Wheat and Weeds

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

It is common today to hear talking heads on TV talk about how Christianity is under attack. Whether it is lack of red Starbucks™ cups during the fourth quarter of the year, resistance to placing a monument to the ten commandments on the premesis of a government building, or fighting the requirement of students to pray and study scripture during times of instruction in public schools… these are all lifted up as examples of an “enemy” seeking to undermine the religious rights of Christians.

This is nonsense of course. As if God needed us to celebrate capitalism’s smorgasbord of excess during Christmas, or for us to shove cherry-picked verses of scripture down everyone’s throat, or take the role of teaching and forming the spiritual life of children out of the hands of the church and place it into a state-controlled educational environment! In these ways, Christianity is not under attack. 

But I would absolutely say that, in other ways, our practice and identity as Christians is under attack. 

Jesus told a parable of a sower in the Gospel of Matthew who planted wheat in his fields, only for his servants to discover the presence of weeds. Later on, alone with his disciples, he explained the meaning of the metaphors in his parable. The wheat were the “children of (God’s) kingdom,” and the weeds were the “children of the evil one.”

If we were to stop there, we would find it very easy to say that this parable means that there are good people who will live on after death, and that there are bad people who will be “burned up with fire.” This convenient narrative to explain life and morality is so much easier to follow than the more complicated one reality offers us. As long as the people we believe are “bad" are punished, and that good people (like us) are rewarded, life makes sense and our appraisal of society and community is simple. 

But this oversimplistic narrative might actually be one of the “weeds” that the evil one has sown in our midst. This over simplistic narrative that allows us to view some people as “children of the evil one” for reasons we are inculturated to believe, gives us license to do horrible things. It is this simplistic narrative that has given rise to what I believe is the true danger, the real “attacker” of Christianity: White Christian Nationalism (WCN).

I am sure you have heard that term before. And all three words of its name are necessary to adequately describe how it functions and why it is dangerous. WCN is not Christianity, but it dresses itself up with a version of Christian culture, christian taboos, and uniquely Christian flavored bigotry. WCN is also, uniquely, a creation meant to sustain and promote white supremacy. And, finally, it is not a religion, but it uses the cohesion of religion by giving its adherents a clear foe and a vision of triumph (through domination) not to promote faith, but to institute a political reality.

White Christian Nationalism is evil. And it is eating away at the witness of Christianity that seeks to promote the Good News that God has made ALL people in God’s image, that we are to love our enemies and not hate them, and that we worship God in Jesus Christ, not a political figurehead.

Perhaps I am sounding a bit angry and more urgent than seems necessary, but I believe that we must urgently respond to this evil metastasizing in our culture which is masquerading an image of our faith as followers of Christ. Because if we remain silent and passive, we will only continue to see our tax payer dollars fund genocide in Palestine. We will only continue to find our nation in fruitless wars while hearing how our new batch of military leaders promote the idea that these wars are meant to bring about Christ’s second return. We will only continue to see the rise of hate and the tolerance of state sponsored violence in our country, most recently illustrated by the extrajudicial murders committed by ICE agents over the past several months.

Just this week, ICE has killed two men who were lawfully present in this country (as if lawful presence even mattered—since when has a misdemeanor offense of being undocumented become an offense worthy of killing someone without a trial?). These men were active in their communities, devoted fathers, and they were innocent. A direct line can be drawn from these evil tragedies to the sick perversion spread by White Christian Nationalism—and our silence as Christians only contributes to the size and impact of it.

White Christian Nationalism, a veritable weed overtaking the field in which God has sown good wheat, is behind the evil masquerading as Christianity in the US. And as people of faith, we must not turn away from it, or pretend it has nothing to do with our faith (to say nothing of our citizenship in the United States of America). 

Let us pray for our collective souls, and let us seek out God’s grace as we do our best to be faithful in times such as this where weeds are overtaking the lush fields of wheat God has planted.