Going into the Weeds
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 28:10-19a • Psalms 139 • Romans 8:12-25 • Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
Last week in our Gospel passage, we heard the familiar parable of the Sower, and I preached about God as the jovial, whirling Gardener, sowing seeds with reckless and joyous abandon.
This week, we are again out in the fields, but interestingly, this time our parable is all about the weeds.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been a bit confused about what is a weed and what is not. I mean, these supposed weeds all have fancy Latin names tucked away in their back pockets, right?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers this definition of a weed: it is
a plant that is not valued where it is growing and is usually of vigorous growth
Another definition that I came across went further:
weeds are random and accidental. They are wild plants growing where they are not wanted. They are considered useless, uncultivated, even noxious, and they crowd out plants we humans consider to be more desirable.
I am not someone who values tidy gardening, although I can appreciate tidiness in other people’s gardens. Our garden is more along the lines of a drought sensitive English cottage garden: a messy tumble of flowers, fragrance, and butterflies..
I love the Springtime when the Oxalis bursts out to fill the garden with yellow blossoms, quickly followed by the Forget-me-nots. I love being surprised through the summer with the self-spreading accomplishments of the Feverfew and the Lamb’s Ears as they find new cracks in the paving to set down roots. Such beauty! Such abundance!
You’ll be glad to hear that even I have my limits. There are certainly some plants that I do regard as noxious and do not want in our garden: Crabgrass is at the top of that list, having no redeeming qualities as far as I can see. If the Morning Glory would exert some self-control, I’d welcome those beautiful blossoms, but if it continues in its determination to asphyxiate my large Sue Ellen rose tree, I am going to continue to wage war on those fast moving, slippery runners.
Let us consider the sad story of Clover. Maybe you already know this, but prior to World War II, far from being a despised weed, to be instantly eliminated, Clover was considered an essential component in lawn seed mixes, It has a number of admirable qualities: it fixes nitrogen in the soil thus supporting a lush and beautiful lawn; it stays green all through the summer: it is small and compact with sweet flowers: it can sustain foot traffic; and it also crowds out less desirable broadleaf plants.
So what happened, you might ask. Well, the gardening and chemical companies decided to make money by waging war on broadleaf plants. Synthetic herbicides were developed that killed everything that wasn’t a grass, clover included. And so overnight, clover became classified as a weed that needed to be eliminated.
I don’t know about you, but it’s all starting to sound very judgmental. And we humans are very fond of our judgments. It has been a useful tool in our survival over the last 300, 000 years. Humans have needed to be able to separate out the life-supporting from the dangerous. However, I do think we have gone way too far in honing our judgement skills. It has led us and continues to lead us to make tragic mistakes: Tulsa 1921 springs immediately to mind.
Our parable for today has a field full of both wheat and weeds. What to do? Trample the wheat in order to pull out the weeds? By no means, says the householder, wait and let it be sorted out at the harvest. And so it will be at the end of the age, says Jesus. Let the angels do the sorting. This is not your job.
The subject may be agricultural, but, as with all parables, we’re knee deep in the field of metaphor.
Sorting out the wheat from the weeds is not our job. Simply put, we are not capable. The actions of humans in any kind of power have proved again and again that we are appallingly capable of making tragic errors. Time and time again groups of humans have decided any number of things about another group including that they are worthless, in the wrong place and doing the wrong things: and just like supposed weeds, that group needs to be eradicated.
And so it continues to go on, and will continue to do so until we all have grown further into our God-given possibilities. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans writes that
the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains
And that seems so true. This process of evolving is a slow and tortuous one, with so much pain and suffering, agony and injustice that it hardly seems bearable. And yet, we are making some progress. Those suffering have always been aware of the wrong-doing and now it seems that at least some of those watching are questioning and things may change.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus spent three years pulling out all the stops in his ministry of healing and teaching both to acknowledge our human limitations and to articulate the promise and hope of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God where love is the law, love is the bottom line. Where relationships with other humans, animals, plants, indeed the whole of creation, not just some, are characterized by love and mutual respect. Oh what a different world we would live in.
But, be in no doubt, the Kingdom of God has always both been with us and is to come; the evidence is all around. We can see it expressed through lives of saints, ancient and contemporary: I think this weekend of John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, may they rest in peace.
We can know the Kingdom of God when life-giving choices are made and lived into. We can know it in our loving relationships. We can know it in the extraordinary beauty of the world in which we live.
Let us leave any judging up to God, who, as our morning’s collect tells us, ‘alone can judge without vengeance or fear’. It goes on to pray that God:
free us from our desire to repay evil with evil,
root us in creation’s longing for freedom from oppression;
shape us by hope unseen for the victory of love;
through Jesus Christ, with whom we suffer and are glorified. Amen.