Sermon 7/20/08
Seeds of Faith: Wheat and Weeds - Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24, Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
(view lectionary notes for this text)
Two weeks ago, we began looking at some of Jesus’ parables that focus on images of growing, planting, seeds, and harvests. We looked at the Parable of the Sower, and heard the surprising things Jesus said, and talked about how the seed of good news, the seeds of God’s love, are sown indiscriminately, recklessly and extravagantly. And we learned that when God’s love is sown in this generous, abundant way, the harvest, the yield, the results of God’s love in the world will be amazing, miraculous in their return. Sowing God’s love freely to all will make amazing things happen.
Today, Jesus has another lesson for us, another surprising parable about sowing seeds that we need to reread with our contemporary lenses, trying to adjust to see and hear what Jesus’ audience saw and heard in this tale. Again, if we read too quickly, with too little understanding, we walk away with a feeling that this text is simple and not as powerful as it really is. With a simple reading, from 21st century readers, we might say that this is the message for us: there are good people in the world, represented by the good seed. And then there are the not-so-good people - they are the weeds in the world. We are instructed not to put them in their places ourselves, but to wait for the harvest - the Judgment Day. Then we, the wheat, will be taken to heaven, and they, the weeds, will be thrown into the fire. That’s the surface reading, what we get if we only take away our first impressions.
But looking more carefully at the text, we can find several questions to ask, actually. These are the surprises twists of the story that would have had Jesus’ first audience hooked in, wondering what he was trying to teach them. First, we hear that the owner has sown the wheat and the ‘enemy’ has sown the weeds. Why didn’t the owner have his servants sow the seed, a normal duty they would usually perform? And even more perplexing, why does an enemy need to plant weeds? Anyone with gardening experience knows that weeds grow quite easily without being intentionally planted. But this is just the beginning of the peculiarities. The seed sown by the owner is always referred to as ‘good’ seed. What other kind of seed would a gardener sow? The adjective seems unnecessary, unless it bears some greater significance. And finally, at the crux of the parable is the command by the owner not to tear up the weeds - they will be dealt with at the harvest. This is perhaps the strangest aspect of all. Normally, gardens are weeded not just once, but several times during a season. A few good plants might be pulled up accidentally, but in the end the seeds produce stronger and healthier plants after a good weeding. Not only that, but Jesus’ Jewish audience would know that a field with two kinds of plants in it, including a combination of wheat and weeds, would make the field ritually unclean. Not only were the weeds not good for the field, but they also would have conflicted with the Jewish purity code, and so of course, fields would be weeded. Wheat and weeds, and so many questions confront us in this text.
For me, for Jesus’ audience, and even for many gardeners today, the biggest surprise of this story is in not letting the weeds be pulled once they are discovered. As I said, Levitical law says that it is actually unlawful to have a field with two kinds of seed in it – a field with wheat and weeds together was ritually unclean. So, the slaves in the story want to remedy this situation as soon as possible by pulling up the weeds, leaving the wheat as the sole, pure seed in the field. The sower won’t permit this however, reasoning that the process of weeding would result in destroying some of the wheat by mistake at the same time. This is a surprise: everyone who has gardened at all knows that it’s important to get the weeds out, even if it means sacrificing a healthy plant or two here and there. In the end, as long as there is still a good sized crop left, what’s the loss of a few good plants? Survival of the fittest. After all, the parable of the sower, just shared by Jesus earlier in this same conversation, talks about how weeds and thorns can choke healthy plants out of existence. Yet, the parable’s message is clear: God tell us not to weed the field – the wheat is too precious to take the risk of destroying it by mistake.
From a gardener’s perspective, that’s frustrating news! God doesn’t want us to do any weeding until harvest time, when God will do the separating of wheat and weeds for us. And yet, if you just think of yourself, your life, as a field of wheat and weeds, we might be thankful. God isn’t weeding us out yet. Thank goodness weeding isn’t going on in the field today, because there are some days when I feel more like weeds than wheat. Thank goodness I don’t have to show God my fruit today, because there are some days when I don’t feel like I'd have so much to show. Thank goodness we aren’t in charge of weeding in one another’s gardens, because there are some people I know would love to weed me of everything that irritates them. Thanks goodness we aren’t in charge of weeding, because some days I'd be tempted to treat as weeds others who I really love and cherish. Thank goodness God sets out our tasks for us: what is our role is, and what our role isn’t. Our role is to bear fruit, to grow strong, to resist being choked down by weeds around us. Our role is not to uproot that which grows near us, our role is not to inspect our neighbor’s fruit, even when it smells rotten to us. One pastor shares, “We want immediate and visible signs that assure us we are on the right side and, more importantly, that God is on that side with us. But Someone else is giving orders and is in charge of the field, the planting, the growing and the harvesting. It seems that sorting, weeding, rewarding and punishing are not our concern.” Jesus’ parable is in fact one of mercy for us: there’s still hope for us – it’s not set in stone how things will turn out yet. There’s still time for us to change if we feel we are too much like the weeds, not much like the wheat. Yet Jesus takes us even deeper.
Though most gardeners weed their fields regularly, it seems there is just something about wheat that makes this hard to do. The wheat and weeds become so intertwined, so close together, almost hard to tell apart without damaging both weed and wheat. You can’t really separate them until they are full grown, ready for harvest. This is the hardest and most important lesson for us. If the wheat represents the children of God, and the weed represents all causes of evil and all evildoers, what does it mean if we all mix in together until we are fully grown? What does it mean if you can’t tell the good from the bad? If we, the servants of God, set out now to tear up the weeds in our garden, who would we point out? The startling message is that we would be tearing up ourselves. We cause evil, because we are imperfect, because we are human, because we make mistakes - we have many reasons, but it does not change the fact that we make the weeds in the garden. We ignore God, we take our blessings for granted, we do not follow God’s will. It seems hopeless... but then we remember that God protects us. God says wait - lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. God says wait - my garden is not yet full grown, not yet developed, not yet ready. And we are thankful for God’s grace.
Think back to the parable again, to the question of ritual cleanliness, to the issue of why the sower wouldn’t want to cleanse the field by weeding it of the bad. Jesus’ shows us that though the slaves thought the field was unclean because of the weeds, the sower wasn’t concerned about this matter. The sower was concerned about protecting the wheat from destruction. The slaves were ready to weed, to clean up, even if it meant letting some of the wheat perish along with the weed. The sower was willing to risk the presence of weeds rather than sacrifice any healthy wheat. For me, this is a powerful message of how God feels about us – imagine that you are the wheat – what if your field was weeded, and you were uprooted, along with the weeds, and destroyed, even though you were a healthy plant. What if you were overlooked by God, deemed unimportant when compared with the prospect of ridding the world of evil? What if individual humans, just one person in a world full of people, what if each one of us wasn’t counted as worth very much? What if God didn’t see us as something worth saving?
But thanks be to God – we hear over and over again that indeed we are worth counting – we are worth saving, even if it means letting the unclean weeds grow around us, God will not overlook us. Our other scripture lessons today prove to us loudly and clearly just how much value God puts on each of us as an individual. In Paul’s letter to the Romans we hear the parent child language that describes our relationship with God: we are the children of God, adopted as God’s own and therefore made like Christ. “We are children of God,” says Paul, “and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” God would adopt us as God’s own children! In doing so, we become heirs, heirs to God’s kingdom, recipients of God’s grace. How much God loves and values us.
In the Psalm we shared in our morning worship we find another message of God’s boundless love for us. The Psalmist writes, “it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them--they are more than the sand; I come to the end--I am still with you.” God knows us inside and out, knows all about us – and is still with us, always and everywhere. No wonder this God is not willing to risk our destruction, just to get rid of some weeds. We are too precious, too loved.
And so what do we do, with the knowledge that we are loved and valued, with the knowledge that we are not responsible for weeding around our gardens? What does God ask of us in return? Good seed bears good fruit, and our good fruits, our strong healthy wheat, is returned to God, gathered in to the God’s barn. We should tend to our own fruit, our own wheat. We can examine our own lives, and use the seed that God plants in us to bring forth and produce that which will further God’s reign on earth. We grow in strength and in the comfort of knowing we are loved, we are worth saving, we are God’s children. Amen.