For the Sake of Honesty
July 23, 2023 + Eighth Sunday After Pentecost + Lectionary 16A +Pr. Michelle Sevig
Well, the Revised Common Lectionary offers us another agricultural parable today. Another challenge for this urban pastor, and maybe for you too…
Last week we heard the Gospel parable about the Sower who appeared to have no farming sense. I suggested he might even be called the Wasteful Sower. This week in another teaching moment with Jesus, he offers up the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Now we’re city folks, most of us—unless some of you were raised on a farm or still visit family or friends in rural areas—but I’ve learned in reading about this story from Matthew that some farmers know this parable well. Bags of wheat seed certainly contain seeds from a type of ryegrass that looks exactly like wheat. And any of us who buy and plant seeds knows there may be all kinds of other things in the seed bag.
But this parable isn’t about farming, of course. Parables are always about “something else.” And this is a big “something else.”
This parable of the wheat and weeds paints a realistic picture of our world as it is, not about a future reality in heaven. Good and bad, constructive and destructive are bound together. It is a reminder that helpful and harmful are mixed up all around us—and within us individually and collectively. As communities, even as a nation and world.
In today’s story, A householder plants seeds in his field, but while everyone is asleep, an enemy sneaks onto the field, sows weeds among the wheat, and goes away. When the plants come up, the householder’s servants are baffled. “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?” they ask him. “Where did these weeds come from?” The householder doesn’t spare them the truth: “An enemy has done this." But when the servants offer to tear up the weeds, the householder stops them. “No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let them both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time, I’ll instruct my reapers to collect, bundle, and burn the weeds, and then I’ll gather the wheat into my barn.”
We join the disciples who say to Jesus, “Explain to us this parable, Jesus?” Perhaps they, too, want to understand what is up with the weeds. And are WE the weeds? And why can’t Jesus do anything about them? This parable, more than any other, brings us face to face with the question: Why is there evil in the world, and why doesn’t God do something about it? In our worst moments, we wonder if God is asleep on the job. We want God to be the Divine Weed Whacker, at least when we identify the weeds–sin, evil, bad-in others.
But when farmhands want to pluck up the weeds, Jesus says “Let them grow together.” Jesus says, ‘Wait and be patient’ because Jesus is interested in growth, not extermination. And we just might wack the wheat, the good along with the bad if it’s all up to us. In other words, there is no way we can police the wheat field without damaging the wheat. There is no way we can rid ourselves of everything bad without distorting everything good. When we rush ahead of God and start yanking weeds left and right, we do terrible harm to ourselves and to the field. Our sincerity devolves into arrogance. Our love devolves into judgment. Our holiness devolves into hypocrisy. And the field suffers.
Jesus promises his listeners that justice is both necessary for an abundant harvest and certain because God wills it. Evil may claim victory for many seasons, lifetimes, and generations. But the passionate, protective, and deeply righteous love of God will not rule the world forever. Oppression will end. Injustice will die. The wheat will thrive and the weeds will not. “All causes of evil and all evildoers,” Jesus says, will be exposed and disempowered. All causes of evil. The causes we condemn in others, and the causes we complacently excuse in ourselves. The causes that are personal, and the causes that are systemic. The causes we know about, and the causes we don’t. All causes of evil. No exceptions.
Biblical scholar Karoline Lewis says that in the end, this parable’s message is that God’s job is not our job. This parable is not told for the sake of action but for the sake of honesty. It causes us to pause, to breathe, to be. This is good news. This is a reminder to be the good in the world. Be patient and have perspective. Our “action” is to live out our baptism: Let your light shine so that others may see your good works and give glory to God.” We are to be the light, be the salt, sow love, and forgive one another.
Jesus invites us to be part of the kindom that is still becoming, still growing. And this field is full of limitless grace in the midst of an evil world. As we receive that grace, we can offer it to others with the same kind of abundant generosity that God has offered to us. Our job is to bless the field, not curse it. The field is not ours, it is God’s. Only God knows it intimately enough to tend it. Only God loves it enough to bring it safely to harvest.
On this beautiful summer day, we are gathered in this place, to rest and to anchor our lives. Being here with one another for story and song, prayers and meal, silence, and breath, reminds us that God is God, and we are not. Here, we stand in awe before the mystery of God’s ability to accept us in our brokenness and help us work through our messy individual and collective lives. And we give thanks that God, in Christ, does not wack the weeds within us, but tends to us patiently and with grace so we may flourish abundantly in God’s field of grace.
