'Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And 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 answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then 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; 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.’”
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”'
--Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
Twenty years ago, my best friend Richard and I built a fence around the house where I grew up in Flat Gap, VA. This wasn’t about maintaining a property line or keeping anybody out, but it was to hold back the woods that were slowly getting closer and closer to our house. He and I got to work, digging the post holes, mixing the quickcrete, and, of course, clearing out brush. But we didn’t use a weed-eater, oh no, not for this stuff. We used machetes! And let me tell you, we went to town on everything – briars, weeds, small intrusive trees, you name it. We got that fence built, but when it was over it wasn’t just the weeds and the briars and small intrusive trees that got slaughtered by those machetes. We’d cut into blackberry bushes and flowers and other innocent plants. Moral of the story: don’t go macheting nothing that don’t need macheting!
My best friend, Richard Mullins, and I in 2003, the summer we built a fence.
I can picture the servants in this parable Jesus tells wielding these machetes, ready to chop up whatever gets in their way, only they get stopped by their master before any damage can be done.
Jesus gives his first “the kingdom of heaven may be compared to…” parable here, immediately after telling the Parable of the Sower, which we heard last week. One way to translate that first line from Jesus might be to say, the way God acts, relates to, and affects God’s followers is like the following story. In this case, like a master who has sown good seed, only for it to be infiltrated with bad seeds and the two to grow together until the harvest comes. If you find this confusing, so did the disciples. Like last week’s parable, this one also gets an explanation from Jesus – and maybe he was ticked off by having to explain himself because he never explains another one! The one who sows, the master, is the Son of Man. The field is the world, good seed are children of the kingdom, bad seed are children of the so-called evil one, who sowed those seeds while no one was paying attention, and the reapers are the angels who will gather those folks together when the harvest comes, which is the end of the age – the eschaton. No explanation is given, though, for who those servants in the story are, but maybe they are the folks who are eager to play the role of the master and judge between what is wheat and what is weed.
An icon of the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds
Let’s go ahead and acknowledge that this is a tough parable to hear because it reeks of judgment. There’s a dualism here: you’re either wheat or weeds, and if you’re weeds then you’re going to be gathered up and burned in the place with weeping and gnashing of teeth. I want to apologize to anyone who had a preacher tell them that this dread, this fear of being a weed and getting thrown into the fire, was what should motivate their Christian lives. That’s just not what Jesus is doing.
Yes, there is judgment here, but the judgment is a reflection of what was happening in the early church at the time, namely Matthew’s gospel community. Matthew is all about the eschaton, he loves him some apocalyptic imagery, and because this community was very mixed – with both Jews and Gentiles and with those who genuinely believed the Gospel liberation message and lived it out and those who only gave it lip service – there was a tendency for folks to separate themselves, go into their own silos, if you will. The writer of the Gospel didn’t like this and has Jesus offer this prophecy, that when the kingdom comes on earth in its fulfillment at the end of the age, those pseudo-disciples will get their comeuppance. Anytime you read these kinds of judgmental Gospel passages think about what was happening in those communities, and you can understand that isn’t so much Jesus who is passing judgment but the Gospel communities themselves.
But that doesn’t stop a lot of Christians from just passing judgment left and right. You’re a weed, you’re a weed, you’re cool, and you’re a weed! When all you have is a machete, everything looks like a weed. This parable gives us a Gospel truth that we all need to hear: it ain’t our job to get rid of the weeds!
There’s a few surprises in this parable. For starters, the master in the parable is the one who sows, even though the servants would’ve normally done that work. Also, the master knows that it was an enemy who sowed these weeds, which were likely darnel, which is a noxious weed that closely resembles wheat and is native to Palestine. You can’t tell the difference between them until maturity. But maybe most surprising of all is that when the servants are so eager to take their machetes to the darnel, the master says no, they may damage the wheat, and he has them allow the wheat and darnel to grow together until the harvest time.
There’s no silos in this story. There’s no separation. There’s nothing anyone has to do except let nature takes its course and for the seeds to blossom into whatever they will be and to wait for the master to take care of the rest. That’s what grace is, y’all. It’s the freedom that God gives us to not have to do God’s job. Besides, when we try doing God’s job it usually ends up coming out poorly.
My parish here in North Carolina is preparing for my imminent departure next week. If you are among those folks, you might feel, especially in the coming weeks and months, like you need to take out your machetes and start weeding, or at least pruning. You might think the clergy who will walk with you are just the best examples of the ripest wheat and you might think they’re the weediest weeds that ever weed. You may have already decided that some folks that the outgoing priest treated like wheat were really more like darnel than real wheat and you and your machete are gonna make sure they don’t contaminate this field. But that’s not anyone’s call to make because it’s not your field, it’s not the priest’s, it’s God’s. The master in the parable owns the field! He knows what’s growing in it, even when nobody else does. So if that’s the case, then there’s no need for the machetes. There’s no need for the weeding and the pruning and the judgment. Not in this little c church, not the big C Church, not in the whole field out there in which our master, our God, has planted every single one of us. And yes, some are good, some are bad, and most are a mixture of both, but passing judgment on who is which is reserved only for God and only at the end of the age. Those of us who spend our time fretting over that day or acting on God’s behalf to pass the judgment beforehand on others often miss the flowers and blackberry bushes and beautiful creation all around us as we’re chopping away.
No time for folks running to their own silos. No time for judgment. No time for machetes. Now is the time to grow together. Now is the time to take root where God has planted you and to listen for whom the Spirit is calling to take up residence in this particular section of God’s ginormous field for the purpose of loving the wheat, weeds, and everything in-between.