Episodes
Sunday Jul 20, 2014
Us vs. Them?
Sunday Jul 20, 2014
Sunday Jul 20, 2014
A sermon preached by Rev.
Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC July 20, 2014, the sixth Sunday
after Pentecost.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
There are always painful and challenging things happening in the world and headlines are pretty consistently depressing. But some weeks things just seem to spiral completely out of control. This, for me, has been one of those weeks. Natural disasters such as Typhoon Glenda are painful enough, but when you add to that the human disasters we are witnessing through violence and neglect and downright hatred—from the shameful conditions of the so-called “family shelter” in our city’s old DC General Hospital, to the violence against the children and families crossing our southern border seeking refuge, to the violence and loss of life happening in places both near and far—well, it’s just all too much. And I would suggest that much of the violence and neglect that rule the headlines is driven by the age-old “Us versus Them” disease. “Us vs. Them” drives war, it fuels greed and selfishness, it can make us blind to the complexities of a situation since the absolutism of “Us versus Them” often leaves little room for facts or subtlety or grace.
Unfortunately, our current political situation provides a ready example of the destructiveness of “us vs. them.” How many of us have witnessed the ways that much-needed policy conversations stall or never get started because folks are unwilling to even mingle with someone from “the other side?” These days collaboration and—God forbid!—compromise are seen as “giving in” or lacking backbone to stand up for what you believe in (and, don’t forget, anything you say can and will be used against you in a nasty political campaign in the future). At worst, we see folks both in public and private not just disagreeing with others, but identifying those in a different camp as “evil.” In this kind of partisan environment, radical polarization and demonization not only threaten the greater good but also, as is the case from generation to generation, lay the greatest burden of suffering upon the most vulnerable: the poor, the marginalized, the stranger and sojourner, the children.
Living in an “Us vs. Them” world may seem inevitable, as though it is simply the natural order. But, according to our Judeo-Christian faith (not to mention most other spiritual traditions), the idea that my life is separate from your life is an illusion. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it this way: “All…life is interrelated…somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Mother Teresa is quoted as saying, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” In our heart of hearts, I believe we know that all people are beloved children of God, that we are interrelated, all part of God’s family. I just think it’s easier to believe that when we aren’t having to actually deal with other people. Let’s face it, people can be challenging and confounding and downright infuriating. And when so much is at stake, when we are talking about people’s LIVES, about policies and attitudes and practices that will make a difference one way or another in the realities of human life and community, no wonder lines get drawn in the sand and divisions occur.
There are times when it is not only easier, but necessary for safety and healing, to find a group of folks who share your experience and perception, a community with whom you don’t have to fight all the time, with whom you can find rest and affirmation. The challenge from within these havens is to remember that other communities—some of which may be at the polar-opposite end of our ways of thinking—are still our sisters and brothers even though they may have hurt us, even though they make us very angry. We are interrelated. We are all kin. And even though there is a time and a place for support groups of like-minded folks, the vision of God’s kin-dom breaks down every dividing wall and calls for a space in which we live together in peace even in the midst of difference. Let me be clear. I’m not suggesting that we are supposed to sacrifice our deepest values for the sake of just “making nice.” It’s not that an “I’m OK you’re OK” approach, with no critical thinking or debate, with no stand taken on anything is what is required. Far from it. That kind of attitude can be held by anyone and IS held by countless people both within and outside the church. Rather, I am saying that those who are serious about following Jesus are required to remember that there is an alternative framework within which to understand and live our lives in community with others, even with those members of the human family who challenge us most. In other words, we as Christians are called to the difficult task of showing the world that “us versus them” isn’t the only way to live.
Jesus offers us some insight into this alternative way to live through his teachings about the kin-dom of God. And in today’s parable of the kin-dom we learn some important things about how to live together as God’s family, as those intertwined so closely to one another that to try to pull out or cut off any part will do harm. But to get to that we must first admit that the parable and the allegorical explanation that follows seem to provide pretty juicy temptations to fall into “us vs. them.” After all, we’ve got good versus evil here, with the wheat representing the “children of the kingdom” and the weeds representing the “children of the evil one.” Let’s break this down a bit. While the language of “Kin-dom” might lead us to think of a place (like “The Magic Kingdom” for example), when Jesus teaches about the Kin-dom of God he is speaking about a reality not confined to any one place or time. He describes the kin-dom as that dynamic way of life-in-relationship that is characterized (ruled) by the perfect love, the unity in diversity, the mutuality, the peace and justice of God’s own Triune life. Therefore, the children of the kin-dom are those who are seeking, by God’s grace, to live in a way that reflects God’s own love and life. The opposite to that way of life, a way we see manifest in some individuals and human communities and systems, is hateful, destructive, greedy, violent, and so on. These things have no place in the kin-dom of God and could be identified as “evil.” (“Evil” in Mt.: behaviors that break the trust required for good relationship) One of my favorite liberation theologians, Jon Sobrino, talks about the Kingdom of God and the “Anti-Kingdom,” with the latter being anything that is actively working against the in-breaking of God’s Kingdom of peace and justice for the poor. All of this is to say, there IS a struggle. There IS evil in the world, forces that seek to undermine the flourishing of God’s good harvest of love, mercy, and peace. If this is the case, if it is true that there is a struggle between kin-dom and “anti-kin-dom” then isn’t “us vs. them” what we are left with after all?
Well, as tempting as it is to feel justified in calling certain others “weeds,” as tempting as it is to look forward to a perceived, promised divine weed-be-gone intervention when the roll is called up yonder and those “children of the evil one” get what’s coming to them, let’s try to keep things in perspective. First of all, Jesus is clear that the ethic of the kin-dom includes the radical notion that we are to love our enemies and to pray for those who persecute us. (Mt. 5:43-44) In the parable an “enemy” is the one who sows the weeds among the wheat. If we desire life in the kin-dom of God, then our call is to love and pray for that enemy. As soon as we allow the enemy to become an object of hatred, as soon as we allow ourselves to treat the enemy as less than a sister or a brother, then we have crossed over into the camp of the anti-kin-dom that wants us to be at enmity. Another thing to consider: Are any of our chosen communities—are any of us—completely weed-free? Have any here today never sinned or broken the law of God’s perfect love? As soon as we begin to judge others for their “weediness” we can become like the weeds in the parable—a specific kind of plant (beaded darnel) that looks just like wheat in the beginning, but whose seeds turn dark and poisonous as the plant grows. Self-righteousness and lack of humility that leads to judging another as evil is poison—deadly.
The trickiness in all this is that there is a dialectical struggle of good versus evil, of God’s way versus all that is counter to God’s way. As those who desire to follow Jesus and to live as children of the kin-dom, how do we engage the struggle without falling into the worldly ways of “us vs. them?” The farmer in the parable implies that the weeds and the wheat are capable of growing together. The threat isn’t found in the weeds themselves, but instead from how we react to the weeds. Ripping out the weeds, trying to root out and destroy any perceived sin or act of injustice, may be our first impulse. But what Jesus teaches in the parable is that our real challenge is to resist that temptation. In verse 30 the master tells the servants just to “let” things be; the Greek word used there is the same word used in the Lord's Prayer and elsewhere for “forgiveness.” The farmer counsels patience to those who would rush in and start weeding like crazy. Patience and forgiveness are kin-dom values. They are divine attributes. And they are offered to each one of us by a patient and forgiving God. Therefore, as those who seek to live in the kin-dom of God, we are called to offer them to others. We already know that forgiveness is hard work. And the patience I’m talking about isn’t passive, isn’t “there isn’t any other option but to take a breath and wait” patience (like when you’re sitting in a doctor’s office reception or stuck in traffic, powerless to do anything else.). The patience that is suggested by this parable of Jesus is an active virtue; it is strong, allowing us to bear the challenges we face in community with love, gentleness, mercy, and compassion.
Jesus teaches elsewhere in Matthew that it is God’s will that none be lost (Mt. 18.14). This helps to temper the fire and gnashing of teeth that appear in our text today. But we would miss the point of today’s text if we failed to see that our easy tendency is to want certain people to do some gnashing of teeth. The common, “us vs. them” response is to point the finger, draw lines in the sand, judge others, cut others off, fail to listen to other points of view, to lash out at those who push our buttons, to decide who’s in and out of God’s grace. But these things are poison to our own souls and poison in our community of faith and poison in our world. Remember, friends, we are all seeds planted in God’s garden, we are all God’s beloved children. There are always wheat and weeds around. And the results of the anti-kin-dom can make us so angry and so deeply sad. But even as we go about our work of advocacy and service, one of the most powerful ways we can stand against the anti-kin-dom is to not give in to its poisonous ways. Our call is to have patience and to trust that since in the kin-dom of God grace and mercy are the primary values—what appears to us as a weed might turn out to be wheat. Who knows? The one who changed water into wine might just transform poison into honey. That is for God to sort out. For us, we can try to live the alternative to “us vs. them” by speaking our own truth in love and by listening for understanding, by humbly acknowledging that we may not always recognize wheat or weeds for what they are, by having patience with the perceived weeds within ourselves and within our church and within our communities, and by allowing that patience to make us “strong enough to hold back, to follow God’s way of grace and forgiveness instead of the world’s quick and easy solutions of vengeance, punishment, and violence”[i] even when the issues at stake are important and the debates grow heated. We might even take a breath and a pause before “sharing” that inflammatory quote or picture or article on FaceBook or Twitter. We might even choose to pray for someone who hurts us instead of making a snarky, hateful comment. The focus of what Jesus is teaching today isn’t on some point in the future, the focus is on what you do, how you respond, how you love, how you practice patience, whether you forgive TODAY even in the midst of all the devastating headlines. Why not give thanks that God’s mercy has been extended to us—and to all? Why not rejoice that we are given the opportunity to grow together, awaiting the harvest of peace that God has promised? It is a harvest with no more “us vs. them,” when lion and lamb, hawk and dove, poor and rich, straight and gay, young and old, together with every race and nation will live together in mutuality and peace. It may seem impossible. But God says it’s not. And moments of kin-dom harvest break in, you shine like the sun, whenever you not only say you trust God’s vision, but live that way too.
[i] Scott Hoezee, Center for Excellence in Preaching, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php
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