Well, I just finished my first experience with jury duty here in Los Angeles this past week. I have served a couple of times before in New York City prior to moving here, so I knew that it was inevitable. After I received my first summons, I went through the new telephone system to transfer to a closer court location, and then I postponed my service date to the summer. After checking the recorded messages on the system each day, I was finally summoned to the Beverly Hills courthouse this past Tuesday. It was a short stay; by chance I was not empanelled for jury selection and was excused that same day.

We all grumble when we receive that summons for jury duty in the mail. Immediately we think of all the things that must get done at work and home at the very time we have been requested to serve. But then our son, Tommy, asked my wife and me what exactly jury duty was. Tania and I explained how grownups are sometimes asked to go and hear a case where a person has been accused of doing something wrong. We hear both sides of the story, the prosecution and the defense, and then 12 people with no vested interest in either side are asked to decide if the accused is innocent or guilty.

If you have ever served on a jury, you know firsthand what an awesome responsibility it is. To judge another human being is a serious and delicate task. Although imperfect, I believe our justice system is still the fairest way to judge one another. So, I got really angry with one young man, who was in the jury assembly room as we awaited our instructions. This young man was loudly announcing to anyone within earshot that it was so unfair that he had been summoned to serve. He was adamant that he was going to keep his cell phone on in the courtroom, and, if he was called to attend a meeting, he was going to walk out no matter what the judge said or did. Obviously, he has never personally encountered a judge when they are running a trial in their courtroom; you don't just walk out unless you want to spend some time in jail yourself. And as I left the courthouse after being excused, I secretly hoped that he would be selected to serve on a trial for a week or so. As my wife Tania said, "I bet he wouldn't complain about the system if it were him that was on trial."

Today's parable from the Gospel of Matthew is also about judgment. Just like last week in the "Parable of the Sower," Jesus uses another farming metaphor to teach his followers. And again, we have the luxury of hearing Jesus explain the parable to his disciples. The Son of Man sows good seed in the field (which represents the world). At the same time, Satan sows bad seed in the field. Now, please don't picture Satan as some skinny red being with horns and a pitchfork. That may be fine for selling deviled ham, but it is too simple for the Bible. In Hebrew, "satan" means tester. The devil, then, is anything that tests our relationship with God. Whenever human beings are separated from their love of God, it is often expressed as a result of Satan or the devil or the enemy.

After the Son of Man and Satan sow their respective seeds, both wheat and weeds appear in the field. It is important to note that the wheat and the weeds look very much alike as they grow. It would be easy to mistake one for the other. It's similar to what you experience when you are out in your backyard doing some gardening. You reach down to pull out a weed from the flowerbed and then you hesitate, because you are not quite sure if it is a weed or a flower that has yet to bloom.

Now the servants in the parable ask a very logical question: "Do you want us to go and gather up the weeds and burn them so that the wheat can grow unhindered?" Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? Wouldn't you want to get rid of the evil in the world that opposes good? Let's go! It's time to act! Let's nip this problem in the bud before it gets out of control and threatens the harvest of the desirable crops.

But Jesus provides an answer that the disciples probably did not expect. "No," he says, "for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, 'Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn' " (Matt 13:29-30). Well, he's got a good point there. If you go out in the field now and try to distinguish the good from the bad, then you risk destroying some of the wheat along with the weeds. So Jesus recommends waiting until the end of the age, the Day of Judgment, before taking such action. It is then that Christ and his angels will undertake the task of separating good from evil.

It appears that Jesus is instructing his disciples not to rush to judgment. He says wait until the very end of time, and I will do the judging about who is good and who is evil. The church has certainly made its share of mistakes regarding judgment of others. One of the issues that helped lead to the Reformation was the indiscriminate use of the ban, or excommunication, from the church. The ability to determine who is in and who is out in the church is dangerous indeed. We risk weeding out the wheat along with the weeds. That's why, as United Methodists, we invite everyone who wishes to be in relationship with God through Christ into our congregations, including at the Table of the Lord.

But, if we see evil in the world now, are we supposed to sit on our hands and wait for Christ's Second Coming to take care of the injustice? I don't think so. A similar kind of argument is saying that because you have experienced the saving grace of Christ and are forgiven of your sins, you can go out and do whatever you want. Both Paul and John Wesley argue strongly against this interpretation of justifying grace.(1) Realizing that you are forgiven of your sins by the grace of God is the beginning of the journey, not the end. I believe that also applies to justice and Christian ethics. To turn away from evil in the world now because we expect God resolve it all in the end is too simplistic. From the prophets of the Old Testament to Jesus, we have been taught how important it is to act justly in this world.

So, where does that leave us? How are we supposed to resist evil now and also wait for justice to come in the end? I think we can find an answer in the African-American spiritual that we sang before the sermon, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Like all of the spirituals, "Swing Low" was born out of the time of slavery in America. Based only on the color of their skin, African-Americans were bought and sold as chattel, sub-human in the eyes of their white owners. From their arrival on the first slave ship that sailed into Jamestown in 1619, African-American slaves risked being severely beaten or even killed if they tried to escape their masters.

So one way to interpret "Swing Low" is to hear it as hope for the future, as something better after death. Since they were enslaved now in a cruel and unjust world, then maybe God would take them home to heaven in a chariot of fire after their death, just as Elijah was taken up to God in his ascension. In fact, if you look at the topical heading above the song in our hymnal, it is classified in the "Death and Eternal Life" section.

But there is another way to interpret this song. As one of my professors at Union Theological Seminary, James Cone, has pointed out, heaven, in the spirituals, did not just mean where one goes after death.(2) Heaven was where you were trying to get to in the here and now. Many of the spirituals like "Steal Away" and "Swing Low" were actually code language for the slaves as they attempted to escape to the North. Listen again to the verses of "Swing Low." "I looked over Jordan, and what did I see"; the Jordan is the Ohio River that separated the South from the North. "A band of angels coming after me"; the band of angels are Harriet Tubman and the other abolitionists who helped the slaves reach the safety of the North via the underground railroad. "If you get there before I do, tell all my friends I'm coming too"; this is not just about arriving in heaven, but also don't forget me when you make it across to the North, because I am determined to get there, too. This is a song of resisting the evil of slavery in the present, not just waiting for freedom after physical death.

This is a song of hope, and we are a church of hope. We are given this hope because God has loved us and continues to love us. We are witnesses to that love through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection means that life has conquered death in all its many forms. While we struggle with injustice and evil in this world now, we still have hope that God's kingdom of truth and righteousness will one day be a reality for this world. That is where we derive our strength to continue fighting for justice in our lives. Belief in Christ includes believing that God's realm is a true possibility in this world in which we live.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that you had to hold both of these perspectives together, the present and the future. The night before his assassination, King gave his final sermon in Memphis, Tennessee. It is his famous "mountaintop" sermon, where King prophetically proclaims that God has allowed him to see the promised land, even though he, like Moses, will not be allowed to cross over to the other side. Listen to King explain in this part of the sermon how we need justice in both the present and the future:

It's alright to talk about "long white robes over yonder," in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here. It's alright to talk about "streets flowing with milk and honey," but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's alright to talk about the New Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do.(3)

We still haven't crossed over into the promised land. We continue to witness poverty and racism all around us. It seems very foolish to believe that we can achieve a world in which there is truly liberty and justice for all. Yet throughout the history of the church, we Christians have included hope as a basic part of our faith. Paul sums it up well in his Letter to the Romans: "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Rom 8:24-25). Do what you can now to build a just world, brothers and sisters, and maintain your hope for what is yet to come. Amen.

NOTES:

(1) See Paul's argument in Romans 6:1-2 and "The Menace of Antinomianism: A Blow at the Root, or Christ Stabb'd in the House of His Friends," in John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (New York: Oxford Univ. press, 1964), 377-83.

(2) James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1972 [repr. 1991]), 78-96.

(3) From A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Melvin Washington (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1986), 282.