Process & Faith: 20 July 2008

Lectionary Commentary

See also: [2005] [2002]

Ps. 139:1-12, 23-24
Gen. 28:10-19a
Rom. 8:12-25
Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43

In the Genesis story we have the familiar “Jacob’s ladder” story, with its powerful theme of the presence of God. Unlike the tower of Babel, which arrogant humans built to gain access to heaven, this ladder has been “set up,” and it is not human beings but angels who use it. Significantly, they are going in both directions—ascending and descending—which suggests that the value is in the interaction between the two realms.

Even more significantly, God is not at the top of the ladder, but standing beside Jacob, which is to say, on earth. Moreover, God does not use heavenly coordinates to describe Jacob’s ultimate “end,” but earthly reference points—west and east, north and south. The images are organic—the land, the dust of the earth, offspring (children of Jacob’s body). It is families of the earth that will be blessed. In other words, in this free movement between heaven and earth, it is the blessings of the earth that are God’s concern for God’s people.

Even with “heaven” dramatically referenced in the text, this is not an eschatology. It is on earth that God stands, and it is earthly families that God wishes to bless. God’s desire for the well-being of earth and creation is front and center, along with God’s affirmation that God is present. Jacob assumes that the place itself is the “house of God,” but more evocatively, “Bethel” is Jacob himself, for God promises to be with Jacob “wherever he goes.”

This theme is repeated in Psalm 139, with its familiar opening, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me.” What is this “knowing” but the knowledge that comes from being present? Sometimes this text is read as demonstrating God’s foreknowledge, a divine attribute of classical theism. A God who is all-knowing would have to know the future, the argument goes, because otherwise God’s knowledge would be subject to change, and if something can be improved upon—changed—then it wasn’t perfect in the first place. But if God already knows everything that will happen, then it can only be because it has already been determined. And if everything is already determined, then there is no free will, and one would feel hemmed in, “behind and before.”

But is this what the psalmist means? A process theologian would say that this “hemming in” is not God’s predetermination of our lives overruling our choices. It is instead the ongoing presence of God in our lives, from which it is impossible to step outside. There is no “outside” the presence of God: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?” This is not bondage; it is knowledge that is wonderful! God is with us, no matter what dark spots we get ourselves into. Indeed, in the Genesis text, Jacob is fleeing from his brother, but God makes it clear that Jacob is not fleeing from the divine presence. Jacob has acted deceitfully; he has deliberately tricked his father into bestowing his blessing upon Jacob, not on Esau, the rightful recipient, but even now God stands beside Jacob and promises him God’s unfailing presence.

In preaching this text, one might start with the notion of the dream itself. Although many people swear that they don’t dream, scientists have determined that we all dream—we just don’t all remember our dreams. Freud called dreams “the royal road to the unconscious,” but perhaps the Talmud speaks more directly to us when it claims that unexamined dreams are “unopened letters” from God. If we examine Jacob’s dream; if we “open” the letter, then we come to those extraordinary words, “Know that I am with you.” This theme can then be explored through the biblical story of Jacob, with the language of the psalm providing the transition to our own lives. Where do we sit ourselves down, in what circumstances do we rise up? What are our private or corporate Sheols? What brings our lives into darkness, and where and how is it possible to see God’s light when we are in these situations? Can the “darkness” be global warming, the economy, the threat of job losses, the rising cost of basic goods? Where is God’s light in our world?

One place that light can be found is in the seed sowers of this world—those who plant goodness in the field; which is to say, who work for the well-being of this world.

The parable of the wheat and the tares is another parable of the kingdom, and as noted last week, the interpretive tradition has placed much of its emphasis on the eschatological implications. Certainly language like “the harvest is the end of the age” has helped! But it is useful to remember that the kingdom is the basileia, the commonwealth or the household of God, and once again the images of the parable are organic: fields, seed, wheat, weeds. The actions are this-worldly: sowing seeds, sowing weeds, uprooting weeds now or waiting for the harvest.

By the time this gospel is written down, the desire to “explain” has entered the text. The parable, which is meant to rattle us, to come at us sideways, to evoke fresh understanding, has been tied down as neatly as a sheaf of wheat—no more surprises here! We are given a straightforward “this=that” explanation. How do we recover some of the original impact of the parable?

John Dominic Crossan has told us that Jesus is not only a parable-teller, Jesus IS a parable, a parable of God (Dark Interval). If we use this as our hermeneutic, what do we get? The ministry of Jesus is one of radical inclusion, of preaching against empire and on the behalf of the marginalized and the poor. Jesus was a good-seed-sower, and the seeds he sowed were not simply “the children of the kingdom,” as the text explains. If you and I are “children of the kingdom,” we are not simply inert in the soil. We sprout, we grow, we realize the possibility embedded in us. We practice to the best of our ability the ministry of Jesus. We contribute to the well-being of this world.

Which brings us to the other side of the parable. Jesus does not restrict his words to the seed-sowers; he directs attention to the weed-pullers, as well. It is clear what he wants from his disciples (both in the first century and today): he wants us all to be seed-sowers. (See Ron Farmer’s reflection on this parable in Creative Transformation 15.3, page 10.) As the text makes clear, the danger in uprooting weeds is that one may inadvertently pull up good wheat at the same time. How could this happen? Well, how do mistakes like this commonly occur? In our zeal to pull out a weed, we pull out the plant, too, or seriously damage it. Or this: to pull weeds, we have to be able to identify them. And here’s the whole point of the parable: people don’t always get it right. What they think is a weed—sure looks like a weed!—is actually the crop. Biblical scholars have pointed out that Jesus is likely referring to the bearded darnel—a plant that looks a lot like wheat when it is just starting to grow. A farmer could easily pull up wheat, mistaking it for the darnel.

We all have blind spots in our judgment, but there are many people today who are convinced that they can tell the wheat from the darnel, and moreover, they think they’ve got the Bible to back them up. According to these folks, gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered persons are the darnel and heterosexuals are the wheat. They are so sure of this that they are determined to pull up what they see as weeds, and they spend a lot of money and time to pass legislation to enforce their view. They are so convinced they are right—that the Bible tells them they are right—that they do not see the theological error in their actions. They are weed pullers. They are ignoring the teaching of Christ. They are so concerned with other people’s morality that they labor in the fields of the Lord not sowing good seed, but pulling up perceived weeds. They have so narrowly defined “weeds” in terms of sexuality that they miss whole fields overrun with greed and injustice.

As I write this, the Supreme Court has just interpreted the Second Amendment as giving individuals the right to keep and bear arms, and a number of Californians are organizing to pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage. Which is the wheat and which the darnel? A gay man or woman holding a marriage license can’t kill me with it; anyone holding a gun can.

In her autobiographical book, Writing in an Age of Silence (Verso, 2007) Sara Paretsky writes: “We are in a peculiar state of mind in America theses days. We want untrammeled capital markets, we think speed limits, handgun controls and taxes are an unwarranted intrusion into personal liberty. But we feel an overwhelming need to control women’s sexuality.” She is writing about the nationwide terrorism aimed at abortion clinics and personnel since Roe vs. Wade, but the broader point within her statement is clear. Why do we feel the need to focus on anyone’s sexuality when more than 4,000 Americans have died in a war waged on the basis of lies, when the Constitution is under attack, when the right of habeus corpus is considered a quaint relic of the past, and oil companies make obscene profits while the price of gas reaches historic highs?

The parable of the wheat and the tares is a cautionary tale, warning us to beware of the weed pulling impulse—the moral need to improve the field based on our own limited judgment. But it is also a story of hope. There is an antidote not only to the weed pullers, but the weeds themselves, and it is the sowing of good seed. No one person can seed the entire earth, but each of us can attend to the fields at hand. And, as noted, the ministry of Jesus makes clear the nature of “good seed.” It is a commitment to justice, inclusion, and equality, with attention paid to the least among us, and the basic needs of food, clothing, and visitation met. It is, in other words, the basileia of God—the commonwealth of creation where God is always present and always seeking our well-being.

The Rev. Dr. Jeanyne Slettom is associate pastor of Brea Congregational UCC, in Brea, California, and managing director of Process & Faith. She has taught as adjunct faculty at Claremont School of Theology and United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. She is the editor of The Process Perspective, by John B. Cobb, Jr. (Chalice Press).

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