09 - Chapter 09
CHAPTER IX THE DARNEL AMONG THE WHEAT Mat 13:24-30, Mat 13:36-43. IN the Sower it was assumed that the thorns got in among the crop by accident. The Darnel presents a new case in which the weeds are deliberately sown with hostile intent. Let us ask first what the parable meant to “ Matthew ’ and the circle for which he wrote. They may have had in mind cases of grave moral delinquency in the Church. Was Paul right, for example, in recommending the excommunication of the Corinthian Christian who was living with his father’s wife (1Co 5:4 f.)? It seems unlikely that any Gospel writer could ascribe to Jesus the view that no attempt should be made to root iniquity out of the Church.
More probably, the early Church regarded the parable as giving guidance on the treatment to be accorded to Christians who held and taught beliefs that differed from the received teaching of the authorities. There was, for example, the great Pauline heresy, that Gentile believers might be baptized without first being circumcised. The proper treatment for men whose beliefs were considered dangerously erroneous must have been at first a matter for serious discussion. Were they to be tolerated in the Church, or were they to be driven out? The parable seemed to answer: “ Let the heretics alone. If their teaching is really wrong and dangerous, in due time its true nature will show itself. Let God be the judge.” This was, in fact, the advice which Gamaliel had given the members of the Sanhedrin, when they wanted to root out their thorns, Peter and the other apostles who had defied them (Acts 5:38 f.) The Jerusalem Council also decided that the uncircumcised Gentile converts might remain in the Church, though some members regarded their membership as a noxious weed (Acts 15:19).
Paul gave the same answer to the same question.
If on the foundation any man builds a structure of wood or thatch, there is no need for us to burn it down; the Day, God’s Day, will show it up; the Fire will bring out its true quality (1Co 3:13). But such questions can hardly have been in the mind of Jesus. The opening scene conveys an important and memorable truth. If there are farmers who sow good seed, there are other farmers who sow darnel. In our Lord’s day, his disciples were not the only preachers; Pharisees were scouring sea and land to make proselytes. In our day, if there are missionaries of the cross, there are also missionaries of the Rationalist Press Association, and there are distinguished novelists and essayists, often with the most meagre knowledge of what they are discussing, using their influence to discredit the Christian message. While Christian preachers and writers are sowing the seed of lofty thought, pure ideals and upright conduct, multitudes in the press, in the drink saloon, on the race course, in the cheap theatre, with no thought but that of making money from the foibles of their fellow-men, are briskly advertising their wares and sowing the seeds of destruction.
It is not only in the sphere of religion that good seems to be inextricably intertwined with evil. Invention has enlarged the opportunity of the criminal as well as of the respectable citizen, and discovery has smoothed the path of vice as well as of virtue; so that many of us have a certain sympathy with Mr. Gandhi’s desire to stop the march of what we call progress, if only it were feasible or possible. But our Lord’s thought moved in the moral and spiritual sphere. With the history of his own people in view, he knew how the system of animal sacrifice had attached itself to the Jewish religion, and men at one and the same time could believe that God was righteous and that by the blood of bulls and goats God could be induced to forgive their sins. Pharisaic zeal for the purity of their race and their religion had resulted in the ugly Pharisaism depicted in the Gospels. A genuine desire to have all things clean in the sight of God had been transformed into that ceremonialism which cleansed all the appurtenances of religion except the heart of the worshipper. The Sabbath rest had become a burden and tithing a mechanical tax. The Law, whose function was to keep people walking in the ways of God, had been corrupted into a yoke beneath which many refused to bend their necks, while those who did were like overladen bullocks, struggling feebly and painfully along, unable to walk upright.
We have similar experiences in our own day.
We have only to look around to see how easily religion, however noble its development, deteriorates till it becomes a parody of its former self. The living Church becomes a dead institution, faith degenerates into a creed and worship into a repetition of formulas and ceremonies. The ecclesiastic becomes a poor substitute for the Churchman and the priest for the pastor. The sacrament turns into the mystery and the joyous reading of the Bible issues in fundamentalism.
Whether or not we have the parable in the precise form in which Jesus gave it, at all events it graphically sets before us three points of great practical importance. There are missionaries of evil as well as missionaries of good; the evil and the good are intertwined in the closest way, the evil being often, in fact, a parasite of the good; and rash attempts to destroy the evil may involve the destruction of much of the good. In uprooting the magical element in the sacramentalist’s attitude to religion, may we not at the same time destroy his interest in the sacrament? Convince the fundamentalist of the intellectual unsoundness of his position, and in some cases he may never again feel the same joyful certainty in reading the old book. Who can tell us the precise point in religion at which the external ends and the internal begins? The architecture, the appurtenances, the liturgy, the music, the vestments, beautiful in themselves and rich in historic memories and spiritual significance: can those who regard these things as of the essence of their worship be deprived of them without the quality of their worship being vitally affected? It is a live issue with which this parable deals.
There was much that was revolting in the Judaism of our Lord’s day; yet he conducted the whole of his ministry within its confines, and he knew that there was another side to contemporary religion. In the introduction to his Gospel Luke seems anxious to show the reverse side of the picture. There were men like Zechariah and women like Elizabeth in the priestly families as well as the priest who ignored the wounded traveller lying on the Jericho road and the priests who hounded Jesus to his death. In the country there were simple shepherds of unaffected piety with an ear for the heavenly choir. Even in Jerusalem there were pious souls like Symeon and Hanna waiting for the coming of the glory of the Lord. Even in the Temple one might see the doctors amazed at the questions and answers of the child Jesus. Our Lord did attack the corruptions of Judaism in some of the fiercest denunciations in literature; yet in all his dealings with it he kept in view his own principle that the uprooting of the evil should not endanger the good. He must have loathed the stream of animal blood that flowed in the name of God, yet we nowhere read that he denounced animal sacrifice: he left the system to perish, and it did perish. He knew how far the priests had fallen from the priestly ideal, but he nowhere suggested the abolition of the priesthood. To the last he remained loyal to the Temple in spite of its corruptions. So far was he from proposing to break loose from the whole Judaic system that after he was taken from them his followers still thought of themselves as Jews and continued to worship in the temple. When the harvest was ripe the separation took place spontaneously. On every mission field we have learned the wisdom of the warning that, in seeking to lop off rotten branches, we may kill the tree. There are many pious souls to whom a work of destruction is very congenial, but Sodom is not the only city that is worth saving if there are even ten righteous men within it.