Preaching text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
I mentioned last week that people change over time. While we are still who we were as children, teenagers, young adults, or whatever in many ways, there are also a lot of things about ourselves from those times that we’ve left behind. Friends, interests, quirks, lifestyles, opinions, and so forth all change as time molds and shapes us through our lives. That’s true of all people and God knows that. Which is why he calls us to spread the seed of his good news regardless of the consequences. Only he knows when a heart is ripe to receive him and it’s not really our job to worry about such things. We sow the seed. Period.
Well, Jesus isn’t done with these agricultural metaphors in his parables, so he tells us another one this week. The two are related in many ways, because both highlight our hunger to control things. Human nature is a huge subtext to both parables, last week’s as well as this one.
We are the sowers, so Jesus says that we go out to sow the seed. Only we find the next day that someone has sown a whole slew of weeds amidst our wheat. Our first response? Let’s go get those blasted weeds out of there. Let’s go control the situation. Let’s make it right.
The landowner, God, tempers this impulse. No, do not pull the weeds but let them grow together.
Now, much like farming, I’m no expert on gardening, but I believe weeding is a pretty essential part of maintaining a good garden. Failure to remove weeds in a timely manner is a good way to let your vegetables and flowers fail. And yet here, the landowner says leave things alone.
There’s a reason for that. Because in the world of this parable, NONE of us are experts at gardening. In fact, we’re downright terrible at it. Problem is, we don’t care that we’re terrible, because we’re going to do it anyway.
We’re terrible because we can’t tell the difference between weed and wheat. Consider the dandelion. Universally decried as a weed, destroyer of good lawns, and painfully hard to eradicate. Everyone hates them, until a little girl hands you a bunch of them and says “Here, Daddy, I picked these flowers for you.” Then, what was once trash becomes more precious than gold.
As I said at the beginning, people change. A person who looks like weed now might be wheat later on. They may not be quite what they appear to be. But we are far too eager to judge and tag them prematurely, so we can again control the way the world works. We want to categorize them “good,” “bad,” etc. But how we define those categories is usually entirely based on our human predilections.
“Of course, I judged fairly, Lord. It’s pure coincidence that all the people I judged weed were black, Latino, gay, Muslim, liberal, and every other group society presently claims is rotten to the core. It’s not my fault.
“And it’s likewise coincidence that all the wheat that remains are people just like me.”
Funny how that happens. Especially since that’s what ALWAYS happens when we’re in charge. Our attempt to judge others righteous or unrighteous usually boils down to two things. Either I’m casting attention on others to avoid it coming on myself (because I’m guilty of the same sins) or I’m hoping people will agree that those sins (which are different than mine) are far worse. Both are efforts to justify ourselves and in that endeavor, our hypocrisies know no bounds.
But this truth highlights something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Matthew’s Gospel often gives us Jesus’ own interpretation of his parables and while I certainly agree with Jesus’ take on his own story, I would like to offer another, complimentary, perspective. You see, the field isn’t just the world, it’s also our own heart. And within our hearts grow both virtue and vice, wheat and weeds.
What are we to do about it? Most, if not all of us, desire to be good. We wish to be righteous. But we carry the burden of being sinful humans. Those vices, every now and then, get the better of us. And sometimes our efforts to eradicate them only make us worse. By trying to control sin, we sin even more.
My friends and I were talking about the Hunchback of Notre Dame at our game session on Saturday and it got me thinking that's a good example of this. In the story, Judge Frollo tries to temper his lust for Esmeralda by....murdering her and all the other gypsies. Not quite the sort of solution I think we're really looking for here. (The whole story really is a good example of how virtue and vice are not always easily discerned in people.)
Surprising for some folks, the Disney version of the story really nails this dynamic.
We’re not meant to eradicate our sins though. That’s God’s job, not ours.
Our job is once again, here as it was in the last parable, to sow the seed. Within the world and within our hearts. We’ll never do it perfectly, but that’s not what God wants. No hero of Scripture is ever perfect. Moses was a coward. David a murderer. St. Paul a persecutor. Peter an idiot. God didn’t choose them because they were perfectly righteous. He chose them because he chose them, because he loved them. And he chooses you and me because he loves us. In spite of all the weeds in our heart.
We spend so much time in the church worrying about sin, our own and others. But that’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to spread the word, to show the world the kingdom God intends for all people. A world where there is no sickness, poverty, hatred, war, prejudice, inequality, or pain. A world to be given for all imperfect people here on earth, those guilty of this sin and that. A world won by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
It is my hope, and even my expectation, that when the “end of the age” comes, God will send his angels into the field to harvest the souls of humankind. And because of Jesus and his sacrifice, the weeds of our hearts are long forgive and those angels find no weeds at all in the world. That’s the happy ending I long for. And I may have a part in making it happen, by being the sower God wishes me to be, regardless of my vices, flaws, and errors. I think that’s true of all of us. Go and sow the word. Amen.
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