Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

8th Sunday after Pentecost | July 23, 2023 | St. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 | Ryan Mills |

²⁴[Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field;²⁵but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. ²⁷And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ ²⁸He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
 ³⁶Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” ³⁷He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; ³⁸the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, ³⁹and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, ⁴²and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!” (NRSV).

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

         The other day I was driving by a local business when I saw an amazing sight.  A man carrying a propane tank connected to a torch, making basically a small flamethrower.  And the man was walking around the parking lot, pausing at any stray grass or weeds popping up, and instead of bending down and picking them, grabbing them out by the roots, he just fired up the flamethrower and torched them until there was nothing left.  And I have to admit, I almost parked the car and asked if he wanted an unpaid intern for the day.  Because not only did it look pretty fun, there’s something very satisfying about getting rid of the things that bother us, of wiping our problems off the face of the earth, of seeing the imperfection of dandelions and ragweed, and with a little fire, leaving only smooth blacktop behind.

         Which is why today’s parable from Jesus is a troubling one—it’s not really gardening advice, it is not approved by your neighbors or the Home Depot Garden Center—but it’s a parable about life and what to do about the bad we find mixed in with the good, what to do about the evil mixed in with the holy, what to do about the bad weeds that grow among the good wheat, and how to live in this world that is complicated, and ambiguous, and full of shades of grey, especially within ourselves.

         Jesus says today that his Kingdom, the reality in which he reigns as King, is like a farmer who sowed good seed in a field, but while everyone was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds in their midst.  And when the wheat came up and began to grow these noxious, poisonous weeds appeared as well.  Jesus is probably talking here about a weed called Darnle that when it sprouts up looks just like wheat, like if your tomato plants and poison ivy looked exactly the same. In case we were politely denying it, Jesus is here reminding us that there is an enemy, an opponent of his Kingdom, the one we call the devil.  And into the middle of this world that God created good, into the middle of our precious lives, into the middle of the people we love, into the middle of our communities, into the middle of our churches, the Evil One comes and plants weeds.  We know this is true—on Long Island a mild-mannered architect by day turns out to be an evil killer by night.  Officers in our State sworn to protect and serve issue thousands of fake traffic tickets.  A local priest I was friends with was arrested for assaulting a female parishioner. In our country, the richest in the world, over 9 million children will go to bed hungry tonight. In all the parts of our lives we hold as most important—whether it’s our health, our country, our churches, our families, weeds sprout up seemingly out of nowhere. “Where did these come from?” we cry with the servants today. It seems that wherever God puts up a church, the devil puts up a chapel, and his congregation is bigger.

         And so I admire the servants in today’s parable who ask the farmer, ask the master, “If an enemy sowed these weeds, do you want us to go and gather them up?”  Will you send us out to pick some weeds!  Send us out with a hoe and shovel, or better some Roundup Spray, or even better some propane and a torch and we will clean house!  Lift high the Cross, and we will clean house!

         “Uh uh,” the Master says, “not so fast.” “For in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them…so let both of them grow together until the harvest.”

         The Farmer, the Master knows the famous story from our family, about my little sister who when she was in elementary school was given the chore one day to weed my mother’s prize flower patch one day—and back she came with a bucket filled with every last green and flowery thing ripped out of the ground, so that there was no weeds or flowers left, just empty black dirt.  As Martin Luther once said, “In this life, if you want no weeds you will end up with no wheat either.”  Because even in the church, life is a mixed bag, and all of us, truth be told, are a hybrid, a mix between good wheat and poisonous weeds—that’s what it means to be in bondage to sin—that stuff grows in us that we don’t want, that there’s no clean break between the good inside of us and the bad outside of us. The writer Dostoevsky once said that the line between good and evil goes through evil human heart, and that if we’re honest our motives are always mixed, that we live not by black or white but by shades of grey, that the weeds are not just out there, but also in here, and so when we start spraying the Roundup Weed Killer to get rid of others, when we light up the propane torch, we are liable to burn up and kill off ourselves too.

         So, the Master says, “Now let the weeds and wheat grow together until the harvest.” Let them grow together! What patience, what gentleness, what trust in the future, what incredible strength this Master has! That’s why he is God, and you and I are not.  Yes, there are consequences to our actions, yes, the law is there to correct wrongdoers, and we can’t stand idly by while innocents are harmed.  “But let them grow together until the harvest.” “But,” he continues, at the harvest I will tell the reapers, ‘Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

         There will be justice at the end, there will be a final accounting, there will be a sorting out and a making right, Jesus promises us, we confess it every week: He will come again to judge the living and the dead.  We can be patient in this life, we can have hope, we can live in confidence even when the weeds grow tall, because we are not the judge and jury of ourselves and our neighbors, but God is, so we leave it in God’s hands to sort out—we let God be God, and so we don’t have to be—and Jesus says he will hold accountable all those who trip others up, who destroy others, who drive others away from faith by their unloving living—he will sort, he will burn, he will gather, he will wipe away every tear from every eye. In this world of ambiguity and the mystery of the evil weeds, the only certainty is that God is God, and that his only absolute here and now absolution, is the forgiveness he offers us as we turn in faith to his Son Jesus Christ, the forgiveness given again to you today.

         And on that day, Christ promises, out of the midst of the weeds, He will gather the wheat to himself, he will gather up you into his arms, he will bring you safely home. But we’re not there yet, are we? As Romans 8 says today, “now we groan inwardly while we wait for adoption.”  Adoption—being gathered into the Arms of the Lord who has made us his own, who has not counted the weeds in our lives against us, but bore them on the Cross in our place, and out of his pure grace and mercy, has adopted us, he has adopted you to be his own child. Many years ago my cousin adopted a daughter from Haiti—and when she arrived there to meet her new daughter it turned out the girl had two other sisters, and so she ended up adopting all three together!  Today they’re all in college and doing great.  But there was a time after the courts had approved everything, but before the paperwork had gone through, that the three girls were officially my cousin’s children, but they were not yet with her, they were officially adopted, belonged to her, but still lived in Haiti, still fought for enough to eat in the orphanage.  Given up by their mother, hiding food under their mats on the dirt floor so that other children would not steal it—they knew what a world full of weeds looked like, and yet they also lived with the certain hope that they had already been adopted, that the time would come when they would be gathered into a loving parents’ arms,–but not yet–it was a hope they did not yet see, which Paul says today means it’s real hope. In our lives full of weeds, in our lives where hopes for things we can see fail us, this is our great hope: that despite ourselves we have been adopted by God our Father, that Christ has made us his own as both our Lord and brother, and that at the End, out of the midst of the weeds within and without, he will gather us safely into his arms.  For the same Lord, the same farmer who came down from heaven, into our mix of wheat and weeds, who bore the weeds of your life in his own body, who was capped with a crown of thorns, he will gather you and me and all who belong to him into his Everlasting Arms.  And we will know we are home, we will know we have been made good wheat, we will know we are his, forever.  That’s our promise, that’s our hope.  Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

          And the Peace of God which passes understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Ryan Mills

New Haven, Connecticut

Pastor@TrinityLutheranNH.org