[Jesus] put before [the crowd] another parable: “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. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (NRSVue)
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
My sermon from the 8th Sunday after Pentecost Sunday (July 23, 2023) on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.
So I originally thought my sermon today would be a bit shorter than usual since we’re singing so many Christmas carols. Sometimes the best way to experience the presence of God is to be surrounded by it through song. The songs we sing aren’t just heard; they’re also felt through the vibrations caused by the organ, the piano, our speakers, and our own body as we join in the hymns that have fed the faithful for generations. God’s story is, for us, an incarnated story because God’s promises are meant for the lives we actually live.
But there’s also another reason why today’s sermon feels like it’s allowed to be shorter and that’s because Jesus’ words speak for themselves. Jesus was a storyteller who used metaphors and everyday experiences to reveal truths about the kingdom of God. We call these stories parables and I’ve often said that the key to understanding these stories is by noticing the parts that seem weird. This takes a little work on our part since an everyday experience for us might not exactly match what folks experienced in ancient Israel and Palestine. However, when we finally unpack Jesus’ words, we often discover a character saying something odd or noticing how this reasonable sounding scene is anything but. The absurd bits within the stories are the key that reveals what God’s kingdom is all about. And when we make time to notice all that’s weird, our faith grows. So it makes sense that when we first listened to today’s parable, we kept waiting to hear something weird. And yet the odd thing about this story is how it all kind of makes sense. The setting of a field full of wheat and weeds seems pretty normal and the request to pull out the weed right away is something most of us would agree too. The decision by the farmer to let the weeds and wheat grow together seems weird at first. But when we realize that the wheat and weeds mentioned in this parable looked the same while they grew up, the landowner’s choice to wait until both could be easily separated makes sense. The field, while it grows, will contain a mix of good and bad. And when we extend this parable beyond its literal setting and integrate into our lives, Jesus’ words describe a realistic vision of our world. Within our communities, our neighborhoods, our country, and even our families, there exists the holy, the helpful, the hurtful, the unholy, and everything in between. We only need to exist in this world for a little bit to realize how true this metaphor is. Yet Jesus’ words also reveal how we, in our own ways, are full of wheat and weeds too. This isn’t Jesus trying to tarnish our self-esteem or become some kind of self-help coach. Rather Jesus was pointing out how we, at the same time, participate and resist what God is doing in our world. Jesus wants us to see how sin, self-centeredness, pride, and greed tries to interfere with what God’s love might do. We are not merely good people who occasionally screw up or sinful folks beyond redemption. We are, instead, just as complicated as our communities and our world. We are a field within a field that sometimes loses where we are meant to go. Yet our God chooses to keep planting seeds within it all so that God’s kingdom can grow.
When compared to the other stories Jesus told, today’s parable isn’t that weird. But it does, I think, reveal something weird about us. When we map the different parts within this story to concrete things in our world, the connections we first make feel easy. The landowner is the One who plants seeds full of grace and truth while the field represents where these seeds take root. Those who serve the landowner have answered the call to tend the places where seeds grow and they recognize how difficult that tending can be. The reapers – those who collect the harvest – show how the world, as it currently is, isn’t the limit of what the world will be. God’s kingdom, made real in the life of Jesus, will become real so that pain, sorrow, and brokenness will be no more. Even without Jesus’ explanation, we can easily map Jesus’ words into our world. Yet when it comes to placing us within Jesus’ story, we don’t always get it right. Since Jesus talks about people, our first instinct is to identify ourselves as one of the people in the story too. We know we’re not the landowner nor do we, in our context, want to see ourselves as enslaved or as the evil one. What’s left, then, is the reapers which is a role were particularly drawn to. Deciding who is wheat and who is a weed is something we do, practically, everyday. And while we often use biblical images and quotes from scripture to justify the judgments we make, we rarely admit how we, ourselves, are full of those same weeds and wheat too. We are not called to excuse behaviors and actions that harm, demean, or demand others to be anything other than the beloved children of God they already are. But we are, I think, invited to wonder why it’s easier for us to reap rather than to patiently tend to the seeds God has already planted. This kind of wondering leads to difficult questions such as: what do we put our trust in? Are our values dominated by our need for comfort or do we work hard to cause discomfort in others? Do we choose to root ourselves in traditions that are merely a sanitized version of a past that never really existed? Or are we seeking a future full of change just for change’s sake? Do we want a kingdom where everyone’s story matches our own or do we prefer the world we’re used to rather than letting ourselves embrace what the world might become? When we spend time reflecting on these questions, we start to notice how we, at the same time, are both wheat and weed, saint and sinner. We are not perfect, we are fully whole, and we are not the hero in every story. Instead we are a people in need of grace, of love, and of a hope that does not depend solely on us. What we need, then, is Christmas – which is why Christmas came. We are not called to be reapers since that kind of judgment is reserved only for God. We can, though, give thanks that through baptism and faith, we have already been granted a seed of grace that will grow. When it seems as if the weeds are all around us or if the wheat within us is nowhere to be found, Jesus’ parable reminds us that there’s still a choice we get to make. Instead of practicing our judgment and doing our best to be the reaper God does not call us to be, we can choose to always make our best, most reverent, more loving guess no matter what comes our way. That does not mean that we’ll always be right or that our intentions should outweigh the impact of the choices we make. But it does keep us rooted in a love so big, so grand, and so weird that shows us how God’s story, our story, and the world’s story keeps going through the Crosses we often build.
Amen.