Life's Purpose Is Often Hidden!
Sermon
Sermons On The Gospel Readings
Series II, Cycle A
Object:
Life is a messy affair. Our purpose is often hidden. We have a parable today that originally may have tried to explore these mysteries -- the parable of the weeds in the field. But once again the explanation that Mathew provided of this parable is probably not original, not something Jesus himself taught.
No, it is more likely, New Testament scholars increasingly agree, that Jesus' original point in the parable was to affirm the messiness, hiddenness, of life in a context where sectarian sentiments were dominating in the church to be more like the Pharisees and other devout groups of Jews in the era. Like the Pharisees and others, like the community of Jews responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls and the group of Jews planning a military revolt against the Romans (the Zealots), Christians in Matthew's community were contemplating purging their less devout members. But Jesus makes clear that matters are murky enough that human beings in this context, even faithful ones, are not able to discern the weeds from the wheat.1 The point of the parable, as Matthew understood it by adding the interpretation in verses 36-43, seems to be that since the end is coming, the judgment is at hand, and we need to get on the stick and live faithfully or suffer the consequences.2
But that is not the Jesus we know, not a threatening judge. No, our Jesus, the one who seems to have taught the Parable in its original form, is a wonderful Savior.3 And his original point seems to have been that life is messy, even in the church, that God's purpose, that our purpose, that the purpose of life is often hidden. Let's take another look at Jesus' own point.
One point about which several New Testament scholars agree is that even Matthew's interpretation of the original parable did not intend to focus solely on the future, but to portray the reality described about the end times as having relevance to our present context. The kingdom of the future has continuity with the way that God rules in the present.4 This entails that God's kingdom is being realized right now, is present among us; the plants are bearing grain, even as the weeds surround the grain-bearing plants.
Yes, God is creating little seeds of the kingdom right now among us. There are a lot of good, beautiful things happening in life that God has given you and me. But with all the weeds growing around them, it's often hard to see the good things. There's a lot of confusion. The good things in life, our purpose, are often hidden.
The guru of purpose-driven living, Rick Warren, and some Prosperity Gospel preachers do not seem to have heard this point. Pastor Warren makes what you and I do as Christians a bit too important in contending that a Christian's mission has eternal significance, that it continues Jesus' mission on earth.5 I think you have to get more real about life! If you are not, you are likely to rob God of the glory he deserves.
You have to get real about life, what will be accomplished by all our human strivings. The great twentieth-century New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, put it this way one time:
... man forgets in his selfishness and presumption ... that it is an illusion to suppose that real security can be gained by men organizing their own personal and community life. There are encounters and destinies which man cannot master. He cannot secure endurance for his works. His life is fleeting and its end is death. History goes on and pulls down all the towers of Babel again and again. There is not real, definitive security, and it is precisely this illusion to which men are prone to succumb in their yearning for security.6
Because of our sin, there is no security in life; nothing lasts forever. Contrary to all the talk about "legacies" you hear these days in the media, no one will remember you and me someday. As the preacher said in Ecclesiastes 5:15-17, it all amounts to a toiling after the wind. Even Christians come naked from their mother's womb and return naked to the ground in death with nothing they can take with them. In between, there is darkness, spent "in much vexation and sickness and resentment."
The preacher of Ecclesiastes is right, is he not? Much of our lives are spent with aggravations, with health problems, or resentment about other people, even the ones who live with us. And if none of those things are happening we spend time worrying that they might happen. In the end all there is is that grave someday, when it all won't matter anymore. The New Testament scholar, Bultmann, is on target. It all has to with our selfishness and presumption. That is what occasions sin and all the meaninglessness of life, the striving after the wind. As I noted recently, all the mess we are in is occasioned by trying to make life all about ourselves, instead of all about God. But that is the reality on this side of the fall into sin until Christ comes again. It's all meaninglessness, vanity, and a striving after wind for the present.
Of course, God still continues to work miracles. Lots of good things emerge out of our twisted, self-serving motives. Children are created from the satisfaction of their parents' lust. People are edified by books and other media creations brought about by the ego and quest for fame of their creators. Life-giving food is given to us by those who farm and sell it in order to make a buck. Yes, good gets done in the world, but it is often hidden. What are we to do in the interim? How are we to do good, to make decisions? What good is life under these circumstances?
The great American theologian and social ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr, claimed that "human history is a mixture of wheat and tares. We must make provisional distinctions, but we must know that there are no final distinctions."7 Moralists, Niebuhr claimed, may urge us to make war on the tares, on the evil that is in us and is exhibited by our fellow human beings. True, much evil comes from human selfishness. But Jesus suggests, Niebuhr contends, that perhaps more evil comes from premature judgments about ourselves and each other. Creativity and selfishness are mixed in life. So are love and self-love.8
Niebuhr's point is that we dare not be too judgmental in assessing the difference between good and bad. Recognize that there is ambiguity in life. What we have, the people with whom we associate, the good things in life, even what you and I do and think deserve praise -- but not without some qualifications. There are still a lot of weeds, and bad motives associated with those good things. So be realistic. What you got ain't perfect. What's good about what you got is not the result of the goodness of the thing or the person. It is good because God used that person, used that thing, to make an imperfect good. Only God is good.
On the other hand, don't be so darn judgmental about those weeds -- about those difficult people, about those hard-to-live with family members, about the problems with the job and your congregation, about the imperfections of your own life and the material possessions you have. I don't care how many fights you have had with those people, how many problems the job or the church have caused you, there is still some healthy grain-bearing plant hidden in there. Open your eyes to the good in the midst of the bad! This is still a world in which God is in control.
Similar sentiments were expressed back in the sixteenth century by Martin Luther as he preached one time on our gospel lesson. He noted that life and the realities of the church are a little like the human body. Just as the body is not free from impurities like waste matter, sweat, and saliva, but were they eliminated we would become weak, so with absolute purity in life we would not heave health and a true, vibrant church.9 No, I say, you would not have a healthy life and a vibrant church without an awareness of all the things that are selfish and sinful in and around us, because then you would be missing God. You and I might not turn to God and the church for all good if we thought that we could do it all ourselves. And when you think you have to do it all yourself, that's a lot of pressure. You just set yourself up for failure, and more failure.
Could it be that the reason that many churches like ours are losing members, why many Americans are unhappy and feel burned-out, is because we don't have this perspective on life? Many twenty-first-century Americans think that they can do it all themselves.
How can you and I live our everyday lives with an awareness of the hiddenness of the good among the weeds, without getting unhealthy in our cynicism, without going crazy? Again Martin Luther offers a profound insight. He put it this way once in a letter to his friend, Philip Melanchthon.
If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a pretended grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a pretended sin. God does not save people who are pretended sinners. Be a sinner and sin bravely, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more bravely....10
Sin bravely. The weeds, our selfishness, our sin, will always surround the good that you and I and everyone else do. So fess up about it. See it. Confess the sin in your own life. Instead of setting aside some dimension of your life as good and sacred, like your love for your family, your vocation or your purpose, fess up about how selfishness typically motivates the things you do in those contexts. Folks who don't admit the weeds in those segments of their lives are what Luther calls "pretended sinners."
What does this all mean for the way you live? The first Protestant Reformer says that you will see grace more clearly, be a preacher of a true grace. That is in line with the original version of the parable of the weeds. Its point, recall, was to proclaim that God is realizing his kingdom, is working good among us, despite all the weeds.
The pressure is off people who live the life of brave sinning. Brave sinners no longer need to cover their base motives, agonize over whether they are doing good for the right reasons. Brave sinners also do not need to justify their lives with high-sounding names like "purpose" or "calling." For the brave sinner, life is play! Brave sinners know that what they do will not bring in God's kingdom, is not of eternal significance in and of itself. Good will only come out it if God intervenes with his miraculous grace. And so brave sinners see God in action, bringing about his kingdom in the most mundane of events.
I see this dynamic in my own vocational life quite often (at least when I do not let the "weeds" of my own sloth get in the way). A casual word of encouragement, and unthinking deed of politeness, can change a parishioner's or a student's life or sense of vocation. I meant nothing cosmic by those comments or actions. I am confident that you can point to times in your life when someone came back and said what you had done for them or said to them meant so much. Perhaps like me, in those instances, you cannot even remember the act of kindness for which you are so profusely thanked, or if you remember it, perhaps your motives in doing the deed were not too good. Like me, you were sinning when you did them, caught up in your own agenda more than that of the person you helped. Your purpose was really ego-gratification, nothing high flown. But in retrospect, is it not magnificent to see know that in a hidden way you were used by God? Gee, life is truly magnificent, miraculous. You and I count for something after all, even with all the weeds growing in our lives.
Okay, let's say that is the reality. How do we live with this hidden purpose? Enjoy life along with honoring God, the preacher in Ecclesiastes (2:24; 12:13b) says. In our parable, Jesus says that the harvest time will come, so in the meantime don't let the weeds trouble you (Matthew 13:30). Live with no illusions about the importance of what you are doing. Your life's work as well as that "important" project you and I have undertaken, even if it is for the family's good, the community's good, or the church's good, is just play. We are just indulging our sinful egos with it. So fess up about that. That is what "brave sinning" is. And then the pressure to succeed will be off.
God and the world are not depending on you and me. We have too many weeds growing in our lives, are too sinful. But maybe, just maybe, God will do something with your life and mine, with those random deeds of ours, with what we do with our lives. Maybe it is God's plan in a hidden way to use of feeble actions, to take the all too flawed lives you and I lead, and in a hidden way make something out of them. So play on, friends, sin bravely, but keep your heads up for the miracles. We have God's promise in this morning's parable that these miracles will happen. After all, the plants are still bearing fruit despite all the sinful weeds that lie around you and me. Life has meaning and purpose, even if it is hidden. Let's celebrate! Amen.
____________
1. Rudolf Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (New York and Evanston, Illinois: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 187; Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Matthew, trans. David E. Green (2nd printing; Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1977), pp. 302-305; Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, trans. S. H. Hooke 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), pp. 81-85, 226-227.
2. Ibid, Schweizer, pp. 310-311; Brevard Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 73.
3. For this opinion, see Martin Luther, Promotion Disputation for Cyriacus Gerichius (1533), in What Luther Says, comp. Elwald M. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), p. 185.
4. Jack Dean Kingsbury, Matthew As Story (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), pp. 62-63.
5. Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 282, 284. For examples of the sort of visible, material prosperity that is promised by Prosperity Gospel preachers like Gloria Copeland and Paul Crouch, see Bill Press, How the Republicans Stole Christmas (New York and London: Doubleday, 2005), pp. 221-222.
6. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), pp. 39-40.
7. Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Wheat and the Tares" (1960), in Justice and Mercy, ed. Ursula M. Niebuhr (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1974), p. 59.
8. Ibid, pp. 55-57.
9. Martin Luther, Sunday After Epiphany (1528), 10-11, in The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 5, ed. Eugene F. A. Klug (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), p. 268.
10. Martin Luther, Letter To Philip Melanchthon (1521), in Luther's Works, Vol. 48, ed. and trans. Gottfried G. Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), pp. 281-282; cf. Martin Luther, The Pharisee and the Publican (n.d.), 44, in The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 2.2, ed. John Nicholas Lenker (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), pp. 367-368.
No, it is more likely, New Testament scholars increasingly agree, that Jesus' original point in the parable was to affirm the messiness, hiddenness, of life in a context where sectarian sentiments were dominating in the church to be more like the Pharisees and other devout groups of Jews in the era. Like the Pharisees and others, like the community of Jews responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls and the group of Jews planning a military revolt against the Romans (the Zealots), Christians in Matthew's community were contemplating purging their less devout members. But Jesus makes clear that matters are murky enough that human beings in this context, even faithful ones, are not able to discern the weeds from the wheat.1 The point of the parable, as Matthew understood it by adding the interpretation in verses 36-43, seems to be that since the end is coming, the judgment is at hand, and we need to get on the stick and live faithfully or suffer the consequences.2
But that is not the Jesus we know, not a threatening judge. No, our Jesus, the one who seems to have taught the Parable in its original form, is a wonderful Savior.3 And his original point seems to have been that life is messy, even in the church, that God's purpose, that our purpose, that the purpose of life is often hidden. Let's take another look at Jesus' own point.
One point about which several New Testament scholars agree is that even Matthew's interpretation of the original parable did not intend to focus solely on the future, but to portray the reality described about the end times as having relevance to our present context. The kingdom of the future has continuity with the way that God rules in the present.4 This entails that God's kingdom is being realized right now, is present among us; the plants are bearing grain, even as the weeds surround the grain-bearing plants.
Yes, God is creating little seeds of the kingdom right now among us. There are a lot of good, beautiful things happening in life that God has given you and me. But with all the weeds growing around them, it's often hard to see the good things. There's a lot of confusion. The good things in life, our purpose, are often hidden.
The guru of purpose-driven living, Rick Warren, and some Prosperity Gospel preachers do not seem to have heard this point. Pastor Warren makes what you and I do as Christians a bit too important in contending that a Christian's mission has eternal significance, that it continues Jesus' mission on earth.5 I think you have to get more real about life! If you are not, you are likely to rob God of the glory he deserves.
You have to get real about life, what will be accomplished by all our human strivings. The great twentieth-century New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, put it this way one time:
... man forgets in his selfishness and presumption ... that it is an illusion to suppose that real security can be gained by men organizing their own personal and community life. There are encounters and destinies which man cannot master. He cannot secure endurance for his works. His life is fleeting and its end is death. History goes on and pulls down all the towers of Babel again and again. There is not real, definitive security, and it is precisely this illusion to which men are prone to succumb in their yearning for security.6
Because of our sin, there is no security in life; nothing lasts forever. Contrary to all the talk about "legacies" you hear these days in the media, no one will remember you and me someday. As the preacher said in Ecclesiastes 5:15-17, it all amounts to a toiling after the wind. Even Christians come naked from their mother's womb and return naked to the ground in death with nothing they can take with them. In between, there is darkness, spent "in much vexation and sickness and resentment."
The preacher of Ecclesiastes is right, is he not? Much of our lives are spent with aggravations, with health problems, or resentment about other people, even the ones who live with us. And if none of those things are happening we spend time worrying that they might happen. In the end all there is is that grave someday, when it all won't matter anymore. The New Testament scholar, Bultmann, is on target. It all has to with our selfishness and presumption. That is what occasions sin and all the meaninglessness of life, the striving after the wind. As I noted recently, all the mess we are in is occasioned by trying to make life all about ourselves, instead of all about God. But that is the reality on this side of the fall into sin until Christ comes again. It's all meaninglessness, vanity, and a striving after wind for the present.
Of course, God still continues to work miracles. Lots of good things emerge out of our twisted, self-serving motives. Children are created from the satisfaction of their parents' lust. People are edified by books and other media creations brought about by the ego and quest for fame of their creators. Life-giving food is given to us by those who farm and sell it in order to make a buck. Yes, good gets done in the world, but it is often hidden. What are we to do in the interim? How are we to do good, to make decisions? What good is life under these circumstances?
The great American theologian and social ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr, claimed that "human history is a mixture of wheat and tares. We must make provisional distinctions, but we must know that there are no final distinctions."7 Moralists, Niebuhr claimed, may urge us to make war on the tares, on the evil that is in us and is exhibited by our fellow human beings. True, much evil comes from human selfishness. But Jesus suggests, Niebuhr contends, that perhaps more evil comes from premature judgments about ourselves and each other. Creativity and selfishness are mixed in life. So are love and self-love.8
Niebuhr's point is that we dare not be too judgmental in assessing the difference between good and bad. Recognize that there is ambiguity in life. What we have, the people with whom we associate, the good things in life, even what you and I do and think deserve praise -- but not without some qualifications. There are still a lot of weeds, and bad motives associated with those good things. So be realistic. What you got ain't perfect. What's good about what you got is not the result of the goodness of the thing or the person. It is good because God used that person, used that thing, to make an imperfect good. Only God is good.
On the other hand, don't be so darn judgmental about those weeds -- about those difficult people, about those hard-to-live with family members, about the problems with the job and your congregation, about the imperfections of your own life and the material possessions you have. I don't care how many fights you have had with those people, how many problems the job or the church have caused you, there is still some healthy grain-bearing plant hidden in there. Open your eyes to the good in the midst of the bad! This is still a world in which God is in control.
Similar sentiments were expressed back in the sixteenth century by Martin Luther as he preached one time on our gospel lesson. He noted that life and the realities of the church are a little like the human body. Just as the body is not free from impurities like waste matter, sweat, and saliva, but were they eliminated we would become weak, so with absolute purity in life we would not heave health and a true, vibrant church.9 No, I say, you would not have a healthy life and a vibrant church without an awareness of all the things that are selfish and sinful in and around us, because then you would be missing God. You and I might not turn to God and the church for all good if we thought that we could do it all ourselves. And when you think you have to do it all yourself, that's a lot of pressure. You just set yourself up for failure, and more failure.
Could it be that the reason that many churches like ours are losing members, why many Americans are unhappy and feel burned-out, is because we don't have this perspective on life? Many twenty-first-century Americans think that they can do it all themselves.
How can you and I live our everyday lives with an awareness of the hiddenness of the good among the weeds, without getting unhealthy in our cynicism, without going crazy? Again Martin Luther offers a profound insight. He put it this way once in a letter to his friend, Philip Melanchthon.
If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a pretended grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a pretended sin. God does not save people who are pretended sinners. Be a sinner and sin bravely, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more bravely....10
Sin bravely. The weeds, our selfishness, our sin, will always surround the good that you and I and everyone else do. So fess up about it. See it. Confess the sin in your own life. Instead of setting aside some dimension of your life as good and sacred, like your love for your family, your vocation or your purpose, fess up about how selfishness typically motivates the things you do in those contexts. Folks who don't admit the weeds in those segments of their lives are what Luther calls "pretended sinners."
What does this all mean for the way you live? The first Protestant Reformer says that you will see grace more clearly, be a preacher of a true grace. That is in line with the original version of the parable of the weeds. Its point, recall, was to proclaim that God is realizing his kingdom, is working good among us, despite all the weeds.
The pressure is off people who live the life of brave sinning. Brave sinners no longer need to cover their base motives, agonize over whether they are doing good for the right reasons. Brave sinners also do not need to justify their lives with high-sounding names like "purpose" or "calling." For the brave sinner, life is play! Brave sinners know that what they do will not bring in God's kingdom, is not of eternal significance in and of itself. Good will only come out it if God intervenes with his miraculous grace. And so brave sinners see God in action, bringing about his kingdom in the most mundane of events.
I see this dynamic in my own vocational life quite often (at least when I do not let the "weeds" of my own sloth get in the way). A casual word of encouragement, and unthinking deed of politeness, can change a parishioner's or a student's life or sense of vocation. I meant nothing cosmic by those comments or actions. I am confident that you can point to times in your life when someone came back and said what you had done for them or said to them meant so much. Perhaps like me, in those instances, you cannot even remember the act of kindness for which you are so profusely thanked, or if you remember it, perhaps your motives in doing the deed were not too good. Like me, you were sinning when you did them, caught up in your own agenda more than that of the person you helped. Your purpose was really ego-gratification, nothing high flown. But in retrospect, is it not magnificent to see know that in a hidden way you were used by God? Gee, life is truly magnificent, miraculous. You and I count for something after all, even with all the weeds growing in our lives.
Okay, let's say that is the reality. How do we live with this hidden purpose? Enjoy life along with honoring God, the preacher in Ecclesiastes (2:24; 12:13b) says. In our parable, Jesus says that the harvest time will come, so in the meantime don't let the weeds trouble you (Matthew 13:30). Live with no illusions about the importance of what you are doing. Your life's work as well as that "important" project you and I have undertaken, even if it is for the family's good, the community's good, or the church's good, is just play. We are just indulging our sinful egos with it. So fess up about that. That is what "brave sinning" is. And then the pressure to succeed will be off.
God and the world are not depending on you and me. We have too many weeds growing in our lives, are too sinful. But maybe, just maybe, God will do something with your life and mine, with those random deeds of ours, with what we do with our lives. Maybe it is God's plan in a hidden way to use of feeble actions, to take the all too flawed lives you and I lead, and in a hidden way make something out of them. So play on, friends, sin bravely, but keep your heads up for the miracles. We have God's promise in this morning's parable that these miracles will happen. After all, the plants are still bearing fruit despite all the sinful weeds that lie around you and me. Life has meaning and purpose, even if it is hidden. Let's celebrate! Amen.
____________
1. Rudolf Bultmann, History of the Synoptic Tradition, trans. John Marsh (New York and Evanston, Illinois: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 187; Eduard Schweizer, The Good News According to Matthew, trans. David E. Green (2nd printing; Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1977), pp. 302-305; Joachim Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, trans. S. H. Hooke 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972), pp. 81-85, 226-227.
2. Ibid, Schweizer, pp. 310-311; Brevard Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 73.
3. For this opinion, see Martin Luther, Promotion Disputation for Cyriacus Gerichius (1533), in What Luther Says, comp. Elwald M. Plass (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959), p. 185.
4. Jack Dean Kingsbury, Matthew As Story (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), pp. 62-63.
5. Rick Warren, The Purpose-Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2002), pp. 282, 284. For examples of the sort of visible, material prosperity that is promised by Prosperity Gospel preachers like Gloria Copeland and Paul Crouch, see Bill Press, How the Republicans Stole Christmas (New York and London: Doubleday, 2005), pp. 221-222.
6. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), pp. 39-40.
7. Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Wheat and the Tares" (1960), in Justice and Mercy, ed. Ursula M. Niebuhr (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1974), p. 59.
8. Ibid, pp. 55-57.
9. Martin Luther, Sunday After Epiphany (1528), 10-11, in The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 5, ed. Eugene F. A. Klug (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), p. 268.
10. Martin Luther, Letter To Philip Melanchthon (1521), in Luther's Works, Vol. 48, ed. and trans. Gottfried G. Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963), pp. 281-282; cf. Martin Luther, The Pharisee and the Publican (n.d.), 44, in The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 2.2, ed. John Nicholas Lenker (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000), pp. 367-368.
