Weeds and Thistles

17 July 2020

 He told another story. “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn. When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up, too.

27 “The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it? Where did these thistles come from?’

28 “He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’

“The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the thistles?’

29-30 “He said, ‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat, too. Let them grow together until harvest time. Then I’ll instruct the harvesters to pull up the thistles and tie them in bundles for the fire, then gather the wheat and put it in the barn.’”

You’ve perhaps heard the saying that “a weed is any plant that is growing where you don’t want it to.”  Such as a rose bush in the middle of your cucumbers, while beautiful, can seem obtrusive and obnoxious. Many of us, perhaps most of us, like things orderly.  Rose bushes where rose bushes go. Cucumbers where cucumbers go. Then we get this parable this morning about weeds that intrude on wheat.

 I think on so many levels this parable strikes at the heart of our personal fears. How do I know if I am weeds or wheat?  What about the person sitting next to me at work, or in the store, or my next door neighbor or the person who thinks politically differently from me, are they weeds or wheat? We want to know who is in the correct place!

 There is a part of us also that like to think that we can discern between who is doing God’s good work and who is not, or we think that we already know, thank you very much. And it’s always the person who thinks differently from us, or what we might call “wrong” and so we don’t want to be around them.

 It would be very comforting and escapist for us to read this parable with the mindset that this is about some who are right and some are wrong. But we know that life and people are not that clear cut and relationships are hard and messy.

 We want or need to believe that God will punish those who deserve it, and if we follow all the rules perfectly, we will be gathered as wheat.

 But parables don’t work that way.  Jesus throws this parable alongside our daily lives to stop us in our tracks and wrestle with God for a while.

 Martin Luther struggled with this dualistic thinking of weeds and wheat.  Luther said that we are simultaneously weed and wheat – or in his words – saint and sinner.  Sometimes an action that can be saintly in one setting can turn around and be sinful in another setting.  And we don’t always know when we have done that.  No matter how we try we can’t quite hit the mark. 

And so there is a sense in which this parable – this story – is one of absolute grace, in which God takes time to sort out the weeds from the wheat in our own lives. 

And so we pray:  Lord God, you are incredibly patient.  When I see that which doesn’t belong I want to rip it out and throw it away – be done with it.  Yet you say to wait.  Let it grow.  I can sort it all out at the end. 

 Work in my life so that I am not so quick to decide what are the weeds, and what is the wheat.  Help me to trust that you will figure it out.  In your name we pray.  Amen.