July 17 Sermon in Bagot

THE WEEDS AMONG THE WHEAT

[Matthew 13:24-30]

Preached by: Andy J. Funk

July 17/11 at Bagot Community Chapel

I am a city boy. Although I have grown up in several places where farming was quite common, I must still acknowledge that I’m a city boy. Some of you may be able to relate to this morning’s Parable more easily than I can, because of your knowledge and experience with farming. I will share my simple perceptions about weeds and plants. 

Weeds are anything that grows in the garden of the field that you didn’t plant there and don’t want there. Often weeds look just like other plants. When children are young and helping their parents with weeding the garden, the parents will carefully teach their children what to pull and what to leave undisturbed. But there are often many little sprouts that even the parents, with their expert eyes, cannot so easily identify and so those are left in order to see what they will become. You wouldn’t want to accidentally pull up a flower mistaking it for a weed… In today’s parable Jesus talks about people as fields, and plants. The parable seems to be telling people that in every field, you will not only find wheat, good plants…but you will also find weeds, bad plants. I have many great qualities…to maintain some semblance of humility, my wife is with me today so that I will not delude myself in thinking I have ONLY great qualities. Yes, I also have bad qualities. My field has weeds among the wheat. Consider also that the parable is talking about people as the plants. Sometimes a person looks like a weed; they act like someone you’d like to just pull right up out of the ground before they infect the entire garden. Jesus knows what can happen if we do that. He says it isn’t our job to pull the weeds out of the field. The farmer has planted good wheat there and we might not know what it looks like. We can’t always tell the difference, even though we think we can.

But as humans we often want to weed the human garden. We want to correct people if we think they are sinning. We get angry at people when they aren’t acting as we see fit. We want to make sure that everyone in our group looks good and acts appropriately. We don’t want too many people who dress the wrong way or who act in questionable ways, around. We don’t want anyone who will stir things up, who will mess up what we have set out for ourselves. We like to identify someone who doesn’t fit and be rid of them. But the problem is we don’t always know which of these people will turn out to be wheat.

Let me share a story which may also help us in looking at today’s parable. A woman recalls her growing up years.

“Where I grew up there is a tree that grows, ugly tree, big long coarse needles that turn brown and fall to the ground, year round, it is an evergreen so it doesn’t just lose its needles sometimes, it is in something like constant shed mode. The needles cause endless raking and serious pain to bare feet. It only has branches high up so it looks like a huge brown trunk with a really bad haircut. Not pretty at all. It is called the ponderosa pine and it is a weed of a tree if there ever was one. I grew up on a hillside just within what is called the “tree line” of eastern Washington. Just where the desert stops and the trees start growing and my home was surrounded by these trees. If it had been up to people we probably would have cut them all down, but there is something special about the scrub pine. It is what is known as a pioneer species. It makes the land liveable for other plants. It changes the eco-system little bit by little bit, shading the ground so that some of the brush dies off and new trees can take root, it creates shelter for animals so that they can move from the forest into new land where they spread seeds and eat down the foliage allowing new things to grow. Without the scrub pine the desert would stay desert but because of it, dead land is turned into fertile soil that holds great beauty and bears good fruit. So despite our suspicion that the scrub pines were weeds we were obliged to let them be. We even watered them in times of drought and protected them from disease knowing that someday because of them new, delicate things would spring up on the hillside.”

In the Parable of today’s text, the field workers want to help the farmer by separating out what they don’t think should be in the field. But the farmer says no. He had planted good wheat and they did not yet know what would bear fruit.

In the story, Jesus tells us the word that he uses for weed really refers to a plant that looks just like the wheat. Until it comes time for harvest it is almost impossible to tell them apart. So when the workers ask if they can get rid of the weeds the farmer says no. He is concerned that the wheat will be pulled along with the weeds. You’ll notice that while the plants and weeds can be separated, the roots cannot. If you pull one, you unavoidably get the other one too.

But still we want to weed the human garden to get rid of anything that springs up looking like a weed because we don’t want to be mistaken for weeds ourselves. 

Back in the days when slaves were still held in the United States, down in South Carolina lived a weed of a man. He was a slave holder and a mean one at that. He was sure everyone had their place. White men at the top descending downwards and ending with black slaves at the bottom. He had children this man. 14 children, a whole patch of weeds we might say. Amongst his children were two daughters. As these daughters grew they became strong voices against slavery. They had seen slaves whipped and mistreated while they were growing up and had decided that slavery was the worst kind of evil. Suddenly the girls who had looked like weeds to the cause of abolition were bearing great fruit in the struggle to give equal rights to all. They spoke as bricks were thrown at them. They spoke as angry mobs tried to drive them away, thirsty for their blood. They spoke and spoke until finally they outspoke slavery. Imagine if someone who thought they were doing good had decided to pull these two weeds as they were growing up in South Carolina; if someone had taken their voice away; if the people in the north had refused to talk to them knowing where they had come from.

As humans we often want to weed the human garden because we are afraid and we want to stop the evil before it starts, but thank God that job is not ours to do.

In our lives we want to help the farmer by pushing away those people who seem like they might be harmful to others, who might be a bad influence. The farmer says no, I planted good wheat; it might yet bear good fruit.

Now if the weeds in this story stand for evil they are a good analogy because heaven knows that just like we never seem to be rid of weeds the world always seems to have some evil in it. Evil that leads someone to set off a bomb on a busy subway, evil that drives a man to take a gun and try to shoot someone outside of an elementary school, hitting a young boy instead. Evil that causes loving Christian people to drive away those most in need. Evil that is sown among us as hatred causing us to turn someone away because of their beliefs, because we don’t approve of how they lead their lives.

It is the evil of arrogance, the evil of judgment which gets us into trouble. It makes us think that we know the good seed from the bad, the fruit bearing plants from the weeds. It makes us think that we don’t need to listen to the farmer that we should decide who gets equal treatment. Who gets to be taken care of by us, who gets to come through these doors. As humans we always want to weed the human garden, but Jesus says no. You might damage some of the precious wheat. Jesus tells this parable to make it clear to all who are listening that while living in this world where some days we see good and some days we see evil. Where some days we do good and some days we do evil. Where some days we are weeds and some days we are wheat, and some days we are both at the same time. We are not to judge one another on these grounds but instead, we are pushed to look within. We must look at our own lives, our own hearts.

Evil is a weed amongst the good wheat. But when we turn to pull the weeds, God the planter knows better and says you might damage some wheat. This parable in Matthew really encourages a reading from us that views ourselves as being wheat AND weeds. The message of Jesus throughout the gospels is ‘do not judge, for you will be judged’. ‘Remove the log in your own eye, before you get the spec out of your brother’s’ and ‘Love your enemies...pray for those who are mean to you; return evil with good’. There is a great tendency for us Christians to want to point out the weeds in our world, isn’t there? It is parables like this one which are in a sense designed to keep us from doing just that; to keep us humble and patient for God to do the work that only God can do. The work of distinguishing between the wheat and the weeds; the good and the bad in all of us, where the weeds are gathered, bound and burned and all that remains is the good seed in us which bears good fruit; the wheat that will be  gathered into the barn. 

There is a meadow on a family property and the meadow is full of weeds. The people thought that they would spray the weeds to kill them and then plant something else. No, that wouldn’t do the job. They thought that they would use some machine to pull them up. No that won’t do it. It turns out the only real way to get rid of these weeds is to sow good, strong seed right among them, to keep watering it and nourishing it and eventually as the good seed takes roots the weeds will disappear.

If we sow hatred because we think we see evil, hatred will grow. If we push away the people who frighten us, how will they ever understand God’s love? If we stop watering the field because the weeds never go away, the weeds might survive but the good seed will wither away for certain. But if we nourish it all, indiscriminately, zealously with the love of God, with the strong word of God the good seed just might overtake all of the weeds.

Good seed is the love that God sows in each and every one of us so for heaven’s sake, let’s not weed the garden. If you don’t like someone remember not to weed the garden, if you are worried about the effect some person might have on the community with the way she looks, don’t weed the garden. If you don’t like the words that come out of someone’s mouth, don’t weed the garden. With water and the word God planted good strong seed in this world. Because that good seed is the love that God sows in each and every one of us then thank God that we are not the ones who weed the garden. Who knows what effect that good seed might have even amidst the weeds.

“First of all, the task of pulling out the weeds isn’t man’s job. Christ specifically says that the angels of heaven will do that sad task, and of course, they will do it under God’s will and guidance. Rebels will be lost and destroyed only when God, in His wisdom gives that directive….Let’s never forget that when the weeds are bundled up and burned, this is God’s "strange act." He puts it off, like the farmer who waits.

Concluding challenge

So, rather than turning this parable outward to distinguish others from us, which goes against the very grain of the parable, we can each of us ask instead whether or not we ourselves are like Jesus? We can ask whether we ourselves turn the other cheek, whether we are agents of continual forgiveness, whether we ourselves feed the hungry, clothe the poor and care for the sick. We need not ask ‘what kind of seed are they?’, but ‘what kind of seed am I?’