Isaiah 44:6-8; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
The Rev. Candice B. Frazer
Storytelling has always been a significant part of every culture. It is how we share our traditions, how we learn, and it is how we shape society. Jesus understood the power of stories in helping people to reframe their context. His parables were not meant to be easily heard—they were meant to disgruntle and disrupt; to cause the listener to go away scratching his head and trying to figure out just exactly what Jesus meant. At the most, they are wisdom sayings. At the very least, they challenge anyone with ears to hear to reflect on how everyday events have points of similarity with the truths of God’s kingdom.
Jesus’s parables should be no less challenging for us today. It is easy to read them, hear how Jesus interprets them to his disciples, and come to simple conclusions. For instance, in this morning’s parable of the wheat and the weeds one can easily determine that Jesus is saying that good and evil both exist and that one day the bad people will go to Hell and the good people get to go to Heaven. We like that interpretation. It is easy and fits neatly into our Christian box. And that should be the first sign that our understanding of what Jesus is trying to teach us might be misconstrued.
I am a child of the 70s and 80s. My formative years included the stories of Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Disney princesses. And though Luke Skywalker, Princess Lea, and Dr. Jones taught me to always strive for the good in the world, it was the Disney princess movie that truly defined the genre of good versus evil for me. Disney struck movie theater gold with its formula of the young, innocent victim put upon by a dark, evil villain, only to be rescued by some handsome young hero prince. Think Ariel, Ursula, and Erik in The Little Mermaid; Snow White, the Wicked Queen, and Prince Charming; and my favorite—Aurora, Maleficent, and Prince Phillip in Sleeping Beauty, just to name a few. Victim, villain, and hero is a triangle that may end in happily ever after, but it creates considerable angst in the process and narrates a story in which everyone is assigned a defined role that is easily translated to our everyday experiences. The subconscious message is that we play particular roles as does everyone else we come in contact with; we are all victims searching for a hero to make a stand against whoever the villain might be—either a particular person or an institution—and our life will know fulfillment only when we strive and embrace the hero in our particular circumstances.
I think this is why I like Sleeping Beauty of all the Disney Princess movies. Aurora is really a non-entity in the plot. She serves simply as a stand in for all victims powerless to escape their fate. Enter the villain, Maleficent, one of the most sinister villains in Disney culture—save maybe Cruella DeVille, I mean, puppies, really Cruella? Anyway, in the original Disney fairy tale, Princess Aurora is cursed by Maleficent at her Christening, and though raised by incompetent fairies, the spell cast at her birth comes to fruition on her 16th birthday when she pricks her finger upon the spindle of a spinning wheel. The whole kingdom sinks into a deep sleep which only true love’s kiss can revive. As Prince Charming—aka Prince Phillip—rides in to save the day, he must first defeat the evil Maleficent before reviving the sleeping Aurora and thus awakening the kingdom. A typical victim, villain, hero plot that Disney and society thrives on—or, at least they did until the turn of the 21st century.
Since the early 2000s, Disney has slightly changed the formula. No longer is a female always cast as the poor, defenseless, innocent victim in need of saving by a handsome prince. Stories now contain an explicit “girl power” that cast females in the light of hero—even in their own stories. Take Sleeping Beauty, or should I say Maleficent. In 2014, Disney released an origin story of the evil fairy. The story takes us back to the tranquil days of a young fairy living in a magical wood. She meets and falls in love with a human named Stefan. Stefan will eventually betray her and cut off her wings. Maleficent, a young girl in love, becomes a victim. Her anger and hatred fester into her villainhood where she goes on to curse the now King Stefan’s infant daughter, Aurora. Though she does not kill the child, she pronounces that only true love can save her knowing that neither she nor Stefan believe that true love can really exist.
The victim has become the villain and she has cast another into the role of victim—Princess Aurora—who, in fact, does prick her finger on her 16th birthday and fall into a deep sleep. But this time, true love’s kiss is not delivered by a Prince Charming or any doting male figure in Aurora’s life. In a great twist of irony, it is Maleficent herself who offers the kiss. In the years of Aurora’s childhood with the imbecile pixie squad, Maleficent has been the one to care and nurture the child. And though throughout Aurora’s 16 years, Maleficent has referred to her only as “beastie,” she has grown to love her as only a mother can do. True love’s kiss is administered by the least likely of heroes—or should I say heroines. Upon arousing Aurora, Maleficent is attacked by King Stefan—the true villain in this version—and subsequently saved by Princess Aurora. Girl power at its finest.
Maleficent, Princess Aurora, and King Stefan are all caught in an eternal cycle of victim, villain, and hero. Though the principal characters might change, the story remains the same. It may be solid gold for theaters and production companies but as a story that shapes our societal values, it lends us a path in which we must always play the victim, strive to be the hero, or be judged as the villain. Holding on to that tension is as difficult as allowing weeds to grow amongst one’s wheat. We agonize over what could be, even as we yearn for a hopeful outcome. It is not simply a personal struggle; it is an interpersonal one. Each of us has the potential to be the victim, villain, and the hero; each of us has the potential to be the wheat and the weed. It is the circumstances and choices we make that define those moments in our life.
The truth is that when we feel we have been treated unfairly or abused and determine ourselves a victim, we have a choice—we can continue as the victim, we can treat others unfairly and become the villain, or we can remain loving, open people and determine ourselves the hero. But there is another choice in the field of love—it is the choice to resist defining ourselves at all. It is the choice to recognize the circumstances of life are rarely fair and instead of becoming victim, villain, or hero, we empower ourselves and others to be problem solvers. We allow the weeds and the wheat to exist in the same field trusting in the promise of God that, in the end, all will be well.
The story the world would have us believe is that we must come to the rescue of others. But the story Jesus tells us is to empower others—even if they are weeds—that they might grow and flourish and come to some purpose—even if it is only fuel for the fire. Because the truth is that few of us are simply wheat or weed. Most of us are both. The good that was planted in us at our creation has been corrupted by an enemy who has sown ill intentions and evil desires into all of our hearts, and we are given a choice as to what we will nurture and reap in our lives. We are all Maleficent, Aurora, Stefan, and even Phillip, prince charming. And when our own day of reckoning comes, we can all be assured that the harvest of our life will be collected—the weeds being burned up and the wheat shining like the sun and waving like those amber waves of grain that Chris spoke so eloquently of last week.
Our stories are how we understand who we are and what we strive for in the world. The story of Jesus Christ is the story of empowering and equipping others to understand and see the kingdom of heaven on earth that they might convey it to others. That is a story of love, not condemnation. It is the story that accepts the good and the bad, the wheat and the weeds, and judges neither knowing that in the end, all shall be well.