Year A Proper 11

Year A
Proper 11
Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43
Preached in New Albany, IN


Upon initial reading or hearing, this gospel sounds so straightforward. The parable itself doesn’t seem too hard to figure out on our own, but just in case, Jesus even explains it step by step. Clearly there are good people and there are bad people, there will be a final judgment and some will be in and others out. We’re sitting here in church on a Sunday morning, so obviously we’re in, we just have to wait it out. Oh how I would love for that to be the whole explanation. I must admit to you I am a rule following girl—give me a black and white world with a set of rules and I could really function well. But we all know this world isn’t a black and white world—and so we must look further into the parable and explore the parts that aren’t explained; the parts that muddy the water.
The weeds are obviously very important here, but the detail that we need to explore is the type of weed. While I would like to believe Jesus is saying don’t bother weeding your garden, it’s not so. These are a very specific type of weed which look exactly like wheat—today it is called darnel wheat and is very very difficult to tell apart from wheat. But the slaves quickly pick up on it—they recognize there is darnel wheat in the field. Keep in mind the slaves are not explained in Jesus’ interpretation. Who are they? They recognize there is darnel wheat, they can or they think they can differentiate it from the good wheat, but the householder tells them to leave it alone. Not only are they not to separate it now, but they are not even the ones who will separate it later. That will be the job of the reapers.
Suddenly, this world of the parable is not so black and white; what appeared to be complete clarity is fogging up. It’s beginning to look more like our world. A world where appearances are not absolute truths. A world where the good and the bad are interconnected and often difficult to separate. And yet we crave the simplicity of that separation; we want to put things, ideas and people into catagories into our lists of good and bad. We want to live in a world of us and them. Not only does that world exist outside of the doors of the church, but it also permeates within the very walls of the church. Within denominations and within individual churches there are differences. We struggle with diversity and wanting to have a definitive rule book for every situation—we want a guide book that says this is right behavior, belief, thought and this is wrong. And we want to be the slaves who make that decision—we want to uproot those things which we believe are bad, useless, worthless. And we don’t want to wait. And this is where we must pay attention to the parable. This is where we must wait because in our attempt at judgment; in our desire to uproot the evil, we risk damaging the good. Even with the best of intentions, and I do believe that most people do have good intentions. I believe that most people who fight and struggle over differences in belief are doing so from their own personal very strong faiths. But if we are so hasty to be right and to decide what and who is right, we run the very real danger of making mistakes. If in our differences within the church we divide and expel; then the whole congregation suffers, and when the church is damaged within, it cannot fulfill its mission to the world.
Pay close attention to what the householder says, “Let both of them grow together until the harvest;” Clearly the darnel wheat is not damaging the entire crop; the wheat will still come to fruition; the crop will still be a success. The seed will still be transformed into a useful piece of wheat despite the existence of the weeds. In the parable Jesus explains that the field is the world. We as a church exist within the world and in the world there is evil. We know that. That evil is not as easy to identify as we would like. I have four children and I would like nothing more than to be able to give them descriptions of evil—a person that looks like this is bad etc. We all know from the many criminal cases we have seen over the years, that some of the worst atrocities are done by the clean cut boy or girl next door. So if we can’t identify pure atrocious evil, what makes us think we can judge who is and who isn’t “right before God?”
I’d like to challenge a little bit deeper and I must admit this makes me very uncomfortable. But could it be there is a little bit of wheat and weed in each of us? Is there a line within each of us that is easy to cross and move from good to evil? Alexander Solzhenitsyn a Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian writes,
Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
We are all shocked and grief stricken when we hear of an infant dying from shaken baby syndrome, but can anyone identify with having to walk out of the room of a colicky baby you’ve been tending for hours at a time? Or do you possess the characteristic of being impatient—could that impatience be used to get things moving, to motivate, and could that impatience also be used to be pushy, to step on others? The roots cannot be separated—the weeds do not impede growth; growth, transformation occurs despite of the weeds in our lives and in the world.
It is not our job now or later to judge and separate the wheat and the weeds. It is not our job to judge and decide who is dispensable; what parts of ourselves are dispensible. This parable frees us from that responsibility; this parable reminds us that we are not God. God is transforming and will transform and God will remove the weeds in the world and in each of us.
In the meantime, we come to church as individuals with our weeds and wheat intertwined, we are a faith community of weeds and wheat in a world of weeds and wheat. And we come to the table bringing with us our weeds and wheat, we kneel next to others with their weeds and wheat, and we pray that together we are transformed so that we can move into the world being humble instruments of transformation.