The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

The problem of weeds…the problem of evil

So – I’ll be the first to admit it…I had to learn the hard way: If you do not go after the weeds by early April – pull ‘em up, hoe ‘em down, or smother them with bark dust – then you will have literally millions of weeds to contend with all summer long!

“A single weedy plant can spew up to 50,000 weed seeds into the air, and each tiny seed” is on a mission “to try to sprout and spread.” So you must get serious! Declare all-out war! Eradicate!

So what was Jesus thinking?

You’ve got a crop of wheat and those nasty weeds growing together, and Jesus says don’t pull the weeds?! “Let both them grow together until the harvest.” Seriously?

Well, let’s be clear: For starters, Jesus isn’t giving a lecture on agriculture here. He’s doing theology. The parable is not talking about some inept farmer dude. In fact, Jesus is dealing with nothing less than the problem of evil!

First the farmer sows good seed. Next thing you somebody else comes along and, under the cover of darkness, sows weeds in the same field. When the shoots come up the farmhands are perplexed: Wait a minute…didn’t you sow good seed in the soil? Yep. Well, so, “Where did all these weeds come from?”

“An enemy has done this.”

And Jesus is saying that’s the kind of world we live in. Jesus is sowing the good news of this life transforming gospel, he is planting the kingdom of God on earth, establishing his body, the church.

But then the weeds get mixed in, too. Good and evil end up rubbing shoulders, growing side by side.

So “Where…did these weeds come from?” Where does evil come from? I don’t suppose you have ever asked this question…maybe just once or twice? Who did this horrible thing?

Jesus says: an enemy did it. Which we may find a bit frustrating – because the parable doesn’t really say any more than that. I mean, can’t we get a few more details here, Lord? Who did this? Where does evil come from?

The thing is, whenever you go searching for a biblical answer to the problem of evil, that’s about all you get: An enemy did this. Not God! The Bible is consistently restrained on this question.

Well, ok, so now what? Start weeding like crazy, right? Yank that evil right out of there! No? Well, why not? Because any attack on the weeds is likely to uproot the wheat as well. So, the parable says, Just let it be.

Which does not mean do not resist evil. Evil is not neutral. Evil is bad. But resisting evil and uprooting it are apparently two different things.

And notice that Jesus’ parable goes on to assure us that there will come a time when things get sorted out. Judgment will come. Evil’s days are numbered. But God is the one who does the sorting. God will uproot the weeds. God will wipe out evil once and for all.

But until that day comes, Jesus is saying, the kingdom of heaven on earth is a bit of a messy operation, a mixture of wheat and weeds, of good and evil.

In other words, things are not so cut and dried.

Our divisive tendencies

Although the thing is, our human tendency is to want to sort it all out now. We spend a fair amount of energy labeling who’s who, and what’s what. Drawing lines. Here’s the good. There’s the bad.

Somebody said we suffer from a spiritual condition called “hardening of the categories.” This is certainly the prevailing cultural condition today.

I’ve mentioned to you before the book that has made me think about this tendency to draw lines, to exclude, today. The book is titled, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart , by a guy named Bill Bishop.

Bishop documents how over the last forty years birds of a social-economic-political and religious feather have been increasingly flocking together. And, while this sounds innocent enough, the only problem is the more we hang out with people who look, and think, and act and believe like us, well, uh, the more we hang out with people who look, and think, and act and believe like us!

The problem is that when people marinate almost exclusively with others of like mind, and experience and even prejudice, then the less cross-fertilization of thoughts and ideas there is, and – here’s the kicker – the more extreme, rigid, antagonistic and polarized people become –including theologically.

What we end up with is a bunch of purists. Exclusivists. All these pockets of people who are “allergic to differences of opinion…blind to compromise…and conflict averse.” People who think they alone are right, and treat everybody else as evil incarnate. We demonize the opposition.

I’m pretty sure this is happening in the Presbyterian church today…a kind of big Presbyterian sort – into liberal and conservative. Pro-gay and anti-gay. Right and wrong. Biblical and apostate. Good and evil. But what if it’s not so cut and dried?

Jesus did not sanction yanking out even the diabolical when it mixes in the kingdom, and is cautioning us against doing so as well. Jesus is cautioning us against being overly discouraged when opposition to the gospel comes even from within.

He is cautioning against having too great expectations for a totally purist church, or promoting a too-exclusivist church or denomination.

The big sort? That’s not the Bible talking. That’s culture talking. For now, Jesus says, it’s not so cut and dried.

In fact, every time the church has tried to pull up the weeds in her midst, it has resulted in a diminished church, a weakened church.

Actually, to be perfectly blunt, more often than not it has ended up a total disaster. History is replete with horrifying weed-pulling episodes: the Crusades…Inquisitions…witch hunts. Not our finest hour. And, not our job.

Some might say, Well, ok, but what about Matthew 18 – where Jesus spells out a plan for church discipline, to help people who have gone astray get back in line, right? Fair enough. But apparently when it comes to church discipline the church can go off the deep end, become fanatical. So the counter-balance to Matthew 18 is this parable in Matthew 13. Because it’s not so cut and dried.

A mixture of good and evil

And here’s the thing: This mixture of good and evil not only exists in the world; this mixture not only exists in the church… I’m here to tell that the line dividing good and evil cuts through every human heart! I know…from personal experience! I’m a mixture. We’re all a mixture!

Maybe you balk at that. You’re thinking: I’m not as bad as bad as can be! Well, maybe so. But I’m pretty sure you are not as good as good can be either. None of us is. Sometimes the wheat is kind of weedy. And sometimes the weeds can be kind of wheaty, too.

Years ago when I went to see the movie Schindler’s List I was forewarned: I knew it was about the Jewish Holocaust, depicting Hitler’s slaughter of 6 million Jews. But nobody told me it was about how mixed evil and good can be, how it’s not so cut and dried.

The film’s protagonist, Oscar Schindler is a Nazi…a boozer…and a womanizer. He’s a charismatic party-guy who constantly used his considerable wealth to buy favors. A businessman with questionable ethics who profited greatly during the early years of World War 2.

But the movie goes on to reveal what happened during the last year of the War, when Schindler spent nearly his entire fortune to save the lives of 1100 Jews who had worked as slave laborers in his enamelware factories on the outskirts of Krakow, Poland. He was their lifeline to freedom. And he helped them.

The movie is not about a Jew saving Jews. Or a neutral person from Sweden or Switzerland saving Jews. It is about a Nazi saving Jews.

You see what happens?, says William Willimon: Just when we get things sorted out, “weed from wheat, sheep from goats, saved from damned, hopeless from hopeful, somebody makes a move…” Something shifts. Maybe somebody even changes!

Because the line dividing good and evil cuts through every human heart! Our hearts. We’re all a mix of wheat and weeds.

Does that mean we don’t resist evil? Not at all. But resisting evil, and uprooting it are two different things.

Let it be

So Jesus says, “Let them both grow together until the harvest.” Leave them alone. Just “let them be.”

Robert Capon says that statement may be the most remarkable in the whole parable. “Let them grow together…”

Capon takes that one word “let” or “permit” and puts it under the microscope. He discovers that the root of the Greek verb takes on another nuance in elsewhere in the New Testament. In fact, the root of that word “let” or “permit” here is often translated into English as “forgive.” And that, says Capon, is really the key behind this text: forgiveness.

Capon explains: “The evil, the badness that is manifest in the real world and in the lives of real people is not to be dealt with by attacking or abolishing the things or persons in whom it dwells; rather, it is to be dealt with only by a letting be, a permission that is a forgiveness, all rolled into one.”

After all, Capon continues, isn’t that what happened on the cross? The cross is where we learn that Christianity is not an “Operation Throw-Them-All-Out.” At the cross Jesus didn’t threaten his enemies, didn’t rail at them, didn’t cut them down, didn’t give up on them. Jesus said, “Father forgive them.” He let it be. He patiently forgave. He still does – and he calls us to do the same.

Jesus’ parable is an invitation to be patient; it’s a call to forgive; to not be so intent on being right that we end up being wrong.

* * *

You may recall one of the early church fathers named Gregory the Great – I’m not exactly sure how he got that name, but it’s quite the nickname! It may have been due to all the profound things he said including this little gem I found: Gregory said that the good we do has no value if we fail to be patient with the evildoing of another. That sounds pretty great alright!

It reminds me of the story I heard about two women who were really struggling with each other in their congregation. Both were committed volunteers, serving the church, sharing their gifts. Both lovely women. The only problem was they couldn’t get along together.

But one day one of the women said something quite wonderful about her difficult sister in Christ. She had been reflecting on the Lord’s Prayer, where it says “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive others” – and it hit her like a ton of bricks! “You know what?” she said: “That woman is going to make a Christian out of me yet!”

God not only uses us to make Christian out of others…God uses others to make Christians out of us! People who let it be, people who love and forgive as Christ has loved and forgiven us all.

Are you listening? Really listening?

Whatever we do, whatever we believe, it must not drive out forgiveness and love and humility! Otherwise we betray the very kingdom that Jesus is inviting us to enter.

I think we’d better pray!

Prayer

O God, we confess that we can be so judgmental – when it’s your job to judge. We write people off. We demonize the opposition. So we pray: Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.

Please keep us rooted in you. Keep us growing in grace.

And in the silence of our hearts right now, Lord maybe there is even someone you will bring to mind who is helping “to make a Christian out of us yet!” Someone in this church, maybe even sitting next to us in the pew. Perhaps you can even give us an ability to say “thank you God” for that person…

So now help us, O God, to keep broadcasting the good seed of the gospel, even as we let you do the sorting in your time, and trust you for a great harvest of righteousness. Through Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.

++++

Marianne Binetti, “Attack weeds now – or pay price later,” The Tacoma News Tribune, April 6, 2011, page C-1.

Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008), 251.

See F. Dale Bruner, Matthew 13-28, A Commentary, Volume 2, The Churchbook (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990), 496-501.

William Willimon, “The Messiness of Ministry,” Leadership, Summer 1994, 147.

Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of the Kingdom, 105-110.

Jason Byassee, “Scattering Seeds,”
http://www.faithandleadership.com/sermons/jason-byassee-scattering-seeds?page=0,0

Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, 245.