ST MATTHEW-IN-THE-CITY
ANGLICAN CHURCH AUCKLAND NEW ZEALAND
Weeds, Hospitality, and Constraints
June 17, 2012
Glynn Cardy
Pentecost 3 Mark 4:30-34
Video available on YouTube, Facebook
Sometimes as a minister you laugh at things you shouldn’t really laugh at. This was one such occasion.
Bill and David were worlds apart, though they had in common an innate kindness. Bill mowed the church lawns, all two hectares of them, including the cemetery. Bill struggled with mental ill-health, and was deemed unemployable. Yet every two weeks he would catch a bus across town to the church and spend the day mowing, and chatting with whoever would pause to talk. Bill had a number of original ideas, many of which were difficult to grasp. We were very fond of Bill.
We were fond of David too. David had been in the parish for over 50 years and had populated the Sunday School and Auckland’s professional ranks with an impressive brood. He was hard-working and sharp, an accomplished surgeon, who in his retirement oversaw the church gardens and landscaping requirements. He had lots of energy, though he struggled to find the patience needed for protracted consultation.
The occasion was a flower. Well, that’s what Bill called it. David called it a weed. Bill refused to uproot it or mow over it. David drew upon his extensive knowledge of botany to convince Bill of his error. But to no avail. Bill stood his ground. He cared passionately about ‘flowers’. David stood his ground. He cared passionately about right and wrong and the logic that determined the difference.
This exchange happened in the Church car park within earshot of the Parish Office where a few of us, without appearing to be listening, were quietly going about our business with large grins on our faces.
Finally David realised that he was getting absolutely nowhere, and strode off muttering to himself. The weed had won a reprieve.
Call me suspicious but I did wonder whether the weed would be there the next day.
This incident came to mind as I read the day’s Gospel: “The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in their garden.”
The parable relies upon us knowing some basic botany. The mustard plant is an annual that grew wild in Palestine. Pliny, that great Roman observer, writes: “It grows entirely wild … when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it.” [i] It was, in other words, a weed.
In the parable the person plants the mustard weed in their garden. Apart from being a stupid thing to do, it violated the law of diverse kinds in Leviticus 19:19. This law was designed to maintain order and separation, keeping plants in their proper place and not mixing them.
Normally mustard was sown in small patches on the edge of a field. It was prohibited to plant it in a garden because it would result in mingling. By planting it in the garden, the planter makes the garden “unclean”. The mustard weed grew, and grew, and grew… as weeds do.
Jesus was inviting his hearers to imagine God’s reign to be very different from their church, with their boundaries delineating insiders from outsiders, believers from non-believers, and the worthy from the toxic.
Dominic Crossan concludes:
The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [rather] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses - if you could control it. [ii]
Given that the reign of God is out-of-control, undomesticated, pungent, and dangerous, it is difficult to equate it with the Church, any Church for that matter. For even Progressive Churches like St Matthew’s need boundaries in order to operate.
We can tolerate and even enjoy a rich variety of plants, flowers, and even weeds in our religious garden, but we too need to be wary of those weeds that are noxious and seek to destroy the community life and ethics we’re trying to cultivate. I’m thinking here of people with destructive disorders, or those who abuse others, or those given to stealing or lying, or those who successfully hide such behaviours until they get into positions of leadership or power.
So I prefer to think of a church like St Matthew’s being in constant dialogue with Jesus’ vision of God’s reign, aware of our differences and similarities, without feeling a need to always emulate it. Being inclusive means creating helpful boundaries for both flowers and weeds, and it’s both a necessary and time-consuming task. Weeds are welcome, including noxious ones, but there are rules.
One important service that St Matthew’s offers is offering a place for those who don’t fit elsewhere, who don’t believe, who don’t want to come to church every week, who don’t want to join a group let alone a religion - let alone Christianity.
The early Church was a community of believers, holding out against the norms of the Empire. It was a community of initiates and catechumens. It was only after Constantine that Christianity really grew and liturgy was transformed into a civic ritual. Most of us were taught this was a bad thing – the end of Christianity as a radical, counter-cultural movement of the dispossessed. Yet this transformation also opened the doors to skeptics, atheists, those of other religions and none. Those who didn’t want to belong, but did want to experience something spiritual, something of wonder.
As the philosopher Harriet Baber says, primitive Christianity and its successors is not for everyone. She writes, “I would never have been one of Jesus’ followers, or St Paul’s. I am not the stuff of which martyrs were made, and, worse, I am a high-church junkie: the draw of Christianity for me is in the ceremonies, the music, and, perhaps above all, the church buildings. I am a Constantinian Christian.” [iii]
St Matthew’s is here for believers and non-believers, for followers of Jesus and Constantinian Christians, for atheists, non-theists, and theists. It is a mixed garden, with plenty of weeds and trees, some of which – the noxious ones – need watching less they destroy those around them.
Debates like Bill and David had in the car park over inclusion/exclusion, what-is-what, flower or weed, and how to deal with them, will continue in Church life. What are needed is some grace, some perception, some rules, some humility, and the ability to laugh at ourselves.
[i] Pliny, Natural History, 29.54.170 [LCL, 529].
[iii] Church Times 4th May 2012, p.14.