Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
24 He put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 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?' 28 He answered, "An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, "Then do you want us to go and gather them?' 29 But he replied, "No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 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.' "
36 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." 37 He answered, "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
Shortly after my grandma died, my uncle (who lived in the house with Grandma) began to make more than a few changes around Grandma’s house. Now, to be fair, it was his right to do with it whatever he wanted; he had bought out my dad and my two aunts and chose to live in the house. He painted the walls, changed the floors, replaced some old fixtures, and a few other things that frankly needed to be done inside the house. I didn’t care to much about that sort of stuff, but what got me was when he started messing with things in the yard.
You see, Grandma was sort of proud of her yard—not so much the grass or the pecan and Catawba trees that lined the short, gravel driveway. No, Grandma was proud of her flower bed that ran along the front of the house and curled along its side (even though the side of the house was barely visible). I spent many spring and summer afternoons walking with Grandma in the front yard talking and looking at those flowers (she was almost always barefoot). She would tell me what each one was called: there were bright orange, spotted tiger lilies, long, wispy, red spider lilies, a sprawling, thorny red rose bush, angel trumpets, giant, blue hydrangeas that were around six feet tall, and anchoring the whole bed on the corner (seemingly tethering the entire house to the very earth itself) was an enormous camellia tree, with its thick-petaled pink flowers and buds that made perfect slingshot ammunition. Grandma loved those flowers, and so did I.
I came home one holiday after Grandma had died to find that my uncle had cut down all the lilies, pulled up the rose bush and the hydrangeas, and taken a chainsaw to that stately camellia. What was more, I found out he had sprayed the entire bed with Round-Up to be sure he killed it all. When I asked him why he did it, why he had destroyed Grandma’s flower bed, which had produced those lovely flowers just a few months before, he said, “Christopher [my family tends to call me that], that flower bed had been eat-up with weeds for years. There were vines growing up the side of the house, crab grass all in the bed, and I even think I saw some poison ivy when I was running the mower over it. It was just easier to cut and kill it all than fool with trying to weed it.” He told me, “Your grandma never tried to pull the weeds out or keep the grass from growing in the flower bed, so it was eat-up with weeds.” It’s funny, though, I never noticed the weeds.
I suppose that comes with age, with experience, with the ebb and flow of seasons; I suppose one begins to notice the weeds when one grows bored with the beauty of the flowers, when one takes for granted the seasonal blooms and regular fragrance they provide. You know, it seems to me we are living in an age when a lot more folks notice the weeds: we turn on the television just to hear of another homicide, another unarmed, black man shot by white police or an unarmed white woman shot by a Muslim officer; we hear stories about politicians possibly colluding with foreign governments or hiding emails on private servers; we read stories in the paper about another bombing, another story about senseless lawsuits, another letter to the editor about the writer’s hatred for this or that issue. We’re bombarded with images and posts on social media of how the world’s just one step away from going to hell in a handbasket, how you had better buy gold, guns, ammo, and doomsday buckets from the likes of Jim Bakker (yes, that Jim Bakker), how the very fabric of humanity is coming unwound, and the sad truth is so many of us read those stories and believe them! Perhaps we’re a bit focused on the weeds too…
You see, it would be easy to point my finger at the media and say it’s their fault. It’s their fault; they’re always showing us bad news, telling us all the horrible stories of the day. But friends, they wouldn’t air it if we didn’t want it! Like the workers in Jesus parable, the wheat, the fruit, the flowers are growing all around us, yet all we seem to see are the weeds! We see the weeds growing in the world and give them our time and attention in the media, yes, but we also seem to strive so hard to see the weeds in one another—don’t we? It’s awful, to think that there are those who give of themselves, who take the risk, who put themselves out there, only to have someone point out their flaws, their sins, their scars, their “weeds,” to accuse them of not living up to their standards of what it takes to be worthy of growth in the garden, to judge entire groups of people by pointing to the rare exceptions that burn up the airwaves and take all the ink on the page as if we have some firsthand knowledge—it’s what we do! We can’t take our eyes off the weeds!
I’m beginning to think that this parable before us is Jesus’ way of showing us our obsession, of peeling back the layers to reveal to us our needless concern for the weeds of this world when we’ve been called to grow as the wheat of God’s harvest, to notice the good things God is growing in our very midst!
I’m not entirely sure why we’re so obsessed with pulling the weeds of this world, why we’re so overcome with the thought that it’s somehow up to us to call attention to all of the problems we believe are facing our culture, country, and world (while simultaneously doing very little, if anything, to correct our perceived problems). Maybe it’s easier to just pull weeds than tend to the wheat. Maybe it’s easier to tell the Master about all the bad things we see and hear than to get our hands dirty in cultivating goodness in the world. I know I think it’s easier. Seriously, it’s a whole lot easier for me to see someone as a criminal than to ask what’s driven them to commit a crime. Really, it’s a whole lot easier for me to ignore the beggar on the side of the road than to ask how I might actually get involved in making his life wholly better. I suppose when it gets right down to it, pulling weeds is a whole lot easier than trying to get something to grow out of the dirt of this world. Perhaps that’s why we give in so easily to looking for the weeds while we miss the wheat, why we are so easily distracted by bad news and so quick to brush off good news as “puff pieces” of journalism.
Maybe that’s why so many Christians (in America anyway) are so easily caught up in this notion that the world is going to end soon (a notion that at least one movement in every generation has had since the disciples witnessed Jesus ascend to heaven!). Maybe that’s why so many Christians want to believe that the world is getting worse, that the weeds are taking over, and the master is coming to send his angels to pull all the weeds out by the root and throw them into hell. But did you notice, nowhere in the parable does Jesus say the weeds overcome the wheat? Not once does Jesus say the weeds in this eschatological field take over and are unruly to the point of outside, divine intervention. The weeds are there, yes, but so is the wheat! And the wheat is plentiful enough to harvest! The wheat is hidden among the weeds; it’s clearly there, in abundance! So why only focus on the weeds?!
What if everyone of us in this room this morning decided today to give our attention to the good God is doing in the world (to the “wheat”) rather than the bad we’ve been led to believe is so rampant (the “weeds”)? What if we choose to see the good in each other—the good in all people—rather than the worst? What if we let go of the lie that the world is going to hell and take hold of the reality that this world and everything in it belongs to God and God has called us to be about the working of setting things right? What would happen? I tell you what, I’ll start, and I’ll start by telling you about the wheat growing among the weeds we so regularly see.
You see, it’s so easy to believe things are so bad, that the world is overrun with weeds, when that’s all you’re ever told, and that makes it hard to believe that the world is actually—get this—getting better. It’s true! In the last thirty years the number of people in the world living in “extreme poverty” (that is, those who are living on less than $1.25/day) has decreased from 53% to 17%--that’s huge! I bet the weeds have also distracted you from knowing that child labor has declined by 50% globally in the last sixteen years: that’s an extremely important number, because it means that more children in this world have the chance to be children, to go to school, to live longer, fuller lives—look at the wheat in the field! Did you know that global infant mortality has declined worldwide by 50% in the last 25 years? That’s the result of better medical practices and greater access to prenatal and maternal care for mothers across the globe!
Now, I’m not some “pie-in-the-sky” optimist, denying the troubles of this world simply because a few things have gotten better, but I think it’s terribly important that those of us who call ourselves Christians not get swept up in the lie that everything is horrible, that there are forces in the world trying to make your life worse—that’s a perceived reality that’s caused by a narrow view of God’s world! It’s that sort of thinking that leads us to believe things that just aren’t true—we start thinking the weeds are taking over! It’s that sort of thinking that causes us to believe that there are more people than ever “out there” who want to hurt us, when things like violent crime have consistently been on the decline in this country for the last 50 years: dropping from about 50 out of every 1,000 people experiencing a violent crime to about 15 out of every 1,000. When we only look for the weeds, we see a rash of pregnant teenage mothers, but the truth is that teen pregnancy is at an all-time low, which means that more girls are finishing high school, going to college, joining the work force or the military, and contributing to society in ways they may not have been able to a generation or more ago.
While there are those who try to tell us the sky is falling and the weeds are taking over the field, people are more educated now than ever, more people have access to clean drinking water now than ever, more people in the world can read now than ever, more girls have access to education now than ever, diseases that once meant certain death are easily treated or vaccinated, saving countless lives that would have otherwise been lost, and while we may give into the notion that the world is a more violent, war-torn place now than ever, the truth is that deaths caused by combat are the lowest they’ve been in a century[1]. The weeds don’t stand a chance!
Are there troubles in this world? Absolutely. Are we called to make a difference, to strive to bring about justice and peace in this world? Of course we are! But if we allow ourselves to only see the weeds, to give in to the notion that everything is awful and there’s no hope left for the world, then what does that say about the gospel we claim and the God we worship? I want to challenge you this day to begin looking for the wheat in God’s field, to take the time to recognize the flowers blooming in God’s garden, to not be overtaken by what the evil one seeks to sow in this world. Don’t give all your energy to trying to pull weeds; remember it’s the Lord’s field in the first place, and God has called you to grow and to cultivate the good you see around you and throughout the world. Amen.
[1] All of these statistics can be found here (accessed 7/22/2017): https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/"Pullin
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