“Casting That First Stone!”

Matthew 13:24-30

Several years ago I got to know a young seminary student who worked in a convenience store where I often stopped for a soft drink or some sort of junk food. Sometimes, after I got to know him, I stopped just to see how he was doing.

His denominational heritage was of the rather conservative charismatic variety. I once asked him how he felt about selling beer, wine, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. He didn’t like it, but since God was calling him to ministry and he had to pay for his seminary education somehow, he had to take the best job he could find.

This conversation ended with him telling me about a conference of charismatic Christians held in Europe. It seems that the American attendees were shocked and appalled that their European counterparts drank beer and wine. Real Christians just don’t do that.

This wasn’t surprising. However, those Americans soon found out that their brothers and sisters from Europe were just as shocked and appalled that they drank coffee and tea. Real Christians don’t do that.

I never did find out how all of this got sorted out. But the whole episode left me amused and bemused. There was and is a somewhat naughty part of me that wishes I could have stood before that assembled conference, talked a bit about their differences, and then asked the real Christians to stand up. Who’re the sheep? Who’re the goats? Which of you are God’s own good wheat, and which of you are hypocritical weeds sown in God’s garden by the Devil?

I’ll never know, and neither will they this side of heaven. Only God knows who the real Christians are. He alone can ultimately tell the sheep from the goats and the wheat from the weeds. We can guess. There are signs like the fruitfulness or the lack thereof of our brothers’ and sisters’ lives in Christ. But this side of eternity only God knows who are among his elect.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day thought they did. Jesus made it clear that they didn’t. The Pharisees assumed that they and their ilk were the elect and that all those sinners out there - those sinners with whom Jesus often hung out – were not. Jesus had a few words to say about that, some of which weren’t very kind. When we read the Gospel accounts carefully, we discover that some of the most harsh things Jesus had to say were directed at the self-righteous, the ones who were absolutely sure who was in and who was out of God’s favor. The self-righteous, of course, always assuming that they were in and those of whom they did not approve were out. Unless I’m mistaken, Jesus even told them about that time to come when some of those who shouted, “Lord, Lord” the loudest and longest would hear him say, “I never knew you.”

Today’s parable makes it very clear that there will always be weeds in God’s garden. Sometimes even the supposedly best-looking wheat turns out to be weeds. The message is that the wheat cannot be separated from the weeds until after the harvest. Any Judean farmer worth his salt knew that there was a pernicious sort of weed that too closely resembled wheat to be pulled up. Furthermore, these weeds had a way of entangling their roots with those of the wheat. Pulling up the weeds meant pulling up the wheat. They had to be allowed to grow together until that appropriate time when the wheat and weeds could be separated without damaging the wheat.

So it is in God’s garden, the church. As it’s so very well stated in the Westminster Confession of Faith: “The purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error…” I like how Harry Hassall stated it in his book Presbyterians: People of the Middle Way: “God is the only eligible voter in [the] election of eternity.” Or as he quoted David Steele and Curtis Thomas, “God’s choice of the sinner, not the sinner’s choice of Christ, is the ultimate cause of salvation.” Or as it’s stated in the proposed Declaration of Faith that I love to quote so much, “The boundaries of the church are not clearly known to us, but God knows those who are his.” Only God truly knows who his elect are, who’s saved, who the sheep are, and who ultimately will be the true wheat of his harvest.

It’s not our place to judge. Nor is it our finger to be pointed. Neither you nor I have the right to stand before Christ’s Church, in whatever form it may take, and ask the real Christians to stand up. No Pope, no bishop, no theologian, no presbytery exec, no pastor, no elder, no deacon, no Christian can look down on any other Christian and say, “I’m real; you’re not.” None of us is allowed to go around singing, “Jesus loves me more than you, because I don’t like the things you do.”

You drink wine! O you’re definitely bound for hell. O yeah, you drink coffee and eat pork chops and shrimp. You’re gonna burn, buddy, you’re gonna burn. You don’t baptize the right way. You don’t do Communion correctly. Your form of church government’s wrong. You’re a knee-jerk liberal. You’re a fundamentalist bozo. You destroy the church’s peace and unity in the name of purity. You allow impurity in the church in order to maintain its peace and unity. You don’t do things decently and in order. You’re a goat. No, you’re a goat. Well, you’re a weed. No, you’re the weed. Yada-yada-yada. And on and on and on it goes ad nauseaum.

The truth is, apart from God’s grace we’re all goats, we’re all weeds. We all deserve to burn. And even those of us who are God’s own true wheat – his elect – are still pretty weedy. Even the best of God’s sheep can occasionally act like goats. And sometimes even the nastiest goats do a real good job of imitating sheep. Often, from our limited human perspective, some of the goats out there make better-looking sheep than do the sheep themselves.

Jesus said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” Paul wrote, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall.” And, “Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another.”

We must not forget God’s own truth. We must prayerfully and hopefully see even the most obviously seeming weed as a potential stalk of wheat. This side of eternity we can count no one beyond redemption. God can. That’s his divine prerogative. We can’t, and we shouldn’t. It’s not our place to do so.

Again St. Paul puts it rightly: “… if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.” Then he goes on: “Take care that you yourselves are not tempted.” To paraphrase the words of Jesus, we need to make sure, that in our efforts to identify and remove the splinter from our brother’s or sister’s eye, we don’t ignore that great big log in our own.

I firmly believe that there should be a sign over every church door that says, “No self-righteousness allowed.”

Maybe there should be a zero tolerance program in place to deal with such things in the church. No self-righteousness. No finger pointing. No name-calling. No arrogant assumptions about who’s in and who’s out. No hypocritical judgment of others. No “I’m-a-real-Christian-and-you’re-not” attitudes. None of this is allowed. None. Nada. Zilch.

That’s the way things ought to be in the church, but you and I know that it’s never going to be so. There’s a little bit of Pharisee in us all. We all have our moments of self-righteousness and supposed spiritual superiority. We all like to imagine from time to time that we’re the only real wheat in God’s garden. Thanks be to God that self-righteousness is not an unforgivable sin!

Before we go casting that first stone of judgment, condemnation, or religious superiority, let’s remember today’s parable. Some weeds may be mixed in with God’s wheat, but in God’s own time all that will be sorted out. Meanwhile the best thing we can do is heed these words from that proposed Declaration of Faith: “Knowing the righteous judgment of God in Christ, we urge all people to be reconciled to God, not exempting ourselves from the warning. Constrained by God’s love in Christ, we have good hope for all people, not exempting the most unlikely from the promises. Judgment belongs to God and not us. We are sure that God’s future for every person will be both merciful and just. Amen.