Gospel: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Last week our Gospel passage was about scattering seed and seeing what grows, and where. I took one additional step and talked about dealing with trying to scatter seed on shifting ground. Today, we’re back with another agricultural parable from Jesus, one that takes me back again to memories of my youth just a few miles from here.
As I’ve mentioned a few times over the years, my family moved to a farm located four miles down what’s now Everett Road. Sadly – and yes, selfishly for how I want things – the farm is no longer there, replaced by two huge residential developments. In 1981, when we moved there, however, it was a working dairy farm. We weren’t responsible for any of the farm operations. The friends who owned it let us live in the old family homeplace, a house built in the 1700s with an addition dating to the 1950s.
The four years on that farm were among the happiest of my life. Lots of solitude. Hundreds of acres of woods to explore on the weekends. Nights during which you could look up and see stars, not just guess that they were there. Countless, wonderful memories.
One thing I remember vividly, something I included in my sermon last week, was the garden my parents planted and tended. Row after row of tomatoes and corn and beans and potatoes, each planned out carefully and yielding more vegetables in those few years than I’m sure I’ve ever eaten, before or since. When it came to weeding my father had a very simple plan: plant the rows far enough apart so that the lawnmower could be pushed between them. That way, he could mow down the weeds with minimal effort and without having to worry about the safety of what was supposed to be growing.
In that case, it was easy to tell the two apart. Here’s the corn; here are the snap peas. Anything over here is weeds and can go. But what about the gardens where the vegetables and weeds grow more closely together? What do you do when you can’t tell them apart?
That’s the imagery used in today’s Gospel reading, wheat and weeds that are growing together. As with many of his parables, Jesus put this one in terms that would have been easy to understand for the listeners. Once again, he’s putting his lesson in the context of agriculture, the wheat needed for bread on which so many relied for survival, and the harmful weeds often found growing among legitimate crops.
Unlike the weeds growing in my family’s garden that were easily distinguishable and could simply be mowed down, the ones Jesus refers to are different and more dangerous. They’re known as tares, or bearded darnels. The roots of the tare grow around the roots of healthy plants, intertwining with them to the point where you can’t pull one out of the ground without harming the other. Add to it that the head of the tare looks deceptively like the head of wheat and, rather than being a helpful ingredient for something sustaining life like bread, it’s poisonous, destructive, and fatal.
There are many wheat fields from which we harvest to make the bread that’s our lives. There’s this field, the field of St. Stephen’s, and the wheat we raise here. There are the fields that are our jobs. We harvest wheat from the fields that are our families. Some of the wheat comes from the fields that are our relationships and our work in the community. But no matter how much we’d like each of these fields to be full of nothing but healthy, golden wheat, we often discover there are tares among the crops.
Sometimes the tares are relationships with people who have been brought into our paths. They may be coworkers or social acquaintances who on the surface may look like folks who want to help with what we’re trying to do but who instead may be distractions intended to pull us in other directions. As someone who used to work in the federal government I can tell you there are tares filling those fields to an extremely unhealthy degree.
Sadly, people may even encounter tares that grow up in the fields of faith: people in many pews or ministers in various pulpits who condemn others in the name of the Gospel, or those who as another example may preach a dangerous prosperity gospel as a promise of a quick shortcut to heaven and to quick financial success here on earth.
Talitha Arnold, a minister in New Mexico, has written that the negative things that have been sowed in our lives sometimes are even subtle enough that we don’t notice. She refers to “the countless distractions that derail us. E-mails, phone calls, and endless meetings can make it look as if we are working on the realm of God, but they may simply be symptoms of our own divided souls.”
When we finally can see clearly enough to find the weeds in our lives, the obvious ones and the subtle ones, I’d wager the gut reaction of many would be the same as the field workers in the parable: “Do you want us to go and gather them?” When we’re walking in our yard and see a weed in a flower bed or in the garden, the easiest thing to do is stop and pull it. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it ensures the health of the garden or crop. But quick and easy isn’t always healthy – and, as Jesus points out, it’s not always our responsibility.
Just like tares and wheat are almost indistinguishable from one another and nearly always intertwined at the roots, those harmful people or situations in our lives may be deeply intertwined with all that’s good. On the surface they look normal and just like everything else, and we might not even detect the difference. Because of that, we shouldn’t try and clean out our fields all by ourselves, particularly when we run the risk of damaging some for the health of the remainder.
No, this is where we need to yield to God. As Jesus says, we should leave it to the heavenly reapers, to the angels and the hands of God. This is where we need to let the Holy Spirit move freely through our lives, guiding us to decisions that will keep us healthy. No matter how clearly we may think we see the weeds, we may not be able to get rid of them without causing harm.
Ultimately, at the highest level, how these people are handled is neither our decision nor our responsibility. Whether the weeds in our lives are separated from us by a bit of space or have roots wrapped around our own, we shouldn’t worry. We should simply focus on making sure the wheat we plant and tend yields a harvest worthy enough to bring to God.
That’s it. Use your lives as a way making sure the wheat grows and yields a harvest worthy enough to bring to God. Raise the best wheat you can. Be the best wheat you can be. Let God separate the wheat from the weeds and use it to make the bread that sustains us.
Amen.