May 10, 2015

Helen Jacobi

Easter 6     Leviticus 25:1-13     Matthew 13: 24-34     

Sermon preached at Evensong Cape Town Cathedral

Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

E te whare karakia e tu

E nga mate, haere haere

E te whanau a te karaiti rangimarie

I greet you in the Maori language of the people of Aotearoa, NZ

Greetings

may this house of prayer stand tall

may the ancestors be honoured and remembered

to the family of Christ, peace be with you.

I bring you the greetings of the church of Aotearoa, NZ and Polynesia; the greetings of my diocese of Auckland; the greetings of my parish of St Matthew-in-the-City, at the heart of Auckland. It is an honour to stand in this great pulpit of the people’s cathedral.

In the last week I think I and my colleagues who have been visiting from across the Anglican Communion, have felt we are in the kingdom of heaven here in Cape Town. Gorgeous weather, beautiful scenery, warm hospitality, great restaurants and wine. Away from the usual demands of our ministries; enjoying the learning and collegiality.

I think we all like to imagine the kingdom of heaven as some idyllic place far away; like NZ maybe! or an isolated Pacific island; a perfect place of goodness and light. Sounds about right – God’s heaven must be a perfect place.

Well, if we read our passage from the gospel of St Matthew tonight we might have to think again.

We have 3 parables which Jesus uses to describe the kingdom of heaven, and it is not a beach holiday.

We have instead the parable of the wheat and the weeds; the parable of the mustard seed and the parable of the yeast.

In the first parable a farmer sows good seed for good wheat in his field, carefully plowed, and tilled and prepared. And overnight an enemy – a rival farmer maybe? sows weeds among the wheat. And the farmer’s slaves say – oh dear let’s get in there quick and weed the plot so the weeds won’t strangle the wheat. But the farmer says, no leave them, we will sort them at harvest time.

Now I know nothing at all about wheat but I am reliably informed that the weeds described here are “darnel wheat” which look exactly like ordinary wheat until the ears of the wheat grow and the real wheat bends over with the weight of the ears; and the false wheat, the darnel wheat stay straight because they bear no fruit, no harvest. So it is not until the harvest that you can tell the difference.

Jesus says “let both of them grow until the harvest”; That little word “let”, apheimi in the Greek, also means to forgive; Forgive them until the harvest…

Matthew adds an explanation and says the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one. But you can’t tell by looking which is which. You can tell later, when they bear grain for the harvest. If God were to judge humanity today as Matthew describes and root out all the evil, all the darnel wheat; none of us would survive. We all have the capacity for evil; we know from history that good people can do unforgivable things. And yet God allows us all to grow in God’s world. God allows us to grow and lets us grow; forgives us as we grow; and waits to see the bearing of the grain, the fruit of our lives. As people of faith we are called to be discerning, to reflect, not to be quick to judge.

And our discernment involves not just our personal actions but the way we react as a society;

the way systemic evils of racism and sexism and economic deprivation wrap their roots around the good wheat and try to strangle them. [1] The way we live and act towards each other can reverse that process and the good roots can strangle the weeds. We are not called to be passive and let evil run rampant; we are called to strengthen the roots of the good wheat, so the darnel wheat cannot strangle the love and hope of God’s people.

Jesus says to us, let the wheat be, let everything grow and take their place in the field, and chances are they will turn out to be good wheat too. The harvest will come, in the meantime you get on with loving and forgiving and believing in the good of my created humanity. Get on with claiming life and hope for your children.

In our visits and presentations in Cape Town this week we have seen many examples of goodness and hope overcoming the evils of the past. But I will not presume to give you examples from your context. But one example from my own.

For people of my generation in NZ the year 1981 is a defining year. As you know we NZers love our rugby; it is our national religion we say. And the Springbok rugby team has always been seen as one of our fiercest and finest opponents.

Way back in 1981 the Springboks were invited to tour NZ to play the All Blacks. But by then of course the whole world was acutely aware of the intolerable suffering of the people of South Africa. And as much as we loved our rugby, to host the team at that time was seen to be supporting the apartheid regime. Many thought sport and politics could be kept separate. Others did not. And so the arguments began across dinner tables, and in families; in workplaces and schools and churches. You were either against the Tour or for the Tour; there was no in between. And for those of us against the tour and especially in the churches we very much saw that this was a time to grow the wheat, to grow the love and hope which would eventually strangle the false wheat of hatred, oppression and apartheid.

What we didn’t realize was how hard people would fight for their rugby; and so the protests began and grew and grew. And the protesters did manage to stop a couple of games going ahead. Our police were forced to defend the rugby stadiums and used violence against the protesters. It was the first time we had seen police in riot gear with batons on our streets. Something of course that was so common then on the streets of South Africa.

The church that I am the rector of now, St Matthew’s, was at the heart of the protest movement. One of the clergy at the time was the chair of MOST “Mobilization to Stop the Tour” – a coalition of all the many protest groups. We have current parishioners who joined the parish at that time, inspired by the sight of the rector in his cassock, celebrating communion on the side of the road for the protesters.

Many years on in 1995 President Nelson Mandela came to NZ to the Commonwealth Heads of Govt meeting. One of his only engagements outside of the official programme was to come to St Matthew’s where he was welcomed and spoke and thanked the people of NZ for their solidarity. People at St Matthew’s still describe that day as our proudest day. We held a commemoration last year on that day and will do so again this year on what will be the 20th anniversary of his visit.

NZ was changed in 1981, the protests and debates about the Tour taught us many things about who we are as a nation while we tried to effect change in a far off land. We were forced to examine more closely our own race relations and identity and our place in the world.

We might have thought we could dig up the darnel wheat easily by just cancelling the tour and so not being seen to condone the apartheid regime. But it was not that simple. In trying to uproot the “evil” we uncovered evil and hatred of our own. And had instead to examine ourselves, and find ways to grow tolerance and respect in our own land, while calling for the same in another land.

Jesus says – let the wheat and the weeds grow – we will sort them at the harvest. Give time for the wheat to grow stronger, let justice and peace flourish, so the weeds might die away.

Jesus goes on to tell two more parables: the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows into a great tree; and the kingdom of heaven is like yeast mixed with flour.

Mustard plants in Palestine are weeds and they certainly do not grow into trees. Matthew places this parable directly following the wheat and the weeds as if to say even the weeds might, if given the chance, grow to something else that will flourish and be useful.

And yeast or leaven was a metaphor for something of bad influence, leaven was in fact “unclean” and Jesus sometimes describes the Pharisees as leaven. [2] But the kingdom of heaven is leaven transformed by the woman who mixes it into bread to feed many.

The kingdom of heaven is not a dream place, it is not a magical holiday in a far off land; but life here and now in all its despair and all its beauty; good and evil mixed in together; we are called to live and to love and to grow; to grow into the people of God as best we can and to pray that at harvesting time God will find only wheat to gather into the barn.

[1] Joni S Sancken p. 330 Preaching God’s Transforming Justice; a lectionary commentary ed Ottoni Wilhelm

[2] Matthew 16:6