Of Tares & Wheat

“ The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. ”

Good seed , bad seed, the righteous and the damned, wheat & tares: this dichotomy rings a bit harshly in our ears. We take it philosophically, but in the end there are some human beings who, like those great farm burns that raise up huge plumes of smoke in late autumn around Butte County, will cause our eyes to smart from the smoke in the air, as our hearts smart from the realization that not all our friends, not all our relatives, not all our co-workers, not even all our fellow church members may be getting into heaven when they die. We know people who will perish. On what criteria will God justly judge their eternal souls? and can we live with that?

John Calvin felt he solved the problem by looking only at such scriptures and parables that made people out as saved or damned right from the start. Everyone is worthy of damnation, he reasoned, but God predetermined certain ones to be rescued from the pyre by His Son Jesus. Some aren't so lucky, but no one can complain, because we're all damnably evil. If God rescues some, they can only be eternally thankful and let Him burn the rest . I don't find comfort in this, nor does it answer my problem.

H. G. Wells must have been thinking of Calvinism when he wrote his great book, The Time Machine . In that story, a man invents a machine that can take him forward or backward in time, and he presses it to its limit in a future thousands of years from now, until he arrives in a time when everyone is lovely, blond and blue eyed, dressed in sylvan tunics and playing like children. The Eloi , they are called, and theirs seems a perfect society. Then he watches them be called into doorways and some of them disappear, never to return. Wondering about this, he explores further and finds that there is another race, the Morlocks , blue skinned, ugly and hairy creatures who live under ground and run the machinery that provides the Eloi with their perfect world on the surface to grow and develop into tasty, choice food for the Morlocks . Humanity has split itself, through some evolutionary process, into two types of beings: predators and their cattle.

I ride with the police force and see parts of Chico that you may not. One ride through a trailer camp called The Pear Grove and you might start believing in tares, or even Morlocks. People can sink to a place where their humanity is questionable, but it is only the appearance of righteousness and evil that we see when a shiny patrol car cruises through broken down tenements and uniformed officials stand erect over a scattering of ill-dressed victims of alcohol and drug abuse, bad choices and bad luck, to question them and bring justice and truth into their dark world. It is an appearance. There may be a great deal more to the story, and some of God's bright saints may live in such squalor. We can't judge everything by its appearance. Not yet.

On Thursday an officer and I encountered two very drunken men: one found passed out in the street. Something about him made us think he hadn't spent too many months in such a state. He had come from another city, but now in Chico, he was middle aged, every night polluted, every morning picked up and taken to the hospital.

The other man called 911 to say he was thinking of suicide with a 45. That triggered more response than he wanted when two officers, three fire department paramedics and I were staring down at a man, 58 years old, on his sofa and asking him questions. He impressed me as one who was too proud to receive help. Obviously life wasn't working for him, and the large empty bottles of vodka in his kitchen spoke to his despair. He kept asking us to leave, but on a suicide threat we had to follow the 5150 protocol—one who was a threat to himself or others—which was to take him to the hospital and to the county mental health. He was intelligent, gray haired and with a trim beard—not the skid row drunk we had already seen. In the hospital ER, he berated us, saying he had a PhD in psychology, and insisted that we take the handcuffs off. I tried to make conversation with him, but his belligerent attitude continued to rebuff my attempts to humanize this event. He could only see our attempts to save his life as an invasion of his rights. We finally left him at mental health without a thank you.

Why do some people refuse help? Why do some people sink and never get up? Why will some reject God, run from those who know Him, and have nothing to do with His Son? Is it nature, bad experiences, something innate or bad luck, bad choices, bad character: what?

Jesus told of the sower and the seed, that familiar parable about four types of soil that all receive the Word of God, the seed, but only the good ground is able to bring a fruitful crop. Then he told of two types of seed, wheat and tares. We heard it this morning: a man sowed good seed, but his enemy threw handfuls of tares among them. A tare is a weed known as darnel that closely resembles wheat as it grows, but when it matures becomes very different, and has no grain at all. It's impossible to tell it from wheat until the very end. Only at that point are the farmer's servants able to pull them out of the field, painstakingly, before harvesting the good grain.

Christ had to explain the parable to his disciples. “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Matthew 13:37-43 The ‘children of the wicked one' is a way of speaking of those who follow Satan. Other scriptures speak of how we all were once the devil's children because we did as he does, rebelling against God. But we become the children of God when we take Him as our Lord. It isn't nature or predestination that determines us to be wheat or tares. But the end may look just like that. My 5150 started out towards a successful life, a doctorate in psychology. He has ended up a chocolate mess, covered in his own mucus, proud and too embarrassed to get help. I witnessed a man sinking, but refusing to take my hand of help to pull him out. “Just leave me alone!” was all he said.

The end of the world, when that harvest comes, will overturn many things we thought stable, high, noble and worthy. The world will mourn its lost glory and many evil structures that prey upon our hearts and inclinations will crash into ruin. As Babylon falls its last time, the Bible tells us, “the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. Rev. 18:11-13 And the souls of men: that is what is bought and sold. Bought and sold by whom? Satan is one answer. People who prey upon others, the Morlocks of our world, not blue and hairy but well-dressed and well-respected, rich in worldly goods and totally unprincipled. They may be corporate moguls or drug dealers or pimps, sheiks or soldiers or bishops or movie stars. But people sell themselves to their world and by and by become tares. These will ultimately be weeds in the final harvest and be removed from the wheat, or there will be no way to use the final harvested grain.

King David had a problem: he had canvassed his kingdom for a number of fighting age men and so angered God. Now a plague was killing people by the thousands and David sought to stop the angel of death, with his reaping sword, standing at the very edge of Jerusalem, at the threshingfloor of a pagan. David bought that stone promontory to make a sacrifice to God and appease God's wrath. “David built there an altar unto the Lord, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon the Lord; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. And the Lord commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.” 1 Chron. 21:18-30 That threshingfloor became the Temple Mount and God's Savior walked upon it, coming into His own Place of Worship to save the world. The wheat must be gathered in and saved. They are of value to Him.

Why tares? Why not all wheat? The short answer is freedom. God made us free so that we might love. He gave us love in order to make us the creatures closest to Himself. Creatures that merely follow instincts or natural impulses can't be called friends, however cute they are. He wanted friends , so He had to accept the existence of some who would choose be enemies, enemies of God and enemies of us all, who would buy and sell the souls of men. They could have been wheat, but they refuse the Savior. Deeper they went, and the hands of help, the words spoken to connect them back with reality go unobserved, unheard, by choice, through pride. Eventually they become unable to see or hear anything but their own despair. But it wasn't like that at the start. Anyone who is here in this church today, for instance, can hear this message, can understand the help that is offered, and can act on it. Wheat or tares: looks today can be deceiving. We may even deceive ourselves—but in that hour, God will know who is His own.

PFH+