of an irresponsible response to the weeds. The Church has developed a bad reputation for its prudeness, and even its hatred towards the homosexual community. In an effort to purify the field, the church has resorted to emotional abuse, electro-shock therapy, and in some cases even stoning. For all of our bemoaning the Church’s poor reputation in the West, not all of it is undeserved.

So how do we hold these two things in tension with one another? Jesus’s parable doesn’t give us a straight answer here. It does, however, warn us very loudly that any idea we will be doing God’s work of judging or any thought that we will obliterate evil must be set aside. We cannot be tolerant of evil, but the destruction of all evil is not our task. We must stop being evil, and we must stop evil from destroying, but we must always be careful that as we stop evil we do not become evil ourselves.