Wheat and Weeds!

Wheat, Weeds and the Patience of God

Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43

Today Jesus tells another parable about sowing seeds, but this time there are two sowers. One sows good seed that will become wheat. The other, under cover of darkness, sows weeds among it. It’s all about telling the difference between weeds and good plants. So, for a few moments, I'm going to pretend I'm an expert on gardening. God help us—literally!

A little bit of botany might help us understand the story. Matthew uses the Greek word zizania, which most scholars think refers to darnel, a common weed in Israel. The problem is that, in its early stages, darnel looks almost exactly like wheat. You can't really tell the difference until the plants mature and the ears appear. The ears of real wheat become heavy and bow down. The ears of darnel remain upright.

That's important because it explains why the master tells his servants to leave everything alone. At first glance they simply can't tell which is which. When the servants discover the weeds they are horrified. "Master," they ask, "did you not sow good seed in your field? Where then did these weeds come from?" The master replies simply, "An enemy has done this."

Immediately the servants have a solution. "Do you want us to go and pull them up?" It sounds like such a sensible suggestion. Find the problem. Get rid of it. Root out the evil. Clean up the field.

But the master surprises them.

"No. If you pull up the weeds now, you will uproot the wheat as well. Let them both grow together until the harvest."

It is every bit as surprising today as it must have been then.

Because if we're honest, we rather like pulling weeds.

I'm sure we've all questioned why God allows evil to grow and thrive. We've all had moments when we've looked at the world and wanted somebody to do something about it. Sometimes we want God to act. And, if we're honest, we'd quite like to act ourselves.

We like the idea of separating the good people from the bad people. The righteous from the unrighteous. The wheat from the weeds. But Jesus says, "Not so fast."

One reason is simply that evil is often much more subtle than we imagine. Like darnel growing among the wheat, it isn't always obvious.

The other reason is that beneath the surface the roots are intertwined. Pull one up carelessly and you damage the other. The cure may end up causing more harm than the disease.

Later, when Jesus explains the parable to his disciples, notice the servants are not told to separate the wheat from the weeds. The angels are. In this parable, final judgement belongs to God.

Some scholars think Matthew's own church may have been struggling with people who wanted to purify the community by deciding who really belonged and who didn't. Whether that's true or not, it has certainly been a temptation for Christians ever since. Churches can become very good at weeding. We decide who is in and who is out for all sorts of reasons. But Jesus' parable warns us that every attempt to root out the weeds risks damaging the wheat as well.

I think we should thank God that the final judgement isn't entrusted to us. Our calling is to cultivate the wheat.

But perhaps the parable is even more uncomfortable than that.

At first it sounds as though Jesus is talking about two groups of people—the good and the bad. I think it's much more subtle.

The Russian writer and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in a Soviet labour camp and eventually exiled from his country. He experienced extraordinary cruelty. If anyone had reason to divide the world neatly into good people and evil people, it was him.

Yet he wrote these remarkable words:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between (social) classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart... This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil… If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

We would much rather believe that the weeds are always somewhere else—in someone else.

We like to imagine that evil belongs to another political party, another nation, another generation, another family. But Jesus won't let us think like that. Perhaps that's why he taught us to pray every day, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

Not because evil is only out there somewhere. But because our own hearts are not always pure. We don't always say what is kind and we don't always do what is loving.

There are weeds growing in our own hearts as well.

Perhaps that's why we find life so confusing.

We often live with the assumption that if we work hard, try to be kind and generally do the right thing, then life ought to work out as we'd planned.

That seems to be the servants' assumption too. When we ask "What happened?" "Who's responsible?"Jesus' answer is remarkably brief.

"An enemy has done this."

That's all he says. He doesn't explain the mystery of evil. Instead, he tells us that this is the reality of life in this age. Our world is a field where wheat and weeds grow together.

And perhaps they stand side by side within us too.

A man was stopped at a traffic light, waiting for it to turn green. When the lights changed, he was distracted and didn't move. The woman behind him gave a little toot on the horn. Nothing happened. She honked again. Still nothing. Before long she was leaning on the horn, shouting, gesticulating and pounding the steering wheel.

Just as the lights turned amber, the man woke up and drove through the junction. She was left behind, absolutely furious.

At that moment there was a tap on her window.

A police officer stood there.

"Madam," he said, "you're under arrest."

She was taken to the station, fingerprinted, photographed and put in a holding cell.

Several hours later the officer returned.

"I'm terribly sorry," he said. "It was all a misunderstanding. You see, when I pulled up behind you, I noticed the fish sticker on your car and another sticker that said, 'What Would Jesus Do?' Naturally, I assumed the car had been stolen."

Our lives are full of wheat and weeds. On the outside we may look like healthy wheat. But our inner thoughts, our impatience, our prejudices, our gossip, our resentment, our harsh judgements of others—well, sometimes they're rather more weed-like than we'd like to admit.

The point of this whole thing is that the field is complicated.

Our world is complicated. Our hearts are complicated.

Yet despite all those weeds, the Kingdom of God is still here.

The weeds do not overcome God's Kingdom. They do not make it disappear. It may not yet be the Kingdom in all its fullness, but it is the Kingdom nonetheless. Christ is still at work.

The good seed is still growing and we should cultivate it. Where we discern weeds are obvious, we can take them out.

But Jesus, interestingly, seems much more interested in growth than extermination.

He is patient and He nurtures the wheat.

And if we are to become more like him, perhaps our calling is not to become better weed-pullers but better wheat-growers.

To nurture what is good. To encourage what is true. To overcome evil with good.

At first sight, this can seem like a strange parable. It almost sounds as though Jesus is saying, "Just leave evil alone."

But I don't think that's quite what he's saying.

He is telling us that if we devote all our energy to hunting weeds, we'll miss the far more important task of growing wheat.

If we concentrate on becoming people who are rooted in Christ, filled with his Spirit, growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, then goodness begins to crowd out evil.

I think the other message this Gospel has for me is that Jesus loves the field of my life, even though my heart is full of weeds and wheat and, rather like my own back garden, I don't always know the difference. He doesn't abandon the field.

He watches me grow, he watches you grow. He is patient and believes that the good seed he has planted will bear fruit.

And that is incredibly good news. Because it means he loves us, not when we've finally sorted ourselves out, but while we are still growing.

He also loves the field of this church.

Even though this congregation, like every congregation, is full of wheat and weeds, he lets us grow together.

And perhaps it also invites us to love one another with that same patience.

Church life is not always easy. From time to time we prick one another like thorns and sometimes we can simply get on each other's nerves.

But perhaps instead of constantly looking for the weeds in one another, Jesus invites us to look for the wheat. To notice the goodness that is growing. To encourage the gifts we see in each other.

The line between good and evil does indeed run through every human heart.

But that is not the end of the story.

The end of the story is not the weeds.

The end of the story is the harvest.

Christ has planted good seed in his world.

He is patient while it grows.

He has not abandoned his field.

And one day, when he comes again, the weeds will be no more, and "the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

May we be people who spend less time pulling weeds and more time growing wheat. And may God, in his patience and mercy, continue to grow his good seed in each one of us.

Amen.