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Toward an Honest Religion
Matthew 13:24-30

February 8, 1970
John M. Buchanan

Somehow, a the years, the Christian Faith has gotten itself gaddled with an
image of unreality. Likewise, the Bible, seems to be generally regarded as a book
without much relatedness to life. And I suppose nothing briddles me as much as
hearing these two ideas expressed because nothing could;be further from the truth.

In a recent article on Ecology Time Magazine tricd to lay the blame for the

pollution of our environment on the first chapter of Genesis and the Christian

Faith. Genesis, Time observed, makes the claim that the natural world was made for
man to exploit and enjoy. God gave man dominion over nature. Christians have simply
assumed that the world is theirs to use in any way they wish -— with the result that
wo are dumping our wastes into the rivers and oceans, spewing our noxious fumes into
the air, and destroying oxygen producing vegetation much faster than the enviroment
can cleanse itself. That is to say: Biblical Christianity is so far romoved from

reality that it is responsible for the inexcusable mess in which we now find ourselves.

Now the trouble with that, besides giving the Faith a lead press, is that it is
blatently untrue. To be sure, our tradition does establish man as the dominant
creature in creation; and it does establish man as the animal given the right to
use and enjoy the earth. But it also very clearly states man's responsibility for
the world. I+ clearly defines the world as God's possession, and man as its manager.
The Biblical tradition secs man as the steward of nature, and because of that it
lays an imperative on every believer to be on the fore front of the belated effort
to call a halt +o the deathly process of pollution. Time, however, chose to ignore
that, and the Christian Faith came off as a dangerously unrealistic idea-system.

Children get the impression that Christian FAith is unreal by observing the
behavior of their parents. A home in which prayer never occurs, 4 home in which
the word God is never spoken is, by default, a learning laboratory in Atheism.
Children see what goes on in church: compare that with what goes on at home and

come to a precisely logical conclusion. Church is irrelevant: Christianity is

unreal.

Those same children go to college and dismiss Christianity without so mech as
a cursory investigation, because they feel it is totally wumrealted to life. After
college they join a scientifically oriented culture which is so obsessed with its
own technology that it doesn't even take religious faith seriously.

And yet, in a sense, we have no one but ourselves to blame. Christians have,
in fact, focused almost totally on the. hereafter instead of the here and now.
Christianity has been marketed, and is marketed today, as a one way ticket to heaven
and nothing else. The Church has happily gone along because eternal salvation is a
very marketable item, particularly if one doesn't have to get too upset about the
sticky problems of the day.

If you want a ficld oxpericnce in the unreality of popular Christinaity, look
sometime at the curriculum which is used in most Sunday Schools - particularly the
teaching pictures. My favorite is one that has been around since I was a child.

It is a picture of a family. The scenc, I presume, is an attempt to portray a
typical Sunday afternoon. Fathor is situing in a chair, dressed in suit and tic,
reading a book. Mother is knitting by the radio. One child is working on a puzzle,
the other looking out the window. -A dog is sleeping in the corner: everything is
immaculate, orderly, clcan - and so completely unrelated to reality that it's
really no wonder our children are inclined to dismiss Christianity as soon as they
can.

Or consider our picturcs of Jesus himself: close cropped beard, clean white
robes, nearly blond with anglo-saxon features, surrounded by happy plump children,
usually in a field of flowers. -- Compare that image with the picture of life today
in a typical Arab village. And you will begin to get a feel for the unreality we
have craated around oursclvcs.

Our art work, such as it is, is merely one small reflector of the total image
Christianity displays to the sacha Thas image, somehow, still includes the
individual Christian who just isn't with it: who shu%s worldly pleasure, is sombre

and sober, who docsn't onjoy himself mach and generally leads a rather dismal life.

F That image still prompts dismay and real horror when Christians start talking about
the nasty issues of lifc, such as racism and equality and peace.
Well, the stance of unreality — the stance of basic dishonesty in religion is
possible only if we studiously ignorethe Bible and what it really says and does not j

say. Just as Timo Magazine could blame Christianity for pollution only by avoiding

the whole Biblical tradition -— so we can be unreal and dishonest Christians only by
not knowing the content of the Bible.

A case in point is our Now Testament Lesson this morning. Jesus was talking to
his disciples about the Kingdom. He was using the best rabbinical teaching tool -
the parable - the story. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like...." "The Kingdom of Heaven",
of course, rings a bell for us and immediately we begin to think about peoarly gates a
and golden streets; a very popular-image of eternal life, including singing hymns and
praying, which once prompted Mark Twain to wonder why in the world so many people
wore anxious to got there.

Actually "Kingdom of Hoaven" is Matthew's idiom for "Kingdom of God", and it is
not a place, but a state of boing; that state of being in which God, and no one else
is King. Jesus, apparently, had in mind something -— not at all confined to life after
death, but a reality in the prosont moment. The Kingdom of Heaven — we might call
it salvation - is a state of boing in which a Christian lives now, and which extends
beyond his death into eternity.

And so Jesus spent a lot of time telling his disciples about it. "The Kingdom
of Heaven is like..." and this time he told a rather romarkablo little story. A
man planted good seed in a ficld. One night an enomy sowed weeds in the same field.
When the weeds began to grow among the wheat the man's servant got very upset and
suggested that they got about the job of pulling them out. But the man declined,
pointing out that a lot of good wheat would be ruined if they did that. Instead
they would allow the wheat and weeds to grow together, and at harvest time separate
and dispose of the weeds.

The fact that Josus told a story like that as a description of the Kingdom of

God ought to tell us a great deal about the nature of Christian FAith and life.

ae . . - ‘ —— *
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Roligion has to do with the immediate: the present: the now. Religion has to do
with the stuff of life, even such mundane matters as a ficld of wheat and weeds.
Christian Faith is honest and realistic, or it is not Christian Faith.

The point of the story, I believe, in that it is imperative to be real and honest
in our religion. The story directs us in the way of realism. Thore are weeds.

Can it be that Jesus was suggesting that there are weeds in the Kingdom of God?

ft think so. \I think he was saying that even in the Christian life, the way of
discipleship, things are not always 100% right, pure and altogether clear. And
those who expect the faith to be this - to provide clear answers for all questions,
to solve all problems, or to fill one with a warm, contented happiness all of the
time are in for a rude shock.

Christianity takes reality seriously. Christianity takes man scriously. Men
are never altogether good and those who would dismiss the Church becausc its members
are not paragons of charity and moral virtue havon't the foggist notion what
Christianity is all about.

It is tragic that the Church in the past has used this story to justify the kind
of activity it seems to prohibit. The whoat and weeds did eventually get separated:
the wocds were burned. And on this basis zcalous churchmen have looked for the weeds
in their midst, and called thom horetics, and proceeded merrily to burn them too,
That docen't happen anymore, and yet there are more sermons occuring at this monent
verbally weeding you and me out of the Kingdom of Heaven than I care to contemplate.
Isn't it interesting, though, that the wheat and wecds were allowed to grow together
in the story? And that the final solution was left until the harvest. That's what
Jesus was saying: let the decision about where aman will spend eternity in tho
hands of God. You got on with the task of growing.

I'm always amused and a little alarmed whenever I hear anyone advocate weeding
the garden — in or outside the Church. Then are those, for instance, who feel that
we do a service to the truth by prevonting Communism from being taught in the schools,

or by denying 2 pass port to a Marxist oconomist, or by rofusing to allow a socialist

theorectician to speak at 2 public university. People feelvery strongly about this,

and yet I get the distinct impressinn that our Lord would say "let them go — truth
will out. It's always dangerous, and ultimately detrimental to the truth, to weed
the garden prematurely."

It's a remarkable little story, and we've only begun to investigate the possi-
bilities it opens.up. I think its greatest truth is that life - the life you and I
have been called to live ~ is a very ambiguous affair, very much like that field in
which the wheat and woeds grew togother.

Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist and one of the most provocative
thinkers of our age, has written a short story cntitled The Wall which says the same
thing about life as Jcsus' parable. The story takes place during the revolution in
Spain. Three anarchists are under arrest for sabatoge, and anc waiting in a dark, %
damp basement to be shot at dawn. One of them, Pablo, knows the whereabouts of the
rebel leader whom the authorities are very much interested in catching. Tho story
describes that torturous night as cach man contomplates his own death. Near dawn
Pablo has made his peace, dcath is inevitable: montally, he has already severed all
realtionships with others. Now he is filled only with scorn for his captors. As
he is led out to be shot ho is given one last chance to save his own life by reveal—
ing the hiding place of his fricnd. In complete scorn he fabricates ao wild tale
about a shack in some remote graveyard, thoroughly onjoys the vision of the police
scurrying on their wild gooséchase, and sits down to wait for his execution. Several
hours later he is cscorted to a dining hall for temporary dctainment before his is
sect freo. From a fricnd he learns that the rebel leader had been forced .to flec
and had hid in a shack in a graveyard. And for some unknown reason the police knew
where he was and shot him on the spot. Tho story ends.

Well, the great philosopher was saying that life is like that. The best of
human efforts sometimes fall flat. Life is a strange mixture of the good and not so
good: the brilliant achicvment and the tragic accident. Jcsus said that too — long
before the French philosopher.

The Good News of the Gospel is that we can bo that honest about life. The good

news is that Jesus Christ came into that kind of world, and lived that kind of life,

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“our fothor Koop us from shallow faith, Give us tho

pes | ourselves, our lives and our religion. ‘Help us always to see “tne noslity of
~ and your involvonont in life with us Through Jesus Christ on Lond.

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