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Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue “prepositional truth” by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.
Jesus is hoping we’ll say goodbye forever to something that most of us find rather enjoyable.
That would be sorting out everyone around us into two categories: Good People vs. Jerks.
Perhaps we’ll favor kinder terminology. We might opt for Wise vs. Foolish, Cool vs. Clueless, Useful to Me vs. Don’t Bother, or (more typical of church people) True Believers vs. Spiritual Pretenders.
But Jesus makes it clear that this practice always works against our best interests. He even tells a parable to drive home the point.
In Matthew 13 (verses 24-30 and 36-43), he describes a Palestinian farmer who plants seeds in his field. He aims to grow a crop of wheat. But when the tiny plants appear above the soil, it’s obvious somebody else has come along and sowed chaos.
Something else is growing there. He discovers a profusion of wheat and weeds growing side by side. And nobody can tell them apart.
The weeds are “among (ANA MESON) the wheat” (Matthew 13:25). ANA is one of the rarest of New Testament prepositions. When combined with the word meson (which we encounter in English words like “mezzanine,” a low floor in a hotel between the lobby and the first floor), it implies a location – “right in the middle of.”
Jesus is reporting a situation well known to Palestinian farmers. Right in the middle of the good crop are unwelcome seedlings of bearded darnel, a weed that in the early stages of growth looks exactly like wheat. It grows at the same speed. It reaches the same height. Only when the heads of grain appear is it possible to tell the plants apart.
The heads of wheat are golden, while bearded darnel produces what look like little gray beards at the end of the stalks.
By that time, however, it’s too late to yank all the darnel out of the fields. The roots of the good plants and the weeds have become enmeshed. “Let both grow together until the harvest,” says Jesus. “Then you can safely separate the wheat from the weeds.”
The problem is, who wants to wait until God’s harvest – that is, his Judgment at the End of History?
Most of us assume we are exceedingly well qualified to go ahead and start the sorting process. We know a weed when we see one. When we’re in the presence of other people, we can tell the good ones from the bad ones from the sneaky ones from the sad ones from the most-likely-to-succeed ones from the old-and-used-up ones – even as Jesus pleads with us, “I’m asking you not to do this. You will never get it right. You will actually damage the wheat by trying to eliminate the weeds. Leave the harvesting to the Lord of the Harvest.”
Augustine of Hippo, arguably the greatest theologian of the early Church, said that every congregation is a corpus per mixtum – a Latin phrase that means “mixed crowd.”
The “visible church” – that would be the totality of those who show up to have their pictures taken for the pictorial directory – always includes what theologians call the “invisible church” (those who have genuine faith in Christ).
But true believers are inevitably found among a wide variety of other people. Those would include the guy who is there “because she makes me get up every Sunday morning,” people who haven’t yet made up their minds about Jesus, and a number of men and women who are actually dead set against God’s purposes but find the church to be a great place to hang out.
As you might expect, that doesn’t always present a pretty picture to the watching world.
Both skeptics and authentic Christians are often turned off by the visible church – by the realities and challenges of the mixed crowd. Many skeptics have no desire to be associated with “all those hypocrites,” while genuine Christ-followers are sometimes so offended by the frailties and failures of local congregations that they choose to stay away.
Something like one-quarter of those who self-identify as members of the “invisible church” in America currently have no local church affiliation. They want no part of the visible church. “I can love God and love people quite well without being among (ANA MESON) those people.”
But Christianity is a team sport. There is absolutely nothing in the New Testament to suggest that followers of Jesus should go solo. Jesus says that the spiritual wheat will always be in the presence of the spiritual weeds, and vice-versa.
Why is he so passionate about this?
We rarely recognize God’s champions. We may think we have the inside scoop on exactly what a growing saint looks like, but only God has eyes to see the true condition of human hearts.
And it just so happens that God delights in using flawed, unconventional people.
Moses identifies himself as a stuttering coward who could never stand up to Pharaoh. When an angel tries to recruit Gideon to save Israel, he responds, “Are you kidding? I’m the least of the least of the least when it comes to family background.” David, the warrior-king who would become “the man after God’s own heart,” starts out as a red-haired runt barely noticed by his own father. Paul, the future apostle, is introduced in the Bible as a hot-headed fundamentalist cheering on the lynching of Stephen, one of God’s key servants.
Do we really have eyes to see what God sees when he looks at other people?
Take a second look at the man who is so shy he can barely raise his voice loudly enough to introduce himself. Check out the bored teenager whose whole life is her iPhone. Watch the woman who crosses the Kroger parking lot crushed under the weight of providing for her family.
Who are these people? These are the plants growing in God’s field. We are among them day after day after day.
On harvest day, it may turn out that they were God’s greatest champions.
When it comes to the people with whom we share our lives, God’s job is to do the sorting. The Savior’s job is to save.
What does that leave for the rest of us?
Our job is to love.