Today the kingdom of heaven is compared to a householder’s field where, though he sowed good seed, both wheat and weeds grow as well. As we just heard moments ago:

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?' He said, `An enemy has done this.' They asked, ‘Do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, `No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”

This exchange speaks a word about the centrality of humility in a vital Christian life, or any human life for that matter; and I want to explore that virtue and this parable by way of a story:

I have a friend named Jim who has been working tirelessly over the last 40 years pressuring major construction firms in New York City and around the country to hire skilled black union workers. Jim’s organization “Harlem FightBack” through information and agitation expose the cronyistic and nepotistic hiring practices of major construction firms, and the slanted bidding process for government contracts that factor out as racism: skilled black trades person’s and minority construction firms passed over again and again.

Jim puts pressure on the large construction companies and local government officials to give some of these jobs to the black workers and contractors and some comply willingly, more do so grudgingly. So his work continues helping people get jobs one by one: an iron worker here, two electricians there, a carpenter picked up and so it goes.

Months ago Jim and I met with a friend named Matt down at Trinity church to talk about union and labor issues. Matt asked Jim about the thousands of workers that passed through his organization, that he had helped get jobs, folks that came to “Fight Back” not only because they needed work but also because they wanted to do something about the racist labor practices that cause such damage.

Matt asked, “What happens to all those that pass through Fightback, do they stay with the cause?”

Jim said, “No. Most are gone… They got in the market, they get theirs and they just melt away. Or they seek to accommodate the union leadership, the status quo, the larger culture: you know the old saying, ‘get what you can and devil take the hindmost.’ Maybe 5, at best 10 percent of those that we have helped stay in touch with the organization, the others melt away.”

Matt looked at Jim and shook his head and said, “That’s terrible,” and I thought the same thing; another instance where people cut themselves from their larger connections and just look out for self. As I sat there my anger grew and had I a sickle and the power I might have gone out and cut down those ungrateful folk that sign up, take all Jim’s aid and then disappear. And after them I would have turned on the people that inhabit those structures that oppress ordinary working people trying desperately to get by. In my anger I wanted to right things quickly and clean up that whole mess.

Then Matt pierced my fantasy of righteousness with another question, “Jim, How do you feel about it, all these people as you say, ‘melting away’ and how do you keep on going?”

Jim looked at him with eyes more generous than tired and said:

“I appreciate those that stay but those that go, it is ok, I understand what they are doing. I know how hard it is out there. They get in the force and they don’t want to be associated with us. They want security, and they want to make money for their families and so even though they want to help-- they intend to help--it is built into the social organization of the industry that for their own security they keep away from us at the margin. I understand that and it is ok. I don’t hold it against them. I know their suffering. Occasionally some pop back in. You know I can‘t know or predict the ways that our help may shake out in the long run, all I can do keep exposing the structures that oppress: agitating, and demonstrating: everybody’s caught up in this you know? Everybody.”

What an extraordinary response. What humility grounded in a deep understanding and care for the human condition and the complexity of the social system! That kind of humility has enabled him to be in the struggle this long.

Fighting this battle out of a Harlem store front office for 40 years, no fancy office equipment, no big staff just one day and one worker at a time, Any help from the many thousands he has helped would have been immense, not only for the daily functioning of the organization but in terms of the larger struggle for racial justice in the labor market but there it is. How easy it would be easy to vilify those men and women who “melted away” and extol the few that return to help; easy to vilify the powers and structures that be and become infected with bitterness toward them; dividing the world up into good and bad with moral surety but as he said, “everybody’s caught up in this: everybody.”

That is what Jesus was getting at when he told the parable of the wheat and the weeds. The weed mentioned is Darnel and it grows is absolutely indistinguishable from the wheat around it, even to the experienced eye of the ancient farmer. Try to weed before the harvest and you risk pulling up the good along with the bad they are so mixed. Jesus is not talking about plants here. He was teaching that it is not in our capacity nor is it our vocation to render absolute judgments about each other: in the church, in relationships, in whatever you do. The zeal for purity, for parsing good from evil; the zeal for the premature harvest is a far greater danger to the field than no action at all. Humility is coming to know that evil and goodness are intertwined both in the world and us We are never, none of us ever, wholly good or evil, sick or well. The reality seems more that in this mortal life-- in this Christian life--we exist shifting somewhere between those poles, between that wheat and those weeds, between spiritual sickness and wholeness every day. As Jim said, “everybody is caught up in this, everybody”

In this holy place we are given a space to practice laying our heavy burden of judgment down; judgments about the ways that we are right and others are wrong, about who is filled with sin and who is not. We are given the space to let go our rough assessments of one another; judgments that see only some small part of human being and sadly take it for the whole. As the psalmist says, “It is only God who searches us out and fully knows us,” God whom, as we heard in the reading from wisdom, “though sovereign in strength judges with mildness; governs with forbearance.”

Instead, all are offered the opportunity, in humility, to join each other in our naked need before God. We do this when we, in a moment, say prayers for all and also as we sing songs in thanks to God for all life. But we practice it most fully at this altar as we come to be received by God who receives us and loves us as we are, wheat, weeds and everything in between, and who will continue to do so until the end of the age. This is a glimpse of God’s wonderful kingdom, and truth is: “everybody is caught up in this. Everybody.”

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