Year A
Isaiah 44:6-8
Psalm 86:11-17
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

May the words of my mouth… O God… speak your Truth… so that anyone with ears… may listen…

Today’s parable is most often referred to as The Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds… and we’re told that The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field… but while everybody was asleep… an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat… and then went away…

Those who study ancient botany say that the weeds in question here… are probably darnel… a Eurasian ryegrass… a somewhat poisonous weed which… during it’s initial stages… looks very much like wheat… and the roots of the two intertwine… making it nearly impossible to separate them…

An enemy has come… and sown bad seed… among good seed… and so the workers are told to not pick the weeds… but to wait for the harvest… and we are tempted… I think… to want to know just who this enemy is… after all… in so many of Jesus’ parables… we try to figure out which character is Jesus… which one is God… and which is the Holy Spirit… don’t we… and we are tempted here… I think… to conclude that the enemy is Satan… the Accuser… and while the text says the Devil… one who embodies opposition to God’s goodness… to God’s will… to God’s love… one who intentionally throws wrenches into the works… the text doesn’t say that it’s Satan… does it… those may be dots we connect on our own…

But we still want to know who to hold accountable… don’t we… we still want to know why things happen… why bad things happen… and sometimes… that can bear really good fruit… if it’s something like dismantling racism and white supremacy and holding accountable those who believe that God is racist too… but at other times… it can just lead from one dead end to another… if it’s something like trying to figure out just exactly when… where… how… and why… the very first COVID-19 virus emerged… but its emergence doesn’t really matter… does it… because it’s here… though we have science to figure out how to deal with it… like wearing masks… and social distancing… and hand washing… to help bring the infection rates down… and stop the spread…

I once had a boss… who taught me an important lesson when some decision… or situation… went south… I mean really SOUTH… the biggest takeaway she said… is not pointing fingers… or assigning blame… she said… sometimes… things… just… happen… and knowing precisely why is next to impossible… the biggest takeaway she said… is figuring out how to keep it from happening again… keep the train on the tracks… learn from our mistakes…

And part of that learning… is realizing that while the enemy is sometimes outside of us… sometimes… we’re our own worst enemy… because we all have some weeds growing inside of us… something that inhibits our wheat from flourishing… inhibits the Word from taking root… and we can spend a lot of time pointing fingers… or we can do all we can… to support the wheat…

There’s another detail in this parable that I think is worth looking at too… the text says that the enemy came when everyone was asleep… Jesus has shown us time and time again that for him… being asleep does not mean being in bed for the night… being asleep means being unaware… being oblivious to the water in which we swim… or of how our worldview may be affecting us… being awake is being able to see the signs of the times… and it reminds me of the passage in Luke (6:47-49) where Jesus says… I will show you what someone is like who hears my words… and acts on them… he is like a man building a house… who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock… and when a flood arose… the river burst against that house but could not shake it… because it had been well built… but the one who hears and does not act… is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation… and when the river burst against it… immediately it fell… and great was the ruin of that house… the house… is the person… whose foundation… is the Ground of Being…

Maybe the advice of the Master… is wise advice… leave the weeds alone… we’ll deal with them later… at the harvest… because… do we always really know which is wheat… and which is weeds… can there be some weeds that look like wheat… like the darnel I mentioned earlier… and can there be some wheat that looks like weeds… and we would throw the baby away with the bathwater…

The Greek word that’s translated as field… means… a cultivated region as opposed to the wilderness… the field is chaos tamed… the wilderness is not… Jesus met the Devil in the wilderness… and we don’t want to go into the basement with just a flashlight… or into woods at night… do we… it’s where witches live… and where wolves wait in Grandma’s bed for Red Riding Hoods… so perhaps the field in this story… is creation… the world in which we live… and perhaps the good seed that’s been sown… is God’s Word… and perhaps the enemy… is our own shortsightedness… our haughtiness in thinking that we see with God’s eyes… in believing that we think with God’s mind… in believing that we love as God loves…

But the slaves balked… they said… we want the field to be perfect… we want there to be ONLY wheat… and NO weeds… because the weeds bring suffering… and we want to control creation so there’s no suffering…

In her book Gift from the Sea… Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote… I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches… if suffering alone taught… all the world would be wise… since everyone suffers… but to suffering we must add mourning… understanding… patience… love… openness… and the willingness to remain vulnerable…

Paul didn’t consider the sufferings of his time to be comparable to the glory that will be revealed to us… he recognized that the whole of creation has been… and continues to be… groaning in labor pains… and yet we too hope for what we do not see… and the pandemic has given us slightly better vision… hasn’t it… we would not otherwise have seen George Floyd’s murder… it would have been lost in the blur of the news cycle… and we wouldn’t have had time to march and protest against systemic racism… which is beginning to be addressed in a new way… and we would have been too distracted to see what’s happening in Washington… and wouldn’t have been able to speak truth to power…

So while I lament the systems and decisions which have caused the suffering through which so many people are going… I also believe this is a good time to take our lives and our relationships… our country and our world… more seriously than we have been… and the Good News… is that judgement will come… it may be scary because of the unjust experiences many have had with our own legal systems… but God’s judgement is just… God has said that our transgressions will be forgotten… and God is far more patient with us… than we are with each other… more patient than we can imagine… we don’t know when the harvest will come… but when it does… God will separate our weeds from our wheat… and we will share the bread we are… at the Heavenly Banquet…