Bloomsbury
Central Baptist Church
20th
July 2014, 11.00am
Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43
He put before them another parable: "The
kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his
field; 25 but while everybody
was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went
away. 26 So when the plants
came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the
householder came and said to him, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your
field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?'
28 He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to
him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 29 But he replied, 'No; for in
gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let both of them grow together
until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the
weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my
barn.'"
Then he left the crowds and went into the
house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the
parable of the weeds of the field."
37 He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the
Son of Man; 38 the field is
the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the
children of the evil one, 39
and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age,
and the reapers are angels. 40
Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the
end of the age. 41 The Son of
Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes
of sin and all evildoers, 42
and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping
and gnashing of teeth. 43
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let
anyone with ears listen!
Revelation 14.2-5, 14-16 And I heard a voice from heaven
like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I
heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, 3 and they sing a new song before
the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one
could learn that song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who have been
redeemed from the earth. 4 It
is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins;
these follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been redeemed from humankind
as first fruits for God and the Lamb, 5
and in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless.
Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and
seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his
head, and a sharp sickle in his hand! 15
Another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to the one who
sat on the cloud, "Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has
come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe." 16 So the one who sat on the cloud
swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.
Alice Nutter, Pendle Witch
On holiday recently, Liz and I went on the
trail of the Pendle witches.
It
was a story I knew I’d heard of, but I didn’t know the details.
On the Witch Trial trail (which is harder to
say than you might think),
we
discovered a fascinating tale of murder and dark deeds in deepest Lancashire.
In brief, 400 years ago, in the shadow of
Pendle Hill,
amid
the pretty villages and sleepy fields,
suspicion started to grow that something wasn’t
right
with
some of the people who lived there.
Some women, probably medicine-women with skills
in herbal healing,
were
accused of witchcraft.
It’s possible that these women had actually
come to believe
that
they had the power to curse people,
and
to access strange powers,
so
there may at one level have been some truth in the accusation.
However, others got caught up in the
accusations,
and
in the end, twelve people were charged
with
using witchcraft to commit multiple murder.
After a trial at Lancaster Castle, ten people
were led outside and hanged.
The Pendle witches weren’t the only people
charged with witchcraft in this period,
and
the best estimate is that during the middle ages
approximately
500 people were executed for witchcraft.
This context of suspicion, which led to the
‘rooting out’ of the witches,
gives
us the phrase ‘witch-hunt’,
which we continue to use to describe any such
attempt to rid society
of
those who represent a specific and feared practice or ideology.
From the Spanish Inquisition, which apparently
no-one expected;
to
the Salem Witch Trials of Massachusetts;
to
the omniscient thought control of George Orwell’s fictional ‘Big Brother’;
to
the McCarthyite ‘reds under the bed’ fears of the Cold War period
- the
tendency seems to be for us to reinvent the witch-hunt for each new generation.
In Pendle in Lancashire, 400 years ago,
a
largely rural culture took its worst fears, paranoia, and guilt,
and
focused these on targeted individuals who were declared guilty
of
the crime which most revulsed the population.
I found it particularly interesting that one of
the guide books to the Pendle witch trials
says
that "The evidence against them was based on memories,
hearsay
and superstition."
In other words, whilst it appears to be
important that the rule of law is followed,
actually
the most important thing is to make the guilty pay.
The role of the legal process becomes less
about
establishing
truth beyond reasonable doubt,
and more about allowing society to believe
that
the witch-hunt has not taken it beyond the bounds of normal process.
One of the characteristics of legal processes
in a witch-hunt scenario
is
that once accused, someone is popularly presumed guilty until proven innocent,
rather
than the other way around.
The philosopher Rene Girard suggests that what
we encounter
in
situations such as the Pendle Witch Trials
is
an example of a social phenomenon known as scape-goating.
The term scape-goat has its origins in the Old
Testament,
in
the book of Leviticus (16.21-22),
where
we find a ritual described which has as its purpose the purification of
society.
In this special ritual, the sins of the people
are
symbolically laden on the head of a goat,
which
is then driven away into the wilderness.[1]
This goat has become known as the ‘scape-goat’,
because
it is sacrificed to atone for the sins of the whole population.
In modern language, we still speak of a
scape-goat,
usually
as a human victim, who is identified as an easy target
on
which to discharge the accumulated hatreds of a community.[2]
Rene Girard says that the act of scape-goating
isn’t simply a religious ritual,
but
that it is rather an example of a universal human tendency.
Girard argues that at the base of human society
is a drive, or instinct,
to
imitate, to copy, to want to be like another person,
or
to have what another person has.
This desire to imitate creates rivalries
between people
that
then have to be contained,
and Girard suggests that the rules of society
are
attempts to contain the rivalries that would otherwise lead to violence.
Think of the child who has not yet learned to
say ‘please’
–
if they want something, they will attempt to just take it.
Eventually, and hopefully before they are
strong enough to take it by force,
they
will learn to say ‘please’,
and
they will learn the rules of sharing,
and
that sometimes you don’t always get what the other person has,
no
matter how much you want it.
In other words, they learn the rules of society.
However, the rules just contain the desire,
they don’t make it go away.
This
is why capitalism is such an addictive ideology – but I digress.
The rules of society don’t banish the capacity
for acquisitive violence
that
lies within each human soul,
they
just contain it,
and
allow it to be exercised at a societal rather than individual level.
If I kill you because I want your stuff,
society judges me guilty.
But
if we all agree, as a nation,
that
we want the land currently occupied by another group,
we
justify together our military action to take it.
Which is why our headlines are full of horrific
news from Gaza this week,
but
again, I digress.
By this way of looking at things, violence
between two people
–
me using violence to take what I want from you – is contained.
But violence exercised on behalf of the many
against the individual is sanctioned,
and
even necessitated, as the legal system asserts its communal rule of law.
By the same token, violence exercised by the many
against
another societal grouping is also justified.
In other words, if enough of us agree that it’s
OK to go to war, then it’s OK.
And
also, interestingly, if we do go to war,
there
is then huge pressure to conform to that decision,
to
cheer on and support ‘our boys’. But again, I digress.
Girard goes on, and takes his argument one
stage further,
and
this is where he starts to shed light on the language of the scape-goat,
on
the practice of the witch-hunt.
Sometimes, he says, the conflicts within a
society
cannot
be contained by the civilising rules that the community has developed.
An atmosphere develops of fear, suspicion, and
distrust
between
members of the society.
Mob rule threatens, and riot is just below the
surface.
At this point, Girard notes that the crisis is
only resolved
when
two or more individuals converge on the same adversary,
and
then others mimic them in this,
so
that in the end everybody gets drawn into a united hatred
of
the targeted adversary.
As Stephen Finamore puts it,
‘The
undifferentiated and unified mob converges
on
one arbitrarily selected individual.’[3]
The murder of the one, or possibly the few,
acts
as a catharsis for the wider society,
expelling
hostile and violent emotions from the group,
and
producing a sense of calm, harmony, and peace.
The group agrees that the scape-goat must die,
the
group enacts the sacrifice,
and
the group feels better as a result.
By this understanding, the scapegoating of the
few serves a wider sociological function,
by
assuaging the guilt of the many.
And so there is an inbuilt human tendency to
scapegoat,
to
witch-hunt, to name certain people as ‘other’, as ‘evil’,
and
to destroy them.
Because
if we all unite in hating them,
maybe
we won’t hate each other as much, at least for today.
And so we love to root out the evil,
to
leave no stone unturned in our efforts to rid society
of
the ones we have deemed unrighteous.
We embark on a crusade, we condemn them to
hell,
because
by doing so we rid ourselves of that which makes us most afraid.
There is a certain type of religious person
who
longs to root out evil in all its forms,
and
to establish the rule and reign of the righteous on the earth.
They have always existed, and they probably
always will.
The parable of the wheat and the weeds,
or
the wheat and the tares as it is more traditionally known,
has
its origin in a society that knew all about such religious extremism.
From the Zealots, eager to rid the land of the polluting
and corrupting Romans;
to
the Pharisees, eager to fight against pagans on the one hand,
and
against compromised Jews on the other,
there
were plenty of people around in Jesus’ day
who
were desperate to rid society of evil.
In the parable of the wheat and the weeds,
Jesus
offers a direct challenge to the mindset of scapegoating,
to
the practice of the witch-hunt.
There’s no point, says Jesus, in trying to root
out all evil from within human society,
because
it can’t be done.
All you will do is damage the good that is
growing there alongside the evil,
and
the whole harvest will be lost.
So at one level, this is a parable that urges
patience, forbearance, and perseverance.
However
frustrating it may feel
to
have to continue living alongside the unrighteous,
it’s
not our job as humans to purify society.
But at another level, the parable offers a deep
insight
into
the nature of the human soul:
the reason we cannot root out evil from our
midst
is
because the evil is within each one of us.
It’s not just society that’s a mixed field of
wheat and weeds;
it’s
me, and you, and each and every complex person on this complex planet.
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it,
‘the
line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human.’
The task of the religious extremist
is
shown by Jesus to be an impossible task,
because one cannot ultimately purify the human
soul
through
the exercising of violence,
however
well intentioned,
and
however legally mandated that violence might be.
People keep trying, of course, because it seems
so enticing;
when
we scape-goat the ‘other’, when we embark on a witch-hunt,
we
feel so righteous;
we
know we are right and innocent,
and
they, whoever they are, are guilty
and deserve their fate.
And yet, of course, none of us are innocent.
All
of us desire that which belongs to the other,
all
of us want what it not ours to have,
all
of us long to reach out and take, by force if necessary,
that
which will make us complete.
And so the crusade doesn’t work.
The
inquisition doesn’t work.
The
holy war doesn’t work.
There must be another way.
Well, says Jesus, there is.
Let
the wheat and the weeds grow side by side.
Don’t
spoil the harvest by rooting it all out too early.
Let
God be the judge of what is of value and what has no value.
The thing about weeds and wheat is that,
until
the harvest is mature,
it
is very hard to tell the one from the other.
You get some wheat the looks like weeds,
and
you get some weeds that look like wheat.
So don’t judge others, lest you yourself be
judged,
as
Jesus puts it earlier in the gospel (Matt. 7.1).
Each of us is a mixed bag of wheat and weeds.
There
are things in my life that have no eternal value,
and
which need to be consigned to the flames for all eternity.
There
are things in my life that are pleasing to God,
and
which he will hold safe in his eternal storehouse for evermore.
I
am weeds, and I am wheat.
As
are we all.
The only purification of the human soul that
carries eternal value
is
the judgment of God.
The only purification of the societies we
construct
that
carries eternal value is the judgment of God.
All human attempts to enact that judgment on
his behalf
become
scapegoating and witch-hunting,
temporary
fixes to assuage our guilt that ultimately damage us all
as
the weeding out of the few destroys the harvest of the many.
The only scapegoat that has the capacity to
take the sins of us all,
and
remove them from us for all eternity,
is the sinless one who was sacrificed on the
cross
for
the forgiveness of the many (Heb. 13.11-12).
And yet, still human society attempts to purify
itself,
to
scapegoat the hated and feared ‘other’
in
a desire to unite against the common foe for the good of us all.
Some seek to purify humanity by planting bombs
on planes and trains.
Some
by naming and shaming.
Some
by manipulation.
Certain quarters of the press and media take
great delight, it seems,
in
dwelling upon the sins of others;
all in the public interest, of course,
for
the good of the many.
Sometimes those who are scapegoated are
entirely innocent.
They
have done nothing to deserve their denigration,
and
they are simply declared guilty in the absence of evidence of innocence.
The language of ‘disabled scroungers’,
- yes, Google it if you don’t believe me – is
now rife.
These people, we are told from certain quarters,
claim
Disability Living Allowance despite being work-ready.
The consequent and distressing rise in
disability hate crime
has
all the hallmarks of a witch-hunt.[4]
As does the language of ‘illegal immigrant’
being used
to
describe those who have come to the UK as refugees to seek asylum.
The designation of them as ‘illegal’ offers a
justification for incarceration,
and
for inhumane or sub-human treatment
through
forced destitution, detention, and deportation.[5]
However, sometimes there are those who are
guilty of a crime,
those
who deserve to be brought to account before the law.
But the culpable guilt of an individual
doesn’t
stop their treatment by society
taking
on the characteristic of a witch-hunt.
Think, for example, of the language used by
David Cameron recently,
where
he promised there would be ‘no stone unturned’
by
the enquiry into allegations of historic abuse.[6]
It
will be rooted out, weeded out, at any cost.
I want to be very clear here: child sexual abuse
is an horrific crime,
and
those who perpetrate it need to be brought to account,
for
the sake of their victims and for society as a whole.
But the way in which the media has reported and
represented this issue in recent years
has
bordered on the prurient, the salacious, and the voyeuristic.
It has seemed on occasions as if there have
been those
who
have taken comfort if not delight in the ‘othering’ of those named.
And I find myself wondering whether,
in
a culture that has normalized sexual objectification,
and
embraced sexual exploitation,
we
are actually seeking to deal with the incipient guilt that this imparts,
by
drawing a boundary around certain types of sexual transgression,
and
then scapegoating those who have so transgressed.
As Paul puts it in his letter to the Romans,
‘all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:23).
Each of us is wheat and weeds.
Each
of us wants that which it is not ours to take.
Each
of us is in need of mercy, and forgiveness, and grace.
Each of us has the capacity to join the mob,
to
assuage our guilt through the scapegoating of the few.
Yet each of us receives forgiveness
from
the one who went to the cross for the sins of the many.
Each
of us receives forgiveness from the only one who is in a position to judge us.
Each
of us is touched by the grace of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus,
who has set us free from the law of
sin and of death. (Rom. 8.2).
[1]
Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible, p. 114
[2]
Eerdman’s Commentary on the Bible, p. 115
[3]
Finamore, God, Order and Chaos, p. 72
[4]
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/03/disabled-people-have-never-had-it-so-bad
[5]
http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2013/09/uk-media-needs-stop-referring-refugees-illegal-immigrants
[6]
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/07/07/david-cameron-westminster-child-abuse_n_5562875.html
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1 comment:
Thanks Simon, very thought provoking and well written.
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