Weeds and Wheat
Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43
July 17, 2011
St. Stephen Presbyterian Church
Fort Worth, TX
Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch, Preacher
Some of you may remember a sermon I did a few years ago about the problem of Trumpet Vines growing in our yard and garden, and our quest to get rid of them permanently. I tried many things, a large number of which you all suggested. And guess what:
They’re ba-ack.
And they’ll keep coming back. There’s a point where if I get focused on killing the weeds, I run the risk of killing the good stuff as well. The rain that isn’t falling is as bad for the flowers and grass as it is for the weeds; the sun that is killing the weeds is killing the good plants even faster. The water sprinkler I run to water the flowers and grass is watering the weeds, too. The poison I apply to the weeds may get into the good plants, too. The sun shines on good and bad alike, Jesus taught; and the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Such is life. Not to say that weeding is pointless—just that the risk is that you may destroy the good with the bad.
The landowner in Jesus’ parable is in the difficult situation of not being able to separate the bad without risking destroying the good. Tares are climbing plants that apparently wind themselves around the other plants in the field. Until the day of the harvest, you can’t really separate them without uprooting and killing the wheat.
In a lot of ways, this parable is not about bad people—it’s about how the bad intertwines itself with the good in our world and in our lives. And actually it’s a word of hope about that. Because we all know how the bad is intertwined with the good in our lives. Deep down we’re troubled: will the bad choke out the good? Will it drown out the good things that God is doing in our hearts? And the good news is that, on the Day of Judgment, God’s angels will not judge us by the bad sides of our lives, but separate them out and then take only the good sides of us, so that we who are imperfect in this life will be at last perfected in heaven.
It reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson:
Not that We did, shall be the test
When Act and Will are done
But what Our Lord infers We would
Had We diviner been—
Part of God’s redemptive work is to separate out the inevitable weeds and vines to reveal the person we’d have been “had we diviner been—.” It is that “diviner” person, shorn of weeds, who is redeemed into eternity with our Lord.
Until then, part of the problem is that the plants haven’t ripened yet. We haven’t matured. The wheat and the weeds have so intertwined that sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which. We can’t just separate the good from the bad so easily in human life. That doesn’t mean you can’t cultivate being more “wheatlike”—but sometimes you can’t kill the weeds without risking the garden, too.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “The Birthmark” tells the story of a scientist who falls in love with a beautiful woman whose only flaw, if it is a flaw, is a birthmark on her face. He become obsessed with removing it, but as he cuts, he discovers it is deeper than he thought—so deep, in fact, that it is part of her soul, her personality, her character; and ultimately in removing it he kills her. That’s a representation of the human predicament. We can’t so easily separate the wheat from the tares. Sometimes it’s hard even to tell the difference. And then, when we do, how much does that which is unpleasant, or flawed about us, also shape us, make us who we are?
This is a message that would have been particularly unpleasant to many of Jesus’ critics, who thought it was very easy, through laws and rules and regulations about right and wrong and clean and unclean, to completely rid yourself of the weeds and only be beautiful, luscious wheat. No. No matter how “wheaty” you are, you’re still “viney,” too. Only God can sort it out. This is a call to humility. We aren’t in a position to judge others.
So whether, we like it or not, until God’s harvest takes place, we have to live in a world where good and evil coexist. That’s not always pleasant—as Paul says, creation itself is living under a curse, crying and groaning until the day when the children of light will be revealed. It’s a world of imperfections, a garden plagued by weeds, a field of wheat that’s been sown with tares.
But it is STILL a garden. It is still a field of wheat. And it is still, furthermore, the Lord’s garden. It is the Lord’s field of wheat. That is, ultimately, good. God will sort out the good and the bad. We’ve heard the awful movie hero joke, “Kill everybody and let God sort ‘em out!” But the point of this parable is the opposite: Let everybody live, and let God sort ‘em out. It’s not up to us to separate out the wheat from the tares. It’s up to God.
What God sees is not who we are now, but who we are becoming. God sees who we would be if we were, as Dickinson says, “diviner.” God sees the big picture, about others, about the world, about each of us, in a way that we cannot. Ultimately it is God, who sees into the heart, and determines whether a blade of wheat is good, or whether it is so overwhelmed by tares that it needs to be thrown in the fire. We don’t decide that—including about ourselves. We may think we’re great, but God may not be so pleased. Likewise, we might think we’re lower than low, but in God’s eyes we’re the best wheat God has ever seen. It’s not up to us—it’s up to God, and thank God for it.
But it’s worth noting that just as weeds can overcome good plants, so can good plants, with proper gardening, overwhelm the bad. In fact, that’s the good news of this parable: ultimately it’s not the tares that win, it’s the wheat. I remember when I first became a Christian as a teen, I was warned not to hang out with the “bad” kids because they could “corrupt” me. But from early on, that felt wrong to me. Wasn’t God more powerful than anything that could quote corrupt unquote me? Wasn’t it possible that by hanging out with the “bad” kids I might be a good influence on them?
It was risky, but it’s the kind of risk we don’t have much choice about in a world where good and bad are so intermingled that’s it’s hard to tell the black hats from the white hats, anyway. In the meantime, God cultivates us, the good and the bad together, and until we reach a point of maturity, not even the angels themselves can separate out the wheat from the weeds.
It’s worth noting that we’re baptizing a man today who is “mature”—someone who has been actually raised in the faith, attended and was active in Presbyterian churches for years, but only now, late in life, has chosen to be baptized. Only he can tell us what his story is, but one way to see this is that late in life he has come to a more profound understanding of the true meaning of baptism—that God’s grace is there to sustain us before we have a chance to respond, and that God’s love never ends no matter what the ups and downs of our lives may be. It is profound for us to recognize this at any time. Often we take it for granted, and the full meaning of baptism never sinks in. But here is someone whose baptism is an expression of gratitude for the way that God has been with him throughout all the years of his life. Apparently, he is aware that the grace of God has been stronger in his life than the inevitable vines that try to choke it out.
Perhaps, today, we’re seeing a moment when the distinction between the wheat and the tare is as clear as it can get.