Living with Weeds

Passage: Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

Jesus begins much of his teaching with the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” When Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven, he’s referring to God’s restoration of Creation to its original, good state. Jesus is talking about a time in which heaven and earth are reconciled, and God’s presence and reign are universally recognized in the world.

The metaphors Jesus uses to illustrate the unfolding of God’s Kingdom are often surprising. Jesus sometimes uses imagery that paints an unexpectedly subtle picture of the onset of God’s reign. In today’s parable Jesus compares the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven to the planting, and eventual harvest, of a crop of wheat. The twist in Jesus’ story is that this crop of wheat is infused with a particularly destructive kind of weed. As the story unfolds, the servants of the farmer want to go out and pull the weeds from among the wheat stalks. They are told to wait. Pulling up plants before the harvest is too risky: either the overzealous servants will catch some wheat in the clumps of weeds they tear up, or they will mistake some wheat plants for weeds – a difficult distinction to make before the different plants bear their unique fruit. It’s not until after the harvest that the wheat and weeds will be distinguishable, and the work of sorting will take place.

Later Jesus explains this imagery to his disciples. He says, "People represent two kinds of plant. Those in whom God’s seed of faith has taken root are like wheat; their lives will bear fruit, and at the end of time they will be gathered into God’s restored Creation. Those who have rejected God will be rejected in the final reckoning. "Now here’s the thing," says Jesus: "In the moment, you can’t know who’s who. You may very well be confronted with people who by all appearances have rejected God. They may renounce any notion of faith. Or they may live in such a way as to suggest they’ve repudiated God’s law. But it’s still early. Too early to tell whether what you’re looking at is wheat or a weed."

Throughout our history those of us in the church have too hastily taken on the role of sorter. We’ve rushed to determine who’s wheat and who’s weed; who’s in and who’s out; who’s condemned and who’s redeemed. In a sense we’re in too much of a rush for the harvest to come.

Although we are called to be vigilant about the behaviors that condemn us, it’s not our job to do the condemning. We’re not equipped to do it. This is God’s job. And according to Jesus’ parable, God’s not in a hurry to do it. In fact, the God that Jesus reveals is a God who goes out of his way not to condemn people but to redeem them. In the parable at hand, God is described as waiting until the last possible moment to sort out who’s in and who’s out. God wants to give everyone every opportunity to repent – literally, to “turn around.”

Only God knows who’s redeemable and who’s not. Only God knows whether the person you’ve got in your crosshairs will turn around – “repent”. God knows that if we outwardly and vocally condemn people, they will stay away. Our words will become the final judgment. What Jesus invites us to do in the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds is to wait as long as possible to see what kind of fruit is born in the people around us. Jesus invites us to look at every plant not as a potential weed – interested only in enough evidence to tear up and toss out – but as potential wheat. To see in others the potential for God to bring forth good fruit. To say that anyone is irredeemable is to limit the power of God’s redemption. And according to the Bible, only one sin is unforgivable: “blaspheming the Holy Spirit.” Claiming the Spirit is not working where indeed he is; and claiming that the Spirit is unable to do precisely what he was sent to do: change hearts. Let him start with yours.