In the Weeds
A Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 23, 2023
The Rev. Robin Teasley
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
At our house we have weeds. Maybe you do too. I like weeding, but I don’t have as much time as I would like to get rid of all of the weeds. My husband is retired, but he does not like weeding as much as I do. Earlier in the summer he went out with some weed killer to spray a few weeds but didn’t notice that there was a slight breeze. And that is all it took, a little breeze, and there went my hydrangea, shriveled and dead as a doornail. And several boxwood now have brown patches. It's a perfect modern-day example of how weeding can be harmful. Don’t worry, the garden will recover, we are still married and can even laugh about this, but he won’t be using herbicides in the flower borders again.
Even if we are not gardeners, most of us know something about weeds. Weeds invade the grass in our yards, they persistently pop up in our gardens, they’re everywhere! And because we have determined that weeds are bad, an entire industry has grown up around weed control. We arm ourselves with Crossbow, we apply pre-emergent and post-emergent herbicides, none of which are good for the environment, by the way. But no matter how hard we work at it, it’s inevitable that yet another weed will appear, defying all our attempts at perfection. While Jesus had no access to a bottle of Roundup, he did know something about weeds.
Last week, when we heard the Parable of the Sower, I mentioned that parables speak more to our hearts than to our heads. They often challenge the way we’ve always thought about things. For example, in our parable today, the slaves were told not to pull the weeds from the field of wheat, but to leave them to God. This was not what anyone expected to hear!
Even today, we know it seems counterintuitive, even downright illogical to just leave the weeds. Weeds will take over if you let them. Wheat and weeds would seem to be at odds with one another. And so, of course the disciples asked Jesus for an explanation because this parable made no more sense to them than the one he told before about the farmer who flung valuable seeds all over the place, not caring where they landed. Now he says, don’t worry about the weeds? Notice though, how focused the disciples are on the weeds, asking Jesus to explain the parable of the weeds in the field. Most of us today call this the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds.
This parable is found only in Matthew, and many scholars think the second part, the explanation of the parable, was added later. This community was most likely made up of both Jews and Gentiles trying to follow Jesus. Perhaps the Jews believed themselves to be the wheat and the Gentiles to be the weeds, or vice versa. But as with most conflicts in community, it’s likely that both groups thought they were right and the other was wrong. Perhaps this resonates with us today.
Throughout the gospel of Matthew there is a strong theme of judgment, questioning who is the judge, who will be judged, what will happen to the judged. Living in a time when Jesus was expected to return any minute, the early Christians were preoccupied with this theme of judgment. Another characteristic of ancient thought was the assumption that the world was dualistic. Everything was black or white, good or evil, right or wrong, and you were either a disciple of Christ or a disciple of the evil one. There are plenty of people today who still see life in this dualistic way. Only as we follow Jesus do we begin to see that not everything can be divided so neatly into this or that. Some areas of life are gray or ambiguous, they are liminal or transitional, they are already and not yet.
Each of us, as individuals are both saint and sinner, wheat and weed; we are all capable of having mixed motives. Sometimes though, we get so busy trying to yank the weeds out of someone else’s field that we don’t even see the weeds in our own crop of thoughts and ideas. It’s like when Jesus said to the disciples, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)
So, what might Jesus want to say to us in this time and place, through this parable? I cannot answer that for you, only for myself. We must each look into our own fields, and into our own inner landscapes to see what God wants to show us in this parable. Perhaps we might do some spiritual gardening this summer; take some time to be still, to stop the frantic weeding of the world, and survey our own field. In God’s presence, we can toss out a few seeds of inquiry and see what begins to germinate in our hearts.
What weeds in our lives are threatening the good wheat we want to have in our field? At first glance, we may think that everything that is negative or that we disagree with or that we don't approve of, must be weeds, but perhaps there is some wisdom to be harvested from our struggles in living with these weeds. Are we always so sure we know the difference between wheat and weeds? Might the weeds be teaching us valuable lessons that will make us stronger and more compassionate? Some of us may know something about this if we have ever changed a long-held opinion about something, if we have come to know that we were mistaken. If we only and always see ourselves as seed planted in good soil, and never as weeds, we might be mistaken; we might want to ponder that.
Are we so busy trying to eradicate the weeds in our neighbor’s garden that we cannot see the weeds in our own back yard? Can we honestly admit there have been times when we have sown some unkind seeds or perhaps weeded too severely in another’s garden?
Gardening, like the spiritual life, takes time. It requires that we tend to the crops, wait for the harvest, and be patient to see what will be produced. While we wait, we can use that time to learn more about ourselves, about our personal crop of wheat and weeds. We may discover that what we first thought were weeds might just be wheat after all.
Rather than holding fixed images of what the Kingdom of God should be, what if we are instead patient and expectant, living intentionally like wheat alongside the weeds in the hope of what the Kingdom could become, trusting God with the harvest. Could it be that transforming weeds into wheat is exactly the reason Christ came into the world?
Title Image: Edge of Wheat Field with Poppies, Van Gogh
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