Wheat, Weeds, and Us

Transcript

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[0:00] All right, we go now to our sermon. The sermon text is from John chapter 15, verses 9. No, that's not right. I have this from last week. Okay, it is Acts chapter 1, 15 through 26. Okay, all sorts of crazy things are going on with my papers today, but bear with me. There's one thing I want to do before we even go to the sermon, and that's this. Last week I asked you to be open to the Spirit in these last seven days. Open to the Spirit and ask, what would Jesus redefine in your life? What would he give new meaning to? He redefined friendship. He redefined what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And I said I would also do the same thing. I'm going to report to you because I asked you to do it, and I said I would do it, so I did it, and now I'm reporting. I'm reporting it back to you. And in this last week I've been contemplating, and through just, I think, some movement of God and just what I've been exposed to in this last week, which is nothing unusual, just information and things like that, I'm open to God redefining what it means for me to be right about things and that I could contemplate that I could be wrong about all sorts of things. Now, I like to be right about things, and I think most of us do. We like being right.

[1:29] We don't relish being wrong. But I'm finding that it's okay to discover that I've been wrong about things. In fact, not only is that an okay thing, that's a great thing to discover that, because if I don't discover it, I'll continue to be wrong. And when I discover that, I learn new things, which I'm always excited about. And then I ask myself the question, which is worse, being wrong and staying wrong, or the humiliation, and it is a bit of humiliation, the humiliation of realizing that you're wrong and trying to find out something new, which is worse. It depends on your pain threshold with humiliation, I guess. But for me, I would much rather know that I was wrong and stop being wrong than sort of ignorantly continue in being wrong, because I'd rather know the reality of things. And God has taught me that I may have been wrong about many things. And even in this season that we're in, I think I've probably been wrong about the state of race relations in our country. I've been wrong about some of my attitudes. And I'm open to God changing and stretching me. And some of that has come about from our racial justice team, our Life Together series, books I've been reading, podcasts I've been listening to.

[2:45] And it is humbling to say, oh, I thought a certain way about this thing, and that wasn't quite the reality that exists. So I'd much rather know what the real reality is. And so that's the redefinition and the challenging that's going on in my life. And I would also be quick to say that it doesn't mean that I'm wrong about everything. There's many things that I probably am still right about because that wisdom has come from Scripture and from God, and I can be happy that God has given me those things. So that was me doing my work that I asked you to do. And I hope that was helpful to you. So now our reading for our sermon is from Acts 1, verses 15-20.

[3:29] And I just don't know where it went. It's really weird. No, that's... Now that's the old one. Oh, here we go. I found it. I just have one paragraph that's wrong. Okay. I got it. All right. Acts 1, verses 15-26. Now, a little word of introduction. After Easter, the apostles needed a new apostle, right? You may remember that Judas died.

[4:10] And even before he died, they needed a new apostle because there was no way they were going to really let him back in the club after that. Now, this is a rare sermon text. We don't often preach on this. This is often sort of the text for this season that you read in the first or second reading. Rarely do people preach on this. In fact, I have never preached on this text. But I thought it was important because of the time that we're in to actually hear a little bit more about Judas, why he did what he did, which we'll get into, and what happened afterwards, and what consequences or implications that has for the larger church. And it's kind of a fascinating question.

[4:48] So Judas betrayed Jesus. One question we'll ask is why. And there's a bigger issue is, how is it that he stayed, in this movement with Jesus and the other apostles for so long, in a way almost hidden, that his heart was turned somewhere else? And that's a very interesting question that we're going to spend more of our time on today than the other thing. So that's our introduction. And our reading is Acts 1, verse 15. It begins like this. In those days, Peter stood up among the believers. Together, the crowd numbered about 120 persons and said, Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus. For he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry. Now this man, speaking of Judas, this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle, and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all, the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language, hakeldama, that is, field of blood. For it is written in the book of Psalms, let his homestead become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it, and let another take his position of overseer.

[6:14] Now Peter begins speaking again. So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was born, and the day when he was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection. So they proposed two. Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justice, and Matthias. Then they prayed, and said, Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own home. And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was added to the eleven apostles. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. And we ask that you would add your blessing to it. In Jesus' name, amen.

[7:15] Well, we're speaking about Judas, and Judas is an interesting figure, and one that we don't pay as much attention to because he's sort of an anti-hero in the Bible. And the other is that we don't get a lot of information about Judas in the Bible. What is the motivation for Judas to betray Jesus? And the answer is we don't quite know. Now, the Gospel writers give us some hints. The best information we have is that it was for the money. Right? He took a bribe to betray Jesus' location to the authorities. Now, I think it's more than that. But that's what we're told. Other Gospels indicate that in hindsight, they saw that he had done something that would have mismanaged the disciples' money and kept some for himself. He was the one that was in charge of the common purse.

[8:04] Now, some, and this is not scriptural necessarily, have thought that he was a zealot and he betrayed Jesus because he became disillusioned. He was disillusioned that Jesus had not yet overthrown the Romans. And so he was like, I don't believe in you because you did not bring this nationalistic vision that I wanted to see happen. And so now I reject you.

[8:27] Or the betrayal was an attempt to force Jesus' hand to actually reveal himself as a political and military messiah who was going to get rid of the Romans. Either way. But neither of those have support in the Scripture. But they're plausible. They are plausible that Judas, for one reason or another, was either disillusioned, angry, greedy. Right?

[8:48] We read in Luke's Gospel that Satan himself enters Judas just prior to the betrayal. And that's a very frightening thing. We don't talk about that very much either. One question then you might say is, well, if Satan is animating Judas, does that mean Judas really shouldn't be responsible for his actions? Right? Does that make sense? It does. Now, maybe, that's a hard one, and I don't have definitive answers on that, but I think we can assume that if he was susceptible to the work of Satan, that was a sign that he had abandoned faith at some point. But the Scriptures don't tell us. They simply tell us that in Luke's Gospel that Satan entered into Judas and that may have animated what he did. We do know, here's what we know. He took money to betray Jesus.

[9:43] He betrayed Jesus. With that money he bought a field and he died. Alright? That's what we read today. And we know that he was excluded from the disciples. But the disciples had to replace him. So let's talk about that for a little bit.

[10:00] The disciples said, we need to complete this number. Twelve is a nice, complete number. It's like a dozen. It's like they had a box of donuts. Except for donuts, they were apostles. And they said, we can't have a box of eleven donuts. We have to have a box of twelve donuts. It was a little more serious than that. But you get the idea. They wanted to be at full force. They wanted to be at full force to do this work that Jesus was asking them to do. And so they decide that they would pick between two men who had been with them from the beginning who knew how to witness to the resurrection. We'll get to that. That's a very important point. And so they said, here's two men, Justus and Matthias.

[10:44] And we need to choose between them. They had good feelings about both of them. But they said, we finally need to make God, in a way, ask God or get God to choose for us. And this is a similar method that other people in the Bible use to get guidance from God. It doesn't always work, but often it does work. So we have Gideon sets out a fleece to get the word from God. David and his men inquire of the Lord. It might be with something called the Urim and the Thummim. We don't know that, but there's some kind of lots that they inquired. And so people do this often. There's many other places in the Bible. Sometimes people take it too far. They kind of push the button too many times and God stops answering.

[11:25] And if you're not going to listen to me the first time, I'm not sure I can keep giving you. God gets a little tired of being sort of a magic eight ball after a while. He's like, okay, I've given you enough. You figure it out from here. But God really responds here. God is full of energy here. Matthias is chosen to replace Judas. And it's important because this is the beginning of the church. Jesus has commissioned them. He's just ascended into heaven. He's just given them a commission to go and spread the gospel. And so they're going to be the first to go. And God wants this to work. And so God is not going to slack in this moment. He's going to give them the guidance that while both of these men are very good men, they're the right men, there's a clear preference here for Matthias. So Matthias becomes the twelfth apostle.

[12:16] And there's a lot to say for this when Christians say choose leaders. Not so much for casting lots, but verse 24 says, they had two good choices, right? Two good candidates. And then what they did was they prayed. Not only did they cast lots, but they prayed first. This is important.

[12:39] And both of the candidates were people who were able to witness to the resurrection. And it's important to remember how much of Acts has to do with the testimony about Jesus, but particularly his death and his resurrection. So them being able to be as a witness to the resurrection is really key to their qualifications as potential future apostles. But they prayed. They prayed over it. And I think prayer can have this sort of clarifying effect.

[13:08] We can work through all the details. We can make all the logical evaluations. We can even create a grid of pros and cons and things like that. But in the end, we need to sense some confirmation that God is with what we are planning to do.

[13:23] And I want you to think about this. Even now, a time when you had two good choices in front of you. I mean, if you have one good choice and one bad choice, that's pretty obvious. But say you had two good choices or two bad choices, but you had to make one of them.

[13:35] Two like choices. And after praying, did you sense peace about one more than the other? And that's the gift, I think, that God gives us. It's maybe not casting lots, but there's this sense where the Spirit almost rests on one of these ideas more than the other. Is this foolproof? Is it infallible? I'm not going to say that. But I think our own peace is improved when we commit these big decisions to prayer and to the Lord. And I will go so far as to say you could also, in your own way, perhaps, set out a fleece or cast lots. Now, I'm not sure I would do this every day. I wouldn't roll dice or flip a coin or anything like that. I'm reluctant to say that that's God's will because I think then you abdicate some of the work that you have to do to really evaluate things and pray and do things. But it's not unheard of even yet. And so, if you want to do that, use it with caution, I would say. But it's possible. I think it's possible.

[14:35] Now, this is a great, this is good. It shows that God cares about the church. He wants it to be fully equipped. He wants to fill up the donut box so that they can go out. And Pentecost is just around the corner for these guys. They're going to start speaking in tongues that other people can understand.

[14:55] They're going to start making their own personal boundaries in just a matter of weeks. It's really amazing. So, God needed the church at full strength. He needed the leadership of the church at full strength.

[15:05] So, I want to go back to Judas. This is, again, I said, this is a very interesting question. And one thing I've been thinking about as I've worked through this is just how sad this is. And I don't think we spend a lot of time considering how sad it is that Judas was killed and that Judas betrayed Jesus. Right? How heartbreaking it is. Here's somebody he loved. Here's somebody he trusted. He walked with for a very long season. They went up and down the land right together as brothers through thick and thin. They saw each other through a lot of scrapes. And this one, Judas, gets up from the table at the Last Supper and he leaves and he brings the authorities back to find Jesus.

[15:55] And they take him and they crucify him. Jesus, that is. And we forget sometimes that Jesus is a very emotional being. He has feelings, right? This is part of the Incarnation. He has to feel disappointment. He has to feel hurt. Deep down in his gut, he has to feel betrayal. And if you've been betrayed by a friend, that emotion is easy to call back up, isn't it? Because it's visceral. And so Jesus was feeling this and it wasn't just somebody knocking behind his back. It wasn't somebody stealing from him when he wasn't looking. It was somebody bringing the authorities to kill him. The stakes were super high, right?

[16:37] There was physical pain at the cross more than we'll ever know, but there was emotional pain for Jesus. At his most needful hour, think of all the things that happened to Jesus in his needful hour. One of his closest friends betrayed him. The others could not stay awake to pray with him. Then they run away and one of his closest friends denies ever knowing him. And you may ask yourself, which betrayal is worse? The betrayal of Judas or the betrayal of Peter?

[17:05] It's an interesting question, right? And so this brings up, I think, as I've been thinking about this, a bigger topic, and it's a troubling one. How is it that Judas could be embedded so long among the followers of Jesus and still end up betraying him? Doesn't Jesus rub it off? Doesn't being around Jesus give Judas the power to resist the devil? How did this happen? Now you could say it had to happen so that the gospel could be the gospel, right? But I don't think it had to happen that way. It could have happened some other way that Jesus would be arrested.

[17:44] But there's this possibility that even in the first twelve apostles, not all of them were together. They were on the same page with Jesus. One of them was really not with the program. And actually Jesus hints at the possibility that this could happen in a parable that he tells in Matthew 13. It's almost like he knows in advance what's going to happen, and of course he does.

[18:14] In Matthew 13 he tells the parable of the wheat and the tares, or sometimes it's called the wheat and the weeds. The master sows some wheat or some seed. The master comes and plants weeds right next to it, right? The servant, they grow up together. The servants notice and say, let's start over, let's gather it all up and then you can replant the seeds. And the master says, no wait. The wheat might get pulled up with the weeds. You know, we just have to wait. At the harvest time we're going to gather it all together then. And then we'll sort it out. And the wheat will go into the grain bin, and the weeds will go in the fire.

[18:55] Now this is one of the few parables that Jesus interprets for them as well. The master is Jesus, the enemy is the devil. This is what Jesus says. And the wheat and the weeds are the righteous and the unrighteous that inhabit the same field. And at the end of time they will be gathered and sorted each to their own place. The place that they belong. Now this parable really came into the imagination of the church, and particularly St. Augustine of Hippo. He's one of the fathers of the church. He's a great thinker, just a wonderful thinker and father of the church as I said. And he had to reflect on this parable at the time that the city of Rome where he lived was sacked by the Visigoths. And he said to himself, how is it that a Christian city, which Rome was at that point, how could God allow a Christian city to fall at the hands of people who weren't Christians?

[19:56] And he thought to himself, from the barbarians from the north? You know, if you're Norwegian or Swedish or German, those are your ancestors, the barbarians. And he realized, as he thought, contemplated and read this parable in fact, that the church would always be a mixed body, just like in the field.

[20:25] and unrighteous people. They all claim that they're Christians. They all claim that they follow God, but some of them don't actually. And we can't always tell them apart. Sometimes you can, but even if you can tell them apart, you can't necessarily harvest them out of there. You have to wait until the end. And so he said Rome wasn't a truly Christian city because there was always a mixture going on. And you could say that about any nation. You could even say that about any church and any congregation. It is a corpus permixum, a mixed body. So there's, in any body there are true believers like the wheat, but the enemy will plant imposters who do not produce anything, but they take nutrients away from the others. They take life away from the others. It's a very powerful descriptive parable. But there is the good news that an impartial God will sort it all out in the end. But in the in-between time, the church needs to learn to live. As a mixed body. Now, I think I've seen this a lot and we're almost done here, but it's hard. It's hard because we really can't speak to the motivations of other people. We can't know truly the state of another person's soul. We shouldn't assume that we could know that,

[21:40] but we can observe people's behavior. We can observe what they say. We can observe what they do. All right. We can talk about their conduct. And I've seen, some believers that seem to create controversy and division wherever they go.

[21:58] Now, are they weeds or wheat? It's not for me to say, but I can say that it seems like everywhere you go, controversy and division follows you around. Something's going on. I can't say definitively what it is, but something is going on, right? I see Christians who seem to be worshiping a different God. They're worshiping at the altar of nationalism or white supremacy or prosperity gospel. There's a lot of goofing. There's a lot of goofed up thinking and a lot of goofed up theology among our brothers and sisters in the church. Again, it's hard to take their motives and figure out what those are, but it's very clear what they're saying and doing. And if they say or do something that's not in alignment with the gospel, we actually have a responsibility to speak up in a prophetic way about it. But we're a mixed body. And you know what else? And this is the sad part. There are abusers in the church and there is abuse in the church, not physical abuse, but spiritual abuse. And this is the unique challenge for the church, because there are people in this world who at heart, they really can't engage in healthy relationships for whatever reason. And we need to give them compassion for whatever those reasons are. But often, and this happens so much, they find a church. And churches

[23:16] are open places and churches are welcoming places. And if you say the right words, the right formula, churches are trusting places. In fact, they might even put you on a bit of, even if you're an abuser, they might put you on a bit of a pedestal if you can say all the holy things. And you can quote a little bit of scripture and they'll say, oh, how could that person be wrong? Because he knows so much about the Bible. No, they could still be an abuser. They're smart. They're crafty. They know what they're doing. Just recently, I've seen two articles about this, I don't take that as a, as a coincidence or anything like that, or an accident. One says that these abusers in the church are good at gaslighting the church. They're good at, at kind of challenging the perceptions of reality in the church. And when their behavior is confronted, they'll just turn the tables really quickly and said, you're the ones with the problem. You're the ones being judgmental about my behavior. Don't be judgmental towards me. Okay. You can't do that. Your perceptions are wrong. You're the ones who are wrong. You're the ones who are wrong. You're the ones who are wrong. I'm the victim. And they can turn from aggressor to victim on a dime. It's really stunning what

[24:27] they can do. Victoria, could you help me with, thanks. He's way over there in the choir loft. They can turn the tables really quickly and they'll say, you're the ones with the problem. Your perceptions are wrong. I'm the victim. I'm always misunderstood. I'm always being picked on here. And also another article said that abusers can groom the congregation, which is a similar concept, but it's different, which is, is they keep testing boundaries around their contact conduct to see what they can get away with. And the longer they can get away with it, the more they have changed the culture of the church to accept it. And so they just kind of keep pushing and churches again, they're open. They're trusting. They don't like to confront things because that's uncomfortable or difficult. And so they might go, Oh, I think we can live with that. I'm not going to have that difficult discussion with that person. And so that becomes the new normal. And the church, so they start to normalize things like just for an example, really long hugs. You know what I'm talking about? Somebody who hugs just a little too long is not a relative, right? Or really long public prayers or all sorts of other boundary violations,

[25:39] emotional boundary violations, where they just get a little too enmeshed with you. And you're like, what is going on here? I don't know you that well. So Asher, I think you need to go back to my office right now. Go ahead. Or you have to go back to your office. Be super quiet. Okay. So I brought Asher with me today and he's, he's missing his dad. I love you, little man. Are you just listening? Okay. All right. Can you sit still and not make noise?

[26:05] Is that a yes? Okay. Thanks. All right. Well, that's life. So, and again, like I said, they can be really good at using scripture to defend themselves and justify what they're doing. And they may even say a lot of spiritual sounding things to throw people off the track. But they can be really good at using scripture to defend themselves and I thought grooming and gaslighting, and they're similar. So what if there was a mashup of these two words? Would it be like grass lighting or groom gassing? I mean, we all have our ideas, but I thought these things kind of go together. This happens in churches. It's a mixed body. Now the church needs to be aware of it. The church needs to do something. And their good news is that the church can and actually should confront this behavior all the while seeking to defend itself. seeking to restore and help the abuser, as long as they haven't abused other people to the point where they really need to be separated from each other for their safety. So we extend grace, healing, and forgiveness to the abuser, but you also keep boundaries around their behavior and say, you can't do that here. That's not what this body here is for. You can't meet your needs that way here.

[27:16] That doesn't work here for us. And all it takes is to do it consistently, to point out those behaviors and say, no, this is a boundary violation, and to say it out of love, because you would say, it's not good for you to violate boundaries, and it's certainly not good for us to have our boundaries violated by you. And so the best thing for us and you is that you cannot do that here anymore. So it takes a little bit of initiative. It takes some consistency, because you could think, oh, I've confronted it once, then that's what happens in churches. They confront it once, and they go, oh, good, it's settled.

[27:52] We talked to that person about it. Now they'll never do it again. Wrong. If they're an abuser by nature, they're going to keep pressing boundaries. And so that one time that you think it's been dealt with, it hasn't been dealt with. You have to consistently be vigilant and say, oh, I see that again. We've talked about this. You can't do that here. If you keep doing that here, we have to sort of escalate sort of the consequences for you, because it doesn't seem... It seems that you think you can keep doing it here. And you can't. So it takes consistency.

[28:25] And they can't help themselves sometimes. This is how they get their sense of self is by pushing these boundaries and getting enmeshed in sort of toxic ways. And to say you can't do that here. You have to keep saying it. And it takes speaking about reality. About what the reality is. Not the gaslighted reality. That where all this stuff is okay. Or that it's just your perception. That it's a problem. problem, but that there's this actual reality. Like you would say, it's not good for one person to pray out loud every week for 10 minutes. It seems holy and pious maybe to a few of us, but to everybody else it seems like this is way too much and way too long, and it's too much about you, and you're taking everybody's time up. You're violating all sorts of boundaries by doing that, and the reality is you can't do that here, and that's unhealthy what you're doing.

[29:15] Um, it's not good or right or healthy to get a hug from someone that lingers too long. It's not, and you have the right to speak up about it, talk to somebody if that happens, right? It's not good, and then be prepared for some anger because the abuser has been pushing this button here at the church for a long time to get what they want, what they need from the church, even in sort of a in a twisted or broken way, and when that button stops working, for a while, it's not good. It's not good. For a while, they're going to push it even harder. That's just what they're going to do. I've seen it many times, and there's going to be some anger because when they push it, they're not going to get what they normally get. They're going to get something else, which is, no, you can't do that here, and so now they have a choice, and nobody can make this choice but them, is to receive the love and care of a church that values them so much that they would enforce boundaries for them and start to work on why it is that they need to do what they're doing, that's one choice, and we hope they take that choice. That's important. There'll be great growth in discipleship for them to take that step, and it should be offered to them in all sorts of

[30:21] ways. That's one choice, or the other choice is to move on to another church in the hopes that they can get away with something there, to another church that doesn't have those boundaries yet. Now, if they're there long enough, eventually that church will develop those boundaries. They have to. So often what they leave, often what happens is that they'll leave, because that is the path of least resistance, and it's understandable. So the question kind of comes up. Judas was in among the disciples for a very long time, around Jesus for a very long time. How long was he harboring in his heart this desire to betray Jesus, to go the other way? The scripture doesn't tell us, but the scripture tells us that he did do it, and so we need to ask ourselves and be wise about what it means to be a Christian. And so, I'm going to ask you, what does it mean to be a Christian? What does it mean for you to live in a mixed body? What does it mean for you to live in a mixed body?

[31:34] Sometimes the abusers in the church are the pastors, and when that happens, you've got a real problem. You really do. But if you live in a mixed body, you're not going to live in a mixed body. but it's possible to get through that too. But all of us bring our brokenness to the church. All of us bring our brokenness to the church. What matters is, do we say, I'm bringing my brokenness to the church and the church has to accept my brokenness as normal how we do things here? Or do I bring my brokenness to the church saying, I am broken. I need forgiveness and help and fellowship so that I can stay on the path. That's a huge difference. And the church always has to say, welcome in every sinner who comes through these doors and receive the grace and love of Jesus Christ. But we put our hand up when we say, when somebody says, I'm gonna act all crazy in here and you all have to put up with it forever. We say, no, we need to get to the bottom of this. We'll help you if you're willing, but you can't do that here. So we bring our brokenness to the church and by the grace of God, we'll be forgiven and God will give us a new life and a new beginning.

[32:42] So Judas, again, he shows us that we're in a mixed body. So we need to be brave. We need to look to ourselves and to our own sin. And we may never find all the weeds, even in our own heart and among us, but we wait and hope for the final day when God and his perfect justice will bring the harvest in. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you again for your word. Help us live as wise people in this mixed body that you call the church. Amen.