The Elephant in The Room

If a tree falls in the forest, should we blame the tree?

The blame game.
I'm sure we've all been there.
It has to be somebody's fault and it's so easy to pin it on somebody else.

Playing the blame game can create a gulf, an unspoken middle, an area of confusion and misunderstanding that truly never gets addressed because we are spending too much time quarreling about issues and things around the outside of the problem and never truly getting to the center of it. 

The Pharisees and teachers of the law seem to have a problem and whose fault is it?
Why...their favorite blame game person. It's Jesus, again.

Matthew 15:1-20

New International Version (NIV)

That Which Defiles

15 Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, ² “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!”

³ Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? ⁴ For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’^[a] and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’^{[b] 5} But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ ⁶ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. ⁷ You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:

⁸ “‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁹ They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’^[c]”

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. ¹¹ What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”

¹² Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”
¹³ He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. ¹⁴ Leave them; they are blind guides.^[d] If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
¹⁵ Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.”
¹⁶ “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. ¹⁷ “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? ¹⁸ But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. ²⁰ These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.”

The elephant in the room.
Sometimes it's there all by itself, without an argument. More likely, it is there because of a disagreement. Why is it there? What is it? To whom does the elephant belong? Who let this ginormous monstrosity into the room in the first place? How do we get rid of it?

The first way to address the elephant is to ask the proper questions.
The blame game never accomplishes this. 
As hard as it may be to get a grip on the actual problem, attacking the other participant never gets them to take ownership of it. There has to be a way to get the party in ownership of the elephant to take it by it's lead and escort it from the room. Otherwise, they leave and the elephant remains.

Lets look closer at the conversation between these two parties.

First, the Pharisees come in and have a problem on their minds, but is it actually the real problem?
The problem they have is that people aren't washing their hands before they eat.
It seems like a legitimate problem. "Cleanliness before godliness" is real truth, isn't it?
It's a "tradition" they suggest and it should be upheld.

In addressing the elephant, you'd think Jesus would walk right up to it, punch it in the nose and make it clear that it has no reason to be here in the first place. But he doesn't do that.

If they aren't going to actually come out and say what their problem is then he isn't going to come out and address it either. Jesus decides to take a side route and hit a nerve with them while not actually addressing the elephant.

“And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?

It seems the Pharisees and teachers of the law had a little law they made up for themselves where if they had something valuable they wanted to devote to God, they could do so and consecrate it for that purpose, but if their own mother or father was in need and maybe that item could be of used to honor them they decided that the item didn't have to be used for that purpose. God comes first.

In doing so they were, essentially, breaking a commandment. "Honor your father and mother".
They nullified the word of God for the sake of their own "tradition".
He even had Scripture to drive his point home. Jesus quotes Isaiah with boldness.

⁸ “‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
⁹ They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’^[c]”

Ok. Jesus hit the point here and they should have gotten it.
But, was the problem actually addressed? And what in the world does any of this have to do with the blessed subject of evangelism that we have been talking about this summer?

Lets rewind.
They come to Jesus complaining about the "washing of hands".
The uncleanness. The filthy. What's their real problem? Well, just take a stroll through the gospels and see. They have never liked the company that Jesus has kept. He eats with "sinners and tax collectors". The downtrodden of society. Those who are destitute and poor. The sick. The needy.
These religious leaders think that if Jesus is the Messiah, then he should be hanging around with those who keep the covenant, the laws, the ones working in the temple and upholding the ways of God as they have traditionally been presented for the generations. Themselves.

Without hitting it on the head, Jesus skirt the issues directly and hits them where they live.
Their traditions.

Listen to Jesus again. Go back up and read it.
If I am hearing this properly, I see Jesus saying to them...
"You complain and gripe because I'm hanging around with the poor and sinners. You think I should be hanging around with you. What makes you special? You are no better than these folks out here and these are the folks who are truly in need!"

To top it off, Jesus turns to the crowd and addresses them also.

¹⁰ Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. ¹¹ What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them."

Not only does he put the Pharisees and leaders on the spot, he trumps their authority and tell the crowd that what these people have been teaching is null and void. 

And his disciples ask him...
“Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?”

NO! Geez...really?? You think I offended them? Really? That's like asking a preacher on fire on a Sunday morning if he really gets what he's doing when he's stepping on people's toes. "Hey, pastor, I think somebody might not like that...." NO! Really????

The elephant in the room might just be true for us in 2013 as well.

Do we want to socialize with those outside of here? Do we want to welcome in those that we are not familiar with and have never met? Are there people in need around us? Do we see the need? or, instead of approaching the need, we create a prickly point to ponder, hang back, point the prickly thing at somebody else, creating a buffer and a wall and then separating ourselves so as to not have actual contact with the issue in the first place.

The word "pharisee" literally means "separated one".
How 'separated' are we from our world?
Is there an unspoken 'elephant' in our rooms?

How can we be used of God to lead the elephant out of the room?

Get Out

The hardest work is out. 

It's a phrase we have uttered to nearly everyone we know at some point.
Our kids have walked in when we're on the phone and they are getting loud.
So, we exclaim, "GET OUT!"

If you are in management, maybe you have had to deal with incompetent worker at some point or other. Their antics and incapability to perform their job properly might cause you to lose it in their presence and force them to leave your office. "GET OUT!"

No doubt, there have been arguments at home, work, even church. And, somebody has most likely screamed the phrase in anger. "GET OUT!"

For some reason, this famous phrase came to mind as I read this passage from Matthew.
Maybe you'll see what I mean after you take a moment.

Matthew 13:24-30

New International Version (NIV)

The Parable of the Weeds

²⁴ Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
²⁷ “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
²⁸ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
²⁹ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”

A farmer's greatest enemy is not bugs or too much sun or not enough fertilizer.
It's weeds.

They suck the life right out of the ground. They suck up moisture and make it hard for anything else to grow. Not to mention, they just don't help anything look good. Nobody likes the look of a bunch of weeds between the rows in your garden.

A farmer's work is to make them get out.

He pulls and he hoes. He cultivates and he waters.
But he never does any actual harm to the garden he cares for.
The chief goal is to make sure that everything grows properly.

One thing that causes me some wonder as I read here is the interpretation.
Who is the one planting seed supposed to be? Who is the enemy?
What do the wheat and weeds represent? What is this parable actually saying to us?

Well, unlike some parables that leave us wondering, this is one of the few parables where Jesus actually gives the interpretation. Just a few lines later He is giving the explanation...

The Parable of the Weeds Explained

³⁶ Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”
³⁷ He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. ³⁸ The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, ³⁹ and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
⁴⁰ “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. ⁴² They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³ Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

As I have read the Parable of the Wheat in my earlier years, I wanted to make a true assumption.
There must be a way to get rid of them weeds.
After all, weeds don't do anything good. They just debilitate the garden, the things that need to grow.
After all, we all know people we have seen in the church who don't seem to do anything good.
What are they doing here? Why are they in this place? Wouldn't we be better off if they were gone?

Oh, but here comes a very dangerous point. How do we go about judging that someone is a "weed"?
The weeds in this parable, after all, were planted by "the enemy".
How is it that we go about determining that someone else is a "child of the enemy"?
Is it even safe for us to do so?

Lets look at the true emotion that we feel when we are dealing with someone who we feel falls into that category. What is ti we would like to tell them? You know it to be true. "GET OUT!"
"Get out of here and quit causing trouble!" "Get out of here and quit holding us up from going somewhere!" "Take your horrible attitude and your horrible self and leave us alone!"

If we could check our own attitude at the door for just a second, we might want some clarification.

You see, this parable has absolutely nothing to do with us.

It doesn't tell us to do anything. It doesn't tell us to go and work on anything.
It's simply for the means of clarification.

Jesus says He is the one who sows the good seed. He doesn't specifically say who the good seed is or point fingers at anybody to designate them. In other places, he explains what good fruit looks like and what a person do if they are truly a child of God. But, he doesn't point to any specific person and tell them, "You are my child." and to anybody else, "You are a child of the devil." (Although, John chapter 8 does have Jesus in a conversation with the Pharisees and he does say to them "You are children of your father", meaning the devil.)

What I'm saying is, Jesus did not make it his way to go about judging others into a palce of salvation or condemnation. What he says in the parable is true. Leave it till the end.

The Father will sort it out. Who are his children and who needs to go away.

What could we take from this parable?

Jesus wants to plant good seed and spread the kingdom. How does he do that?
Through you and me. We are his workers, his hands and feet, his eyes and ears.
There are needs to be met and people who need to be met.

Maybe we need to go. Maybe we need to GET OUT.

Get out of the pews and into the street. Into peoples homes and hearts and lives.
Can we see ourselves getting out instead of expecting or demanding others to get out?

Could we be God's children in a field full of weeds?

God needs wheat, children of good seed.
God wants to grow something good in good soil.
Is your heart in the right place to receive the seed, be his child, cause some good int he world around you?

The work is out there. And, the field is ripe with harvest.