Shared with Nagoya All Saints International Church Link based on the Gospel Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
I remember early in my ministry, after a pastor’s meeting, a friend of mine came up to me and said that they had not seen my name on the list for a Young Pastor’s Group. I said that I did not know anything about it and asked for more information. Well come to find out that the invitation had been sent out to all those who were 30 years and under. I was over 30.
After mutual chuckles when we realized what happed, I thanked her for thinking I was younger than 30! Yet, after that experience, I left that meeting wondering about our general perceptions of others. How do others perceive us? But more than just age, how do we see ourselves and is it accurately reflected in the broader world? And how about the people we meet, how do we see them? Is everything as Doi Takeo suggested in Anatomy of Self, Link hone and tatemae --- our feelings and public display. And how is that all lived out as Christians? I would hope that the world would see me as a caring, compassionate, thoughtful Christian, but do they? Of course, it takes interactions and relationship building that ultimately gives us the tools to understand each other more fully.
Over the years that event early in my pastoral career has reappeared in other ways as I have led my life as pastor, husband, and father. Sometimes in less than humorous ways. Either I have erroneously perceived a person or situation inaccurately or the other way around. Meaning, not only may we not be perceived accurately but we may not accurately see others.
That event from my past and those experiences since came to mind as I spent time thinking about today’s lesson from Matthew. What is central to the parable of the wheat and the weeds is the preciousness of the wheat. Meaning do we perceive ourselves as that precious wheat? Or are we more like weeds? And how about others? Can we truly even judge or for that matter even fight against evil sprouting in and around us? And if not, is this all to be left for the sweet by and by or a Dante style purgatory.
First let us review today’s lesson. It begins with Jesus saying that the kingdom of heaven was like a person who sowed wheat seed in a field, but “while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.” The enemy sowed zizania in Biblical Greek --- otherwise known as tares, darnel, or cockle. It is a weed that, especially in its early stages, looks like wheat, but at maturity, the weight of the grain of the wheat bends the heads down. Since there is not much of anything in the heads of darnel, the plant continues to stand straight. Darnel is, thusly, a plant of “air heads.” It looks good, in other words, but there is nothing there and what is there is inedible.
Jesus adds in the parable that the slaves of the landowner, after identifying that a problem existed in the fields and make the issue known are the first to consider acting against the weeds after being told how they came about. “Then do you want us to go and gather them” ask the slaves. Do you want us to respond to this initiative from the hostile enemy? Are we to fight back?
Interesting that it is the slaves who are volunteering for more work, perhaps it could be because they do not want to get blamed. Either way, in the parable the response of the landowner is: Do nothing! “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” In your zeal to root out the enemy, you are quite likely to tear up the whole field. It will be “at harvest time,” when the landowner will instruct the reapers to gather the weeds first place in bundles to be burned. The word translated as “time” in the parable is Kairos, which means “opportune time” not chronological time.
Notice again that the parable says, “Let both grow….” The word “let” in our translation is apheta in biblical Greek. It may also be translated as “allow” besides “let” but another common translation of aphete is “forgive.” “Forgive both grow…” which I think adds a different nuance. The parable concludes that the weeds will be dealt with ultimately through fire. The fire may not be the most pleasant of Biblical images, but it is certainly a dramatic one.
We are then told that Jesus left the crowds and went “into the house,” which, incidentally, may have been his own residence in Capernaum. In the house, the disciples want an explanation for this “parable of the weeds,” which shows, right there, that they did not get it. You may also notice if you were following along in the Bible that the other parables are ignored by the disciples in this series. Insightful for us that the disciples in Matthew’s version considered this one the most challenging! And how does Jesus explain the parable. Well, crucially the enemy is now, finally, identified as diabolos -- the devil. And “The reapers” are identified as “angels” and the fire is now a furnace where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth” all eschatological references.
So, what do you think? Well for me it is helpful to put this parable in context for in Matthew the parable of the sower precedes this one.[1] And what happens in that parable? There is a sower, who sows everywhere, and some of the seed takes root in good soil, whereas in other places it is eaten or takes root within thorns. At a another landing the seeds grows quickly but then wither in the heat.
However, in this parable, we have the Kingdom of Heaven with Christ as the sower sowing “wheat.” This wheat seed are the children of the kingdom, Jesus says.[2] In this parable, Christ refuses to lose any wheat, with the assumption that where it is planted is good. Moreover, nothing is said on how it grows other than it will.
Another aspect of this parable and Jesus’ explanation to notice is that the wheat not getting destroyed with the weeds suggests a familiar theme, the same one that informs other parables like the one about the lost sheep or the lost coin --- and I would suggest even the gathering up of those 12 baskets of leftover fragments after the feeding of the 5,000. In God's economy nothing is counted as expendable, whether lost sheep, lost pennies, wheat growing among weeds, or leftover fragments after a miracle. We had just heard earlier in Matthew that we are not to fear for “you are of more value than many sparrows.”[3] Furthermore, in this parable there is also an echo of a question posed by the two disciples James and John as recorded in Luke when Jesus is not received well.[4] “Do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” similar to today’s slaves at the presence of the weeds. Jesus' reply to the Sons of Thunder is also pertinent: “He rebuked them.”
For God, apparently, all is precious in God’s economy. Since God loves goodness more than God hates evil, and is not willing to lose the good … what about evil? This parable does not excuse it or our Christian responsibilities, rather in this parable Jesus reminds us that in God’s “time of harvest,” there will be a reckoning. Evil will be checked, but by God's work and not ours. Not that excuses us from the present evils but the inspiration to do act is not in today’s parable.
Again, the implication of this parable is that God is a different kind of farmer than we can ever imagine. God is like a teacher who care less about who cheats as who learns. She bides her time with a classful of known smug stinkers just so one struggling underachiever can pass his test. And it is not up to the stinkers in the class, or the fellow teachers or the administration, to decide.
In summary all these observations have comprehensive implications not only for us but for others. We can grow impatient with God when our prayers to uproot some personal weeds seem to go unanswered. God will not uproot the wheat of our survival to get at the weed of our fury. And perhaps the weed itself is merely another strain of wheat that we do not recognize. We are not always particularly good at identifying wheat from weed. For example, up until their crucifixion, the two thieves who died beside Jesus probably appeared as no more than two bad peas in the same bad pod. Time told another story.
Jesus knows evil will be dealt with ultimately through the purifying furnace. Again, this purifying furnace is not the most pleasant of Biblical images, but we all have our “weed side” --- that part of us which may look good but does not produce fruit. This part will be refined away, leaving only that which is built on Christ. In God's time of harvest, this will be seen and experienced as a good thing. After all, the one who sends the purifying refinement --- is really the one who loves us so much and is the same one who hesitant to risk one single grain of wheat at the mere appearance of evil.
Notice again that the “wheat” is never threatened in the parable, not while growing or at harvest. No matter how many weeds are planted in the field, in fact, it was the very produce of the “wheat” that illuminated the failure of the weeds in the first place.
All this I find hopeful and perhaps even joyful in these times of pandemic. Again, and again, amid this thorny and rocky and good world, God is not only sowing a life-giving Word but building a harvest, including the found lost sheep, discovered lost coin, or returned prodigal child. Meaning that however we perceive others and others perceive us, we have a God who came incarnate in Jesus Christ to bring good news to the poor, and comfort to those who mourn. To heal the brokenhearted. To open prison. Turning upside down what we may consider weeds in the first place.
I was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s, the German pastor and theologian who was martyred in 1945, on his comment regarding the two trees in The Garden: the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And how the original human sin was choosing knowledge of good and evil over the tree of life. Bonhoeffer indicted that at that moment we could choose to know God and have life, or we could choose to try and be like God to raise up good and exterminate evil.[5] It seems we prefer to be like God over over life.
All in all, this parable is a good reminder to ground ourselves as wheat in God’s good soil and that is how we are to perceive ourselves and other people around us. That it is important to bear that in mind when we grow impatient with God's role. How long must this creation groan in its labor? Often in these moods our attention is fixed more intently on the stubborn persistence of evil than on the slow emergence of a harvest of wheat and God’s role. Amen.
[1] 13: 1-23
[2] 13:38
[3] Matthew 10: 31
[4] Luke 9: 54
[5] For more thought on this see: https://sojo.net/articles/tree-life-politics-abundance
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