Wheat or Weed?

Have you ever wondered how different Holy Scripture might be if Jesus had come to Sweden, say, rather than to Palestine? What sort of parables might Jesus have told to people in Sweden (or Maine) in the deepest, darkest, coldest part of winter? This morning’s parable about wheat and weeds strikes a very familiar chord this time of year here in Maine. I can identify with the people in the parable who discover weeds amid their crops, weeds that have sprung up literally overnight, despite every best effort by the gardener… weeds that threaten to choke out and overwhelm the good crops. The only thing missing to make the parable completely true to life is bugs—the little yellow and black striped ones that are eating my cucumber plants.

As I read Jesus’ words from Matthew this week, I thought that it is good to have this reading in the lectionary in July when these images are indeed powerful and real for us. Because the point of Jesus’ parables is to provide us with a world that we can truly enter into. They are meant to engage us experientially, not just intellectually. Which got me thinking about winter and Sweden or Maine. The Kingdom of heaven is like a lake frozen in winter, nurturing life within its depths, so that life may endure through harsh and bitter times… The Kingdom of heaven is like Mount Katahdin in winter, so awesome and majestic that even from afar it draws the soul to God… The Kingdom of heaven is like having a generator in the midst of the great ice storm… I don’t know, none of my winter parables seem quite right. Maybe that’s because they’re mine, not Jesus’.

So perhaps we’d best return to Jesus’ parable. Most Biblical scholars think that only the first part of this morning’s reading from Matthew comes from Jesus' own teaching. The parable itself is Jesus’; the interpretation (although put in Jesus’ mouth) is Matthew’s.

In the old King James Bible, this passage was known as the parable of the tares. For variety, listen to it now from the New Jerusalem Bible. "The kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everybody was asleep his enemy came, sowed darnel all among the wheat, and made off. When the new wheat sprouted and ripened, then the darnel appeared as well. The owner’s laborers went to him and said, ‘Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?’ He said to them, ‘Some enemy has done this.’ And the laborers said, ‘Do you want us to go and weed it out?" But he said, ‘No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up the wheat with it. Let them both grow till the harvest; and at harvest time I shall say to the reapers: First collect the darnel and tie it in bundles to be burnt, then gather the wheat into my barn.’"

Is this a world you know? Can you experientially enter into Jesus’ parable? With whom do you most identify in this parable? The farmer? The farmer finds himself in a world where his honest efforts to feed himself and others are thwarted completely beyond his control. No human farmer can stay awake 24 hours a day for the entire planting season to protect his fields; there is no realistic way he could have kept the weeds out of his field. And not just weeds that happen to spring up! Weeds deliberately planted. Weeds maliciously chosen to cause the most harm. Darnel is a noxious weed that looks and grows like wheat. It would indeed be impossible to separate them before the harvest. Do you live in a world that often seems to treat you as the farmer is treated? Where malicious, powerful evil seems to threaten your every best effort? If so, the parable does remind us that in the end evil will not triumph. God’s ultimate judgment will come.

Or do you empathize with the laborers? Those who are eager to promote righteousness right here, right now? It’s a common perspective, especially among leaders in the church. Surely, as Jesus’ disciples, we are called to weed out evil and nurture good. Nothing in the parable seems to discourage us from an effort to spread and nurture goodness. The question of fertilizing or watering the field doesn’t come up. As Jesus tells it, the laborers don't seem to consider how they might promote good.  But they and we are clearly warned against taking it upon ourselves to weed out the bad. The cost may be very high; the entire crop may be lost. And the job of weeding (at least within the church) is not really ours. The responsibility for judging or condemning others is not ours. It is God’s. And God will do it in God’s own way and God's own time.

Are we the farmer? The laborers? In Matthew’s interpretation of Jesus’ parable, those of us who people this world are the wheat and the weeds. We are not the people of the parable; we are the plants.  Each of us is a stalk of wheat or a stalk of darnel in the Lord’s field. What does that mean for you and me?

It’s humbling, for one thing. One stalk in a great field of grain.

It reminds us, too, that we live in a world where wheat and darnel grow side by side. Good and evil are real and present in our daily lives. Good and evil are around us in other people and in the chance occurrences of life. Good and evil will affect us and our lives in ways we cannot predict or control. And the potential for both good and evil lies within the heart and soul of each of us as well. We have the opportunity to be a stalk of wheat; we have the opportunity to be a stalk of darnel.

There are many ways we can respond to this world in which we live, this field of wheat and darnel that is our world. A person without faith might say that from the individual’s perspective there’s really no difference between wheat and darnel. They look the same. The rain falls on both; the sun shines on both; pest or drought equally affects both; both are obviously a part of the natural world. It doesn’t really matter whether we are wheat or darnel. We should just live each day as it comes.

Other people acknowledge that good and evil are not the same.  It matters whether we are good or evil and it is better to be good, but the way to be good is to establish their own definitions of what makes one plant a good crop versus what makes another plant a weed. If you can’t tell wheat from darnel just by looking, there must be other ways to distinguish them. I must be good because I come from a good family. Surely, I am wheat because I am spiritual. I am wheat because I believe I am a good person. I must be wheat because I am a gardener, an organic gardener. I am wheat because I belong to a church (at least I think I belong… I attend… Some of the time…).

There is a difference between wheat and darnel. The good seed, Matthew tells us, are the children of God’s kingdom. The darnel is planted by the evil one. There is indeed a difference.  But goodness is not ours to define however we choose; goodness is God’s to give. And if we choose to receive it, we’ll be all of those other things, too. Wheat and darnel may be difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, but the difference between them is the difference between following God and following evil. We live in a world where we have that choice.

It is not within our power to create good. It is not our responsibility to punish bad. But each of us has the choice to be a stalk of good wheat or to be a weed in this world. The Christian life is all about nurturing the good seed that God has planted within each of us. The Christian life is about the time that we are given on this earth to grow, to grow into good wheat. We are in the midst of the growing season. Maybe that’s why it is so hard to come up with winter parables for the kingdom of heaven. I am sure Jesus could have taught us things about God that I can’t begin to imagine using images of ice and snow, but the heart of this morning’s parable is growth. God says to us, grow! Grow into rich and fruitful grain. Grow.

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