Matthew 13:24-30
A puppet master or puppeteer is
defined literally as a person who controls and moves an object that represents
a creature of some sort by means of strings or hand movements. If this
puppeteer is also a ventriloquist, then they control the puppets movements as
well as its speech or sounds. The puppet has no life of its own and can only
move and make sounds as the puppet master directs.
Figuratively, a puppet master can
also signify a person who likes to control others or events in the lives of
others…a micromanager of sorts. Usually, this is used in negative terms.
Our God is not a puppet master.
People will often ask why God
allows certain bad things to happen. Why does He not step in and stop wicked
people from doing wicked things? Is God distant or removed or disinterested?
Why is He silent in the face of evil?
The Scriptures do not answer
these questions. In fact, these question may never be answered this side of
eternity. However, the parable before us helps us see that the Kingdom of
Heaven is not quite as simple as we would like it to be. God’s sovereignty does
not cancel the responsibility or irresponsibility of humanity. It is what
philosophers call a paradox or an antinomy – two apparently contradictory laws
that in some inexplicable way compliment each other.
The farmer planted good seeds in
his field. Like the farmer in the parable of the seed’s spontaneous growth,
this farmer and his workers followed their usual daily cycle and went to sleep.
Under cover of darkness, an enemy slithered in and sowed weeds among the wheat
and consequently, when the seeds germinated and began to grow, weeds and wheat
grew alongside each other in the same field.
The workers were quite naturally
vexed and perplexed when they realised that their careful hard work had been
spoiled and again quite naturally wanted to rectify the catastrophe
immediately. The wise farmer stopped them because he knew that pulling out the
weeds would result in the harming of at least some of the wheat. He counselled
them to wait until the harvest before attempting to sort the one from the
other.
Herein lie two lessons for those
who are willing to listen. The first has to do with waiting. God alone is all
wise and He alone is all knowing and He has a timetable. Jesus frequently
referred to times and seasons that the Father alone knew and set for good reason
(cf. Acts 1:7). The disciples often wanted to rush in where angels fear to
tread and two in particular earned the name sons of thunder, as they wanted to
obliterate a village that rejected their message (Luke 9:51-56). So the first lesson
is simply this: workers in the kingdom need to learn to wait for the Lord’s
timing.
The second lesson is related to
the first, but it has more to do with the nature of God than the timing of His
actions. Our God is a holy God. He is altogether perfect and altogether good
and altogether righteous. Humanity, on the other hand, is broken and flawed and
even our best good works fall far short of God’s perfection. The Scriptures
indicate that people – even “good” people like Moses and Isaiah – would die in
the presence of God (cf. Exodus 33:20; Isaiah 6:5). Consequently, if God were
to intervene in the affairs of humans, both wheat and weeds would be destroyed.
As N. T. Wright has said, “If the
price of God stepping in and stopping a campaign of genocide were that He would
also have to rebuke and restrain every other evil impulse, would we be prepared
to pay that price? If we ask God to act on special occasions, do we really
suppose that He could do that simply when we want Him to, and then back off for
the rest of the time?”[1]
God is pure and He does not discriminate – to deal with one form of evil and
overlook another is not His nature. We may have created an elaborate system of
superlatives in which one sin is greater or lesser when compared to another,
but in God’s economy all sin is equal. To use the images in our parable, if God
were to uproot the weeds, He would have to uproot the wheat as well.
And so we come full circle…we
must learn to wait. In Jesus’ day, various revolutionary groups wanted a
Messiah who would overthrow their Roman overlords in one fell swoop. They were
yearning for God to act and were more than willing to help Him to act, but in
this parable Jesus taught that this is not how the Kingdom of Heaven comes
about, nor is it in keeping with the holy, just, perfect, and righteous
character of God.
At the very core of the parable
is the need for patient trust. Our God does not want anyone to be destroyed,
but wants everyone to repent (2 Peter 3:9), and so He waits for the time of the
harvest…He delays His judgement because He is merciful and deeply compassionate.
He is not a grand puppeteer, but a loving Creator Who wants all to come to a
saving knowledge of Christ.
Jesus has acted once for all,
decisively and dramatically on the cross. We are now waiting for the full
outworking of that salvific event. Waiting is hard especially as we wait in a
dark world. But we wait in hope, as we have seen the Son rise, and He will make
all things new in His time.
[1] Matthew for
Everyone: Part One, Tom Wright, SPCK, Westminster John Knox Press, London,
2004, 168.
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