NOTES for Mat 13:36-43
Evidently, the parable of the wheat and the weeds gives a brief yet complete account of the meaning of what might be called Christian history. Indeed, Christian history in the strict sense is not the history of so-called ‘Christian states’, which by definition do not exist, nor even the history of the Church, if by the Church we mean ecclesiastical structures created according to the laws of ‘this world’. It is the history of the Kingdom entering the world. This is what the Saviour sets out as he explains to his disciples the parable of the wheat and the weeds that he had previously told the people. His words make clear that his principal task in our world, which is being transfigured but is not yet transfigured, is to expand the Kingdom's spiritual space and bring ever more people into its life. At the centre of the Kingdom's history lies the confrontation between those who belong to it and the powers of darkness at work in the world, including through human beings. This confrontation is the central nerve of all Christian history. That history evidently ends with the day of Judgement and Christ's return in glory, which also becomes the day of the Kingdom's final triumph, as it is revealed in all its fullness at the end of time and transfigures the world. But then a natural question arises: what of the two millennia of Christian history that have already passed, when we do not yet know how many more lie ahead? For this history has been not only a history of holiness, which in a certain sense can be regarded as the Kingdom's history, but also the history of the Church in all its historical unseemliness, of states that might provisionally be called Christian, and even of an entire Christian civilisation! Can all this really have no connection with the history of the Kingdom? Presumably it does have a connection after all. For the world in which we live is still only in the process of transfiguration, which means that there is also room within it for history in the older, pre-Christian sense, a history one might call ‘earthly’. But now, within this ‘earthly’ history, the most important question becomes that of ‘heaven’, that is, the Kingdom. The history of individual states, peoples and civilisations depends on whether room has been found for the Kingdom in their lives. The more room was found, the more vibrant and spiritually fruitful the civilisation proved to be, and the fuller its historical life. An unwillingness to make room for the Kingdom, by contrast, often led to historical breakdowns and national catastrophes. This is hardly surprising: all outward history now proves to be merely the background and stage for another history, that of the Kingdom entering the world. Only within the context of this new history does the existence of states, peoples and civilisations acquire meaning. Just as the lives of individuals do.