Pentecost 8A
July 23, 2023
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
INTRODUCTION
One characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel is that is very intentionally organized, like obsessively so. For instance, it is set up in five discourses. The first is the Sermon on the Mount (instructions for faith), the second is the missionary discourse (instructions for the apostles proclaiming the kingdom of God), and now we are into the parable discourse, which will teach us some truths about God. Today’s story is the parable of the wheat and the weeds, in which an enemy sows weeds among the good seed, and the farmer tells the workers not to pull the weeds, but to wait until the harvest, when all will be sorted out. This powerful parable, along with the other readings today, bring up some tough questions about evil – where it comes from and why it is among us. Each reading offers a directive that brings us both comfort and discomfort: wait. God’s got this under control. Evil and suffering will, finally, come to an end. “Hope for what you do not see,” Paul urges in our reading from Romans, “and wait for it with patience.”
Wait and see. It’s not a message I particularly like! It’s a difficult one to hear, in the midst of so many unknowns in our world. But friends, do hear it today. And try to find in it some comfort and solace for the uncertainty before us, as we wait with patience “for the glory about to be revealed to us.” Let’s listen.
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| Part of my overgrown garden. (It actually looks works than this right now!) |
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I will be the first to tell you that, while I have many gifts, gardening is not one of them. I wish it was. But friends, I have killed mint. Mint! Multiple times! I have lots of gardening deficiencies, but among them is that I simply don’t know what things are supposed to look like. When we moved into the house 10 ago, when springtime came around, all kinds of things started growing that I didn’t even know were there. Did someone plant those? Are they supposed to be there? Will that turn into a beautiful flower, or will it turn into something that will take over my garden and won’t be tamed? Because of my ignorance, I just didn’t touch anything, and so soon enough it was a lush, green, overgrown mess.
Until I began studying this parable this week, I had counted my gardening ignorance as a fault, but now I’m starting to see my inability to discern weeds from flowers more as a boon (at least theologically, if not as a homeowner!). Let me explain by first asking you a question. When you first hear or read this parable about the wheat and the weeds, without thinking too much about it, what would you say it is about? [judgment, heaven/hell…] It is considered one of the judgment parables, isn’t it, and with good reason, I suppose. It seems pretty clear that Jesus is saying some people are good seeds (wheat), some are bad seeds (weeds), and at the end of time, at what the parable calls the harvest, the good seeds will go to heaven and the bad seeds will burn in eternity. (It’s one of those happy, feel-good parables, you know.)
But there is a danger in interpreting this parable this way. If some people are wheat and some are weeds, then the next logical step we humans want to take is to decide who is what. That’s what the workers wanted to do in the parable, after all. “Do you want us to go and gather [the weeds]?” they ask. Do you want us to go decide what is good and what is bad, and what belongs and what doesn’t, and take care to only leave what is good in the land? It’s a natural tendency, one that taps into a question that has consumed Christians for generations: who is going to heaven, and who is not? Are you? Am I? Should I feel sorry for you if you’re not? Should I be depressed if I am not? Should I act any differently to ensure I will go to heaven?
But you see, while this is the step we humans want to take, I think the parable is saying the opposite – because you see the sower’s response about gathering the weeds? “No, don’t go and try to determine that for yourself, because it will do more harm than good. Just leave it be, and in the end, God will take care of sorting everything out. Meanwhile, you just live your life and do your job the best you can under the circumstances.”
To me, this is great news. Because whatever assumptions I may want to make about certain kinds of people, or whatever feelings I may have about how someone has treated me, it is not my job to judge. Furthermore, try though I might to make accurate judgments of people, in the end I cannot tell the difference between weed and wheat, any more than I can tell the difference between weeds and flowers in my own garden. None of us are equipped to judge other people, because none of us know the whole story.
Several years ago, Michael and I watched the hit TV show, Breaking Bad. It is about a high school chemistry teacher named Walt who is, on the surface, a well-loved, upstanding, pretty decent guy. But in his secret life, circumstances drive him to become a murderer and a drug kingpin. No one, not even his own wife, has any idea that this quiet family man, this “wheat,” is capable of such heinous acts. On the other hand, his partner, Jesse, seems in every way to be a “weed”: a punk and a druggie who is up to no good and will never amount to anything. But while he does struggle and make poor choices, we also learn that he cared for his aunt as she died of cancer; that he has limitless compassion for those close to him, especially children; that he has integrity and is loyal and caring even to people who have hurt him. At the start of season one of Breaking Bad, it is easy to feel sympathy for Walt, who has just been diagnosed with cancer, and to hate Jesse. Wheat and weed, clearly. As their stories unfold, however, Jesse quickly becomes admirable and easy to love, while Walt becomes one of the most loathsome characters on television.
Of course, Breaking Bad is dramatized, but is the basic character development really so far off? Everyone has a story, a struggle, that we don’t know anything about. Everybody has a reason for why they act or talk or look the way they do. Who are we to be the judge?
We all have people in our lives whom we would like to label as weeds, don’t we. We may label as “weeds” those people who live a lifestyle we don’t approve of, or, those people who won’t let personal lives be personal. They are those people who are undermining women’s ability to care for their own reproductive health, or, those people who are allowing abortions to occur. They are those people who think they can just sneak into America and take our valuable jobs, or, they are those people who would refuse help to vulnerable children in need of refuge from drugs, poverty and violence. They are those people who are a drain on our national budget by taking advantage of welfare programs, or, they are those people who hoard all the world’s wealth for themselves.
This world – it is a garden full of weeds. No matter what you do or what you believe, you are a weed to someone. But thanks be to God, we are also a garden full of wheat. Each one of us, and every beloved child of God: we are all weeds to someone, but we are also, each one of us, claimed and loved by God. Christ died for every last one of us weeds, so that, like grains of wheat scattered on the hill that have come together to become one bread, we might all come together to serve God and feed the world. In the end, that is all we really can to do: love God with mind, heart, body, and soul, and our neighbors as ourselves. And the judgment piece? We will have to leave it up to God to sort that out.
As a closing prayer today, I’d like to invite each of you to take a moment to think about who you might consider a weed. It could be a person or group of people I already mentioned, or someone else in your life whom you find it difficult not to judge because of their beliefs, their behavior, or the way they treat other people. All these weeds in our lives – we will pray for them, and we will pray for ourselves. I will leave some silence, during which you can offer your own silent prayer.
Let us pray… Gracious and merciful God, we try to live the best lives we can, but sometimes it is hard for us not to judge others because they look, act, or believe differently from us. We sometimes think of these people as weeds that get in the way of the good work we try to do. We pray for these people today, Lord, and for their well-being…. We also pray for ourselves, that we might see all your beloved children not as weeds, but as wheat, and as your beloved children. Help us to have compassion for those who are different from us, remembering that they, too, have a story we know nothing about. Grant us the courage to hear their stories, and to love them as you have loved us…. This we pray in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen
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