Parables of the Kingdom: Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43

THERE’R WEEDS IN THE WHEAT!!!

 

When you have a field more riddled with weeds than with wheat, what do you do? Do you spray herbicide over the whole thing and reseed the field? 

            In 1942, Britain was being threatened by Nazi attacks and the threat of invasion. To strike back, the Brits came up with an idea for weaponizing anthrax and using it against German agriculture. The plan would have killed in such an indiscriminate manner that it would have lived up to its name: Operation Vegetarian. 

            Anthrax is an infectious disease that kills at a high rate. The British planned to drop anthrax-infested cattle cakes from bombers onto grazing cattle. The cows would eat the cakes and die while spreading the disease. This plan would wipe out the German food supply, kill many people, and starve the rest. Germans would be too scared to eat meat, thus the name “Operation Vegetarian.” How demoralizing! 

            The problem with this indiscriminate poisoning is that, yes it would kill Nazis, but it would also kill women, children, Christians, the elderly, and any number of non-Nazis. It was a desperate plan. It was a horrible plan. Even the island that the military tested this weapon on remained infected until 1990. Fortunately, Winston Churchill decided not to use the weapon.

            The question is: How do you respond to evil people?

            The Parable of the Weeds is a story Jesus told to illustrate how people who love God coexist with people who love the world. Many of us wonder how we are to respond to evil in our midst. We also want to know what God is doing about the wickedness of our generation. 

            Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God and announced that it had arrived in his very person. God’s kingdom has invaded this world and begun to move. But if the kingdom has already come, and Jesus is at the right hand of the Father reigning as king, why is there so much evil in the world? Why is evil allowed to exist? What is God’s plan for this world? That’s what the Parable of the Weeds seeks to answer.

 

What do we do with the weeds? (13:24-30)

 

Jesus tells a story about wheat and weeds. It’s very simple. A farmer goes out to sow seeds in his field and later that night his enemy sows weeds in the same field. Wheat and weeds grow up together. It takes a while to notice and when the servants do, it’s too late. If the servants pull the weeds, they will tear out the wheat as well. Leave them both, the farmer says.

            Notice how Jesus tells the story. “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man…” Hold on! You have to be careful in reading parables. Is the kingdom of heaven like a man? No, we read on, “…a man who sowed good seed…”But don’t stop there! It’s not just a man sowing seed in his field; there’s an enemy who comes and sows weeds in the field. Then there are servants who discuss the problem with the farmer/owner of the field. So, when Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” he means: the whole story I’m about to tell you. You must hear and understand the whole story. What Jesus is saying is: the kingdom of heaven is like two sowers, one who sows good seed in his field, and an enemy who comes along and sows weeds in the field. 

            By the way, this is a rotten thing to do, isn’t it? Sowing weeds in your neighbor’s wheatfield? 

            In Palestine, it actually happened. If you made an enemy of someone, one way they could make your life miserable is to sow weeds in your field. Roman law criminalized this practice, it was so common. 

            Weeds are a pain. At least we can identify dandelions; some weeds are sneaky and don’t look like weeds. These weeds in the parable were likely bearded darnel (like foxtail) and looked like wheat in its early stages. It grows at the same speed. It reaches the same height. If harvested together, it spoils the crop, making the harvest inedible. Only when it matures can you tell the difference. But by that point the roots of the good plants and the weeds have become intertwined. To pull one out is to pull the other. 

            This is why Jesus’ farmer tells his servants, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn,’”(30). Jesus is not concerned with proper agricultural practices; he is making a point. Just so you know, his audience would have been shocked at his instruction to let wheat and weeds grow together. But now he’s got their attention.

            What do we do with the weeds? Let them grow! 

 

Why it’s too soon to use Roundup (36-39)

 

Have you ever told someone a joke that the other person didn’t get? I was visiting with a group of low-German speaking youth in Paraguay who were laughing hysterically. I could tell it had something to do with cheese. I didn’t care. But one my teammates decided to translate the conversation for me. There were twenty sets of eyes staring at me waiting for my reaction. I gave a half-hearted chuckle and tried to disappear. 

            Jesus didn’t explain his parable to the large crowd. Try reading it without the explanation. If you read the explanation, you may to be tempted to forget the main point and focus on how those weedy people are going to get theirs on the day of judgment. We wonder less about what it means to be wheat among the weeds and more about that day when the roll is called up yonder and the weeds are finally burned. 

            When they left the crowds behind, the disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable to them (13:36). “Tell us the punchline of the joke.” There are seven elements in the parable:

The sower of the good seed is the Son of Man (Jesus). In the parable of the four soils, the sower is not identified. But now we know that these parables are about people’s responses to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of heaven. 

The field is the world. Not the church. We can safely say that there are weeds in the church, but the seeds are sown throughout the world. Spoiler: the seed is the gospel, and the gospel is for everyone, not just the people who get it. 

The good seed represents the children of the kingdom (sons and daughters). In the Parable of the Sower the seed was the Word of God, and it is powerful enough to change the world. Yet it is also oddly vulnerable in that it can be snatched away by birds, burned by the sun, and choked by thorns. Still, the kingdom is the single most powerful and important reality in the world. It is not flashy or always obvious. Apparently, God would rather work behind the scenes. He changes hearts in a quiet, gracious way rather than forcefully. The growth of this kingdom will extend throughout the world, but it will not exist in a pure state. The weeds will always be there.

The weeds are children of the evil one. And the enemy is the devil, a spiteful being who tries to spoil the good work of the Master and ruin his harvest. He is a spoiler. He is never constructive, but always destructive in his activities.   

The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels who will do the work of sorting out the wheat and the weeds. 

            Now if you take these elements “as” is you may miss the essence of the parable: let the wheat and weeds grow together. It requires discernment in this present age to weed out evil and this is not what Jesus called us to do. That’s why it’s too soon to pull out the Roundup and spray some weeds.

 

Lessons about “Roundup” and the Kingdom (40-43)

 

You may have guessed by now that the theme of this parable is judgment. A day of the Lord is coming when the children of the devil (those who chose to live for themselves and not for God) will be judged. What Jesus is telling us is that the task of judging does not belong to us.

            We may assume that we are more than qualified to start sorting out the weeds from the wheat. We know a weed when we see one. When we are in the presence of certain people, we can tell the good ones from the bad ones. We can tell who’s trying and we can tell when some are in outright rebellion before God. We judge by our customs, by our tradition, by our interpretation of Scripture…But Jesus is pleading with us, “I am asking you not to do this. You will never get it right. Leave the harvest to God.” 

            Our first lesson then is that it is hard for you and me to distinguish between those who are in the kingdom and those who are not. Would you have discerned that the woman at the well, a woman with five ex-husbands and a live-in lover was a candidate for the kingdom? Would you have guessed that a religious zealot who relished killing Christians would end up being an apostle to the Gentiles? Would you have ever imagined that a KKK white-supremacist and murderer (Thomas Tarrants) would one day pastor a multiracial church in Washington DC? Can you tell me who’s in and who’s out?

            We are taught then not to be quick with judgments. If the servants had their way, they would have torn out the weeds and probably damaged the wheat as well. Judgment has to wait for the day of the harvest. A woman may make a terrible decision, and then redeem herself by the grace of God by making the rest of her life a lovely offering to God. A man may live a seemingly devout Christian life and then throw it all away in sin. Who can see the big picture of a life but God? 

            The lesson is incomplete, however, if we fail to recognize that a day of judgment is coming. “Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all lawbreakers,” (40-41). We asked, “Why doesn’t God do something about evil the world?” He will do something. But the Lord is patient, as Peter said, “not wishing that any should perish,” but repent and believe in Jesus (2 Peter 3:9). 

            Judgment will come. We read about judgment in part in the book of Revelation where John records that, “…the city has no need of the sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of the Lord gives it light, and it’s lamp is the Lamb…But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life,” (Rev. 21:23-27). The city is a metaphor for the community of followers of Jesus who will live forever in the presence of God. This is the wheat. But there are no weeds. Men and women who reject Jesus as King of their lives and instead live in the passions of their sins will not live. They are the weeds that are burned up. 

            No one really wants to talk about the judgment. The unchurched don’t want to hear about it. Believers are uncomfortable bringing it up. It’s not a pleasant topic. I, for one, do not want to use it “scare the hell out of people” and into the kingdom, as was the practice of 20^th century crusades. We must focus on the love of God in Christ for men and women. But the truth is, people need to know there is judgment coming for living a life of hell. How we tell them is critical. Is it with vengeance or with sadness? 

            We also want to share with them the hope that we have. I believe that Jesus, in verse 43, took his cue from the book of Daniel where a beautiful picture of resurrection is expressed. Daniel wrote, “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever,” (12:2-3). 

 

As we read the Parable of the Weeds, we need to remember what Jesus intended for his audience. The parable is not about having all the wrongs that we have experienced paid for in swift justice. It’s not hoping for the Day of the Lord so that our enemies will get what’s coming to them. The parable is about “TODAY.” It’s about how we react and respond to the presence of weeds in our world. 

            If we consider the farmer in the parable, he seems to believe that the weeds won’t threaten the wheat as the two grow together. The real threat is how the wheat reacts to the weeds. The danger is not being in the presence of sin, but trying to root out all the sin we see. There are enough stories of churches excommunicating people to know that spiritual abuse comes easy to the so-called righteous. 

            The challenge of the parable of the weeds, the challenge to the church, is to resist reacting to sin in a manner that harms someone who is close to the kingdom. No, we do not turn a blind eye to sin. But neither should we respond with anger and rejection. 

            As Robert Farrar Capon points out, in verse 30 the master tells the servants just to “let things be” the Greek word used in this expression is the same word in the Lord’s Prayer for “forgiveness.” 

            Hmmm…forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us? That’s how we respond to weeds.

 

                                                AMEN