The Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
One day God was looking down at Earth and saw all of the evil that was going on. He decided to send an angel down to Earth to check it out. So he called one of His best angels and sent the angel to Earth for a time.
When he returned he told God, “Yes, it’s bad on Earth; 95% is bad and 5% is good.
Well, he thought for a moment and said, “Maybe I’d better send down a second angel to get another point of view.”
So God called another angel and sent him to Earth for a time, too.
When the angel returned he told God, “Yes, the Earth is in decline; 95%’s bad and 5%’s good.”
God said this was not good. So he decided to E-mail the 5% that were good and encourage them, give them a little something to help them keep going.
Do you know what that E-mail said????
You didn’t get one either,…..huh?
According to Lloyd John Ogilvie, a prominent Presbyterian minister, there are dangerous people in every congregation! He states that in every parish there are two kinds of people; one kind he calls inside-insiders, and the other kind he calls inside-outsiders.
The inside-insiders are people who have given over their entire lives to Christ. All of their major decisions affecting their personal, family, and business lives are based upon their faith in Christ and his will for their lives. They have a relationship with Christ that is marked by prayer, study of the Scriptures, and frequent reception of the Sacrament. In other words, they do what is explicitly stated in their baptismal vows, and they do it out of love for Christ and his Church.
The inside-outsiders are the other group of folks in every parish. The inside-outsiders are virtually indistinguishable from the inside-insiders. They’re on the committees, in the men’s and women’s groups, on the vestry, and among the clergy. Their decisions and whole way of life, however, are based on common sense, whatever way the social and political wind is blowing, their own skill and knowledge, and what is generally considered by the culture as being OK. Reliance on and trust in God may be given lip service, but there is no abiding relationship with Jesus. These are the dangerous people in a parish—often doing the right things for the wrong reasons.
This situation of having both inside-insiders and inside-outsiders isn’t a new phenomenon in the Church. When Jesus walked the earth, he had people who were interested in him because they wanted him to make them wiser, more self-sufficient, better at mastering life; and there were those who followed him because they knew that he was the key to life, that their relationship with God depended not on their learning new ways to be masters of their own destiny, but on their relationship with Jesus. There were some who felt that Jesus should have weeded out the false followers from the true ones; some, like those in our own day, who thought the Church should be pure.
And so Jesus told the parable about the wheat and the weeds, and just like the parable of the sower, he used an example with which his hearers would be familiar.
There was a certain kind of weed that flourished in wheat fields in that day that was indistinguishable from the wheat. Only when it was time for the harvest did the harvesters know which was wheat and which was weed, for the wheat seed was golden and the seed of the weeds was gray. The crop would be harvested along with the weeds, and then servants would laboriously separate the wheat from the weeds, storing the wheat and using the weeds for fuel.
In Jesus’ parable, he tells his disciples that the wheat and the weeds are like the Church—using Ogilvie’s terminology, that the inside-outsiders must be allowed to exist alongside the inside-insiders, for the two are so intermingled that destroying the evil would also result in destroying the good.
The parable has several implications for us. First, it is not for us to determine who the insiders-outsiders are. We do not have the ability to judge another person’s intentions and motivations. Until the close of the age, that is, until Judgment Day, the two are indistinguishable, for the evil Jesus is dealing with is not evil deeds, but simply living life without Christ at the center.
Second, by implication from the rest of the Gospel, people can change. A person in church for the wrong reasons today might be here for the right reasons tomorrow, and vice versa. And any person’s reasons are known only to God.
Third, beware of evil in the midst of good. Some people think that the Church is the one place where they should not encounter evil. But if we hear the parable, this is precisely the place where the devil wants to sow his seed. For this is where the followers of his greatest enemy are to be found; this is where his greatest challenge is!
And finally, this parable doesn’t mean that we should be silent in the face of what is obviously evil. God indeed is the ultimate judge, but it’s our responsibility to speak out against evil when we see it. This parable simply warns us that none of us is capable of judging a person’s heart, motivations, or intentions.
There are dangerous people in every parish, but it’s impossible to know who they are, and it’s highly likely that each one of us is dangerous from time to time as we lose sight of our relationship with Christ. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart.” Only God can judge, and our responsibility is to work on our part of our relationship with him, and to rely solely on him as our Lord and Master.
Sermon preached by the Very Rev. Fredrick A. Robinson
Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
7th Sunday after Pentecost
23 July 2017