When Wheat and Weeds Grow Together

Walking through a wheat field gave me additional perspective on some things Jesus said. Somewhere not far from where he preached the Sermon on the Mount, we stood among the vibrant green stalks on a beautiful spring day in the hills that gently rise above the Sea of Galilee. The farmer who tended this field had obviously worked hard to ensure it produced only wheat. The weeds we saw were gathered at the side of the field. These were the thistles Jesus talked about (Matt. 7:16), hearty, fibrous plants that almost looked like they were peering into the field of wheat, plotting their attack. If the weeds invaded the field, it would make a real mess for the farmer.

Maybe that same hillside field was filled with weeds when Jesus walked nearby, all those years ago. Maybe he knew farmers who spent a lot of their time trying to deal with weeds in their fields, and that was why he chose the image as the basis of one of his parables (Matt. 13). In his illustration, Jesus talks about the kingdom of God as a wheat field intended to grow food that would nourish people and offer life. Some enemy comes at night and throws a bunch of weed seeds into the field, potentially ruining the crop. The workers ask the farmer if they should get busy pulling the weeds, and he tells them instead to wait until the harvest, then the weeds will be gathered up and burned while the wheat goes to the storehouses, where it will wait to offer nourishment and life. Weeds in a wheat field, we know, aren’t good for nourishment, but the kingdom of God is all about the flourishing of life.

When Jesus indulges the disciples’ request to explain the parable (Matt. 13:36-43), he tells them that the weeds are the things that cause sin and those who do evil (13:41). In other words, it’s the stuff that is getting in the way of the life and nourishment that describes God’s kingdom. As Jesus extends the metaphor, the eschatological implications come into focus: there are causes and people who are working against flourishing, and those will be dealt with eventually, leaving only the nourishing goodness of the kingdom.

But what do we do in the meantime? There are still weeds in the field!

Jesus’s parable has me thinking about a lot of questions I hear from friends who are asking serious questions about things like the nature of the church. It should be a wheat field, shouldn’t it? Why do the headlines in our newsfeeds sometimes feel like a litany of announcements that there are weeds in the church? If there are weeds in the field, is that a place to devote our life’s work? (I often remind students that the church isn't the kingdom. It points to and participates in it, but there are weeds in the church's field.)

I get a bit protective of my students who are preparing for ministry. I want them to only go to weed-free, wheatfield churches. This parable reminds me that there will be weeds in every wheatfield, and I need to prepare students accordingly, helping them remember that the wheat is really good and not to expect any weed-free congregations. Wheat and weeds grow together.

I’m also thinking about any other organization I’ve ever worked in and how none of them have been a field of only weeds, and none of them have been a field of only wheat. Every organization likely has weeds and wheat growing together, and in my case, that reminder helps temper my expectations. Even if I were the one making all the decisions for the organization, there would still be weeds growing in the wheatfield.

Finally, I’m thinking about my impulse to want to pull a bunch of weeds. When I look around, I can see causes and people who seem to be working only against the goodness and flourishing God is bringing. The workers’ impulse is my impulse: Let’s go pull some weeds. But Jesus’s response is challenging me, especially around this warning: “While you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them” (Matt 13:29).

Are there weeds in the world God loves? Yes. Is my impulse to get out there and do some weeding? It often is, yes. Here, then, is the good news for me and maybe it is for you, too: The weeds are a problem, and they’ll be dealt with, but overzealous weeding risks killing the wheat. In fact, when I think of the times and places where overzealous weeding has taken place, the wheat hasn’t fared well. The result isn’t usually a pristine wheatfield, but a ragged collection of a few stalks that are barely holding on.

Like most of Jesus’s parables, this one makes me uncomfortable. I would prefer not to wait, and to take the weeding into my own hands. This parable helps me to slow down and trust that these not-good-for-life weeds aren’t going to choke out the wheat. At the same time, I don’t think Jesus is telling us to throw up our hands and prepare to eat weed salad for the rest of our lives. Farmers still need to tend to their fields and steward them well, but good farmers know that when you go after the weeds, you risk killing the wheat. The wheat, though, is the gift that nourishes, the seeds sown by the God who loves this creation. (Post adapted from a sermon/discussion you can watch here.)

The Roots Run Deep: Non-Anxious Theology in an Anxious Age

The way theological conversations are unfolding in my tradition these days calls for a non-anxious presence. Usually, anxiety shows up in organizations amid rapid social change, and that’s precisely what we are encountering now. American culture is experiencing more extreme culture shifts more rapidly than it has ever seen before, and I can see the church being swept up in it. This is a moment that calls for doing theology non-anxiously, not by falling for false alternatives that present a quick fix to our social instability, but by rooting deeply into the gift of our tradition.

A Tale of Two Emails

Two messages came in on the same day, both raising questions about a clergy education program I helped develop. The first email raised questions about nearly every textbook in the program. Though there were no direct engagements with the content of the books themselves, the email’s author was suspicious because ‘I’ve heard so and so believes such and such.’ (Every one of the books had undergone a theological review by a committee before publication, but I don’t think the email’s writer knew that.)

The other email asked for theological clarification on a word used in a course he didn’t know. It was a word he wasn’t sure he wanted to use because it carried a connotation that he thought contradicted our tradition. He pointed to several specific examples in our tradition in which theologians had worked on that word.

I can’t speak for the motivations of each person who wrote those emails, but reading them back-to-back gave me an opportunity to reflect on the theological dynamics we’re living in today. It’s never a problem to field questions and offer clarification to notes like this, but one struck me as being very anxious, while the other seemed to be seeking clarification by rooting more deeply into our theological tradition. It was, for me, a microcosm of the larger theological conversation and the motivations undergirding it.

Non-Anxious Examples

This isn’t the first time we have encountered these dynamics, and there are non-anxious examples who have guided us previously. A ’non-anxious presence’ is a description of a pastor I heard in my early days of ministry. Pastors, I quickly learned, are called to step into crisis situations where change is happening quickly, most of which are laden with anxiety. The way a pastor shows up can make all the difference in a situation. You can add to the anxiety, becoming consumed by a frantic attempt to stem the change and bring the situation under control, or you can take account of the situation, look for the ways God’s presence is showing up in the situation, and give yourself more to God’s presence than anxiety, quietly inviting others to join you in that posture.

Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, a predecessor of mine in teaching theology at Trevecca, is one of the northern stars of non-anxious theology for me. Though she passed away before I knew what theology was, she has become an example to me of ‘showing up’ in the theological room as a non-anxious presence.

While Wynkoop was a professor at Trevecca, American culture was staggering through a massive social change as the Boomers began to question the virtue of social conformity that characterized their parents. The Civil Rights movement was in full swing, images of a faraway war filled American television screens each evening, and women were staking our new roles at home and in the workplace. In short, things were changing, and they were changing quickly. Of course, that will create anxiety, and of course, this is going to shape the way theology gets done.

Two Approaches

A simple (though not entirely complete) way to narrate the church’s response to rapid social change was to gravitate toward theological programs that offered a quick sense of stability amid social disorientation. In Wynkoop’s (and my) denomination, a group began to form around a brand of theology that sought to name the sins of the age decisively and distance itself from them. I call this the ‘get the sin out!’ approach. It tends to be primarily motivated by ridding ourselves and our society of sin. It generally looks to extract problems, resulting in a ‘pure’ state.

Wynkoop, instead, turned toward a deep well of theological resource that had largely been forgotten in Nazarene circles. She started reading the works of John Wesley and discovered how the tree of Wesleyan theology was nourished by roots sunk deep into the Old and New Testaments. What she pointed toward was a theology that was like a slow-growing oak that had been growing for generations and was now leafing anew for an anxious generation. It’s an approach that I call, ‘fill our hearts with love,’ entirely dependent upon a vital and intimate relationship with God. Wesley used the more archaic phrase, ‘love excluding sin.’ Its primary motivation is intimacy with God; the secondary reality is that it changes our motivation away from ungodly behaviors because we don’t want to do things that harm the relationship with the One we love.

There are other places for a theological evaluation of the two approaches I’ve outlined in more detail. Here, I’m simply offering the observation that theology can be done non-anxiously and calling for us to adopt the wisdom of our ancestors who have embraced a non-anxious presence. We are, as they were, thrust into a time of rapid social change, and it is creating anxiety, making ‘get the sin out!’ approaches an attractive harbor for those seeking a bit of social stability. These approaches have often been the well-intentioned pathway to legalism; we tried as hard as we could to rid sin from ourselves and the world around us, and found that journey never could result in true freedom from sin. I wonder, though, if these approaches are attractive precisely because they offer a kind of silent promise: ‘As long as you can control sin, you can control the chaos. Trying hard to control sin is how you’ll cure your anxiety.’

Such anxiety may even make other approaches appear less trustworthy and deserving of critique. That is, at some level, what Wynkoop endured. A host of pastors and theologians classified her as being soft on sin, when, in fact, a careful reading of A Theology of Love offers a lively description of how a person can be free from the power of sin. That freedom, she argues, is rooted in the love of God and neighbor, filling and directing the inner motivations of humans. What A Theology of Love doesn’t do is offer a quick solution for anxiety by pronouncing the need for control over sin or social change. To my reading, A Theology of Love only works when you have an enduring sense that God is actively working in the world, and that because of God’s activity, it isn’t up to you to expel sin; our role is to be filled with love because we are primarily motivated to be intimate with God, and the displacement of sin will be the natural result.

In my estimation, we are facing a situation similar to what Wynkoop faced. Some of us are anxious about rapid social change and our theological conversation is showing the marks of a people anxiously searching for a resting place. We would do well, then, to learn not only from the content of Wynkoop's theology but also from her example of carefully and consistently evaluating whether our theology trusts in God’s gracious activity or is caught up in an anxious search for home. “She always wanted to be sure she was getting it right,” one of her former students told me. That care, I think, is why her theology eventually carried the day, and the church did not bound headlong toward a legalistic false home.

Social change is picking up, anxiety is on the rise, and legalism still looks like a more efficient strategy than love. In the coming years, it will look more attractive to those whose anxious souls are seeking rest. The problem is that legalism can never be a true home for God’s people. It may offer a feeling of security amid social instability, but intimacy with God is not only the hope of holiness, but also the only resting place for our anxious hearts. We are going to need theologians who continue to help us root into the goodness of our tradition and let it blossom for a new generation. We are also going to need to be aware of when we are anxiously reacting to rapid social change and when we are resting in the goodness of divine activity. The good news: the oak is still growing, and the roots are still deep.

(I'm currently working on a new book called Coming Home: Theological Formation for an Anxious Age. If you'd like to know when it's available or see an advance copy, you can sign up here.)

The Work of Discipleship in a Christian University

Here are a few phrases I’ve often used that I’m now trying to work out of my vocabulary: “…a foot in both worlds.” “…bridging the gap between church and university.” It’s not that my passion for those kinds of things is waning; it’s more that I think those kinds of phrases have already caught me up in a false dichotomy, especially if we are talking about a Christian university. The heart of the problem I see in phrases like that is thinking of the church and the university as two entities, divergent in their missions.

Distinctly Christian universities don’t stand apart from the church; they are a part of the church. To appeal to Paul’s provocative metaphor, a Christian university is a part of the body of Christ with a distinctive function, but still part of the body, like any part of our own bodies (1 Cor. 12, Rom. 12). Phrases like the ones I’ve named above are a bit like saying, ‘I stand at the intersection between my shoulder and my lung, trying to hold the two together.’

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been developing a bit of a thought experiment called What If Christian University, or WICU for short. Basically, it asks, ‘What if…’ regarding many aspects of life at a Christian university, appreciating what has been and considering what might be possible. Today, though, I’m considering this: What if the Christian university really was understood as a part of the body of Christ? How would that shape the way we do our work? How would that change the kinds of conversations happening among church and university leaders? How would it shape what happens in the classroom?

I’m limiting myself to this brief claim today, because I have a lot of work to do for a Christian university that isn’t a thought experiment: Christ as the head of the body unifies the work of discipleship.

Christ as the Head of the Body

“He is the head of the body, the church,” we read in Colossians 1. Paul’s employment of the body metaphor spans several of his letters, but here we gain insight into how the body of Christ works. As the head of the body, Christ unites the parts of the body. That is, like our own bodies, the parts function together when they are united by the head.

This carries implications for those like me who work at a Christian university, pursuing truth and inviting students to join us in that quest. Here I have in mind an image of Jesus walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. They were walking together, learning as they went (I love that Jesus is a teacher), and guided by Jesus. That didn’t mean they didn’t walk into difficult situations or ask difficult questions. Following Jesus tends to mean you’re probably headed into places where life isn’t neat or tidy, and the pursuit of the truth rubs against the status quo uncomfortably. The disciples, though, followed Jesus as the ‘head’ of their metaphorical body, and it united them in their mission. Were there disagreements among them? Certainly! They were all committed, however, to following Jesus.

What if those of us who render our service at Christian higher ed institutions saw ourselves like that? What if we understood ourselves primarily as those who are following Jesus, our head, who unites the parts of the body? How might that shape the way I approach my work or manage disagreements with colleagues?

The head of the body, too, unifies the parts of the body so that they function together, and if Christ is the head of the body, I have to pay attention to the way my work is unified by the head. I am not disconnected from the head, severed from the body of Christ. This is the kind of work that calls me to be connected to Christ, the head of the body, and follow him as a disciple into the thorniest of questions and situations.

The Work of Discipleship

If my work is to stay connected to the head and follow Christ as a disciple, the work of Christian higher ed is also rooted in discipleship. As a distinctly Christian university, that also means that the university participates in the mission of the church by making disciples. What does that mean for education? It means that Christian universities are called to educate as discipleship, and that’s precisely what makes the work joyful and enlivening!

I have in mind here another discipleship scene: Jesus approaches Peter on the lakeshore and asks him to follow, telling him, “I will make you fish for people” (Matt. 4:19). Two things are functioning here: acquisition of skills and a vision for how to use those skills.

Part of education involves the acquisition of skill, whether that be in researching, writing, coding software, or taking vital signs. We need to be careful, though, to not reduce education to acquiring skill. Education also involves casting a vision for how those skills will be used.

Jesus is speaking to those who have acquired job skills as fishermen, but he wants to reorient those skills toward the purposes of the kingdom he is bringing. That, to me, is a large part of the work we do at Christian universities. These institutions are the part of the body of Christ that not only equip students with skills but also offer them a vision of how those skills can be used according to Christ’s kingdom. We disciple aspiring educators, business professionals, medical professionals, social workers, etc. to use their skills in a way that participate in God’s work of making all things new. What a joy!

Christ’s headship and the work of discipleship remind us that the church and the Christian university are not two separate entities with two separate missions. “For just as each of us has one body with many members,” Paul wrote to the Romans, “and these members have different functions, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Rom. 12:4-5).