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| "weed circuit" by Martin Krzywinski, on Flickr |
Matthew 13:24-33, 36-43
[Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And 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?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let 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.’ ”
[Jesus] put before [the crowds] another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field;it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Then 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.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”
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On a long drive last week, I listened to an episode of a podcast in my queue that took an in-depth look at the shifting ecology of the Galápagos Islands - the way that these once-pristine ecosystems have been damaged and altered, and current efforts to restore and resurrect them.
If you remember Charles Darwin from science class and the fieldwork that he did in the Galápagos Islands, you might remember that these islands are particularly known for two animal groups: its tortoises and its finches. Both of these populations have been threatened in recent years.
A couple of decades ago, the tortoise population plummeted unexpectedly due to an unlikely invasive species that decimated the fertile, water-rich forests that had once provided the tortoises shelter, food, and water. The demise of the forests and the threat to the tortoises came at the hands of goats - yes, goats! Goats that had been brought to the islands by whalers and pirates in the 1800’s, which had surged to a population of more than 100,000 by the mid 1990’s.
In more recent years, the finch population of the islands has also seen rapid decline due to the introduction of another invasive species in the 1960’s - a parasitic nest fly that preys on baby finches in the nest. Some of the bleakest predictions say that the finch population could face extinction in as few as 80 years.
Scientists and conservationists have been hard at work to find solutions for these invasive species, and to restore the land and seas to their previous flourishing. It is hard work.
Because invasive species are just that: invasive. They come in. They take over. They crowd out and eat up what is native. They threaten the stability of the environment. When they grow out of control, they threaten the very existence of the ecosystem.
Jesus, in our gospel reading today, is talking about invasive species, isn’t he? There is wheat, there are weeds, and one threatens to overtake the other. One of those things should be there, the other has invaded its territory. Jesus is forthright about how this parable describes the co-existence of good and evil in the world. Jesus warns the disciples that the ecosystem of this world is fragile. Good and evil, their roots are all tangled. The healing of our world is not just as simple as us going around pulling up weeds, because good and evil are growing up on top of each other, in our world and in our own hearts.
Martin Luther made the astute observation that each of us is both sinner and saint, simultaneously. Remember a few weeks ago when Paul rambled on about “the good I want to do I cannot and the evil that I don’t want to do is what I do?” Sinner and saint. Broken and redeemed. Good and evil. We, and our world, are a mushed-up mix of all of it. And no matter how hard we try, we will never on our own succeed at detaching ourselves from evil or destroying its power over our world.
The good news, of course, is that God is both capable of pulling up evil by its roots and is trustworthy in his promise to do so. At the end of all things, God will judge the earth, which sounds scary, but is actually a great comfort to us. Because what we mean when we talk about God’s judgement is simply that God in Christ has defeated the eternal power of sin and death, and at the end of all things, God will uproot and stamp out every last tendril of evil and pain and brokenness for good. This promise of God’s judgement and triumph over evil comes to us over and over again in Matthew’s gospel, and is usually illustrated in images of growing and harvest, just like our parable today. Listen to how this theme develops:
John the Baptist sets up the theme in Matthew 3, when he says to the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism “You brood of vipers! Bear fruit worthy of repentance….Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire….One who is more powerful than I is coming after me [who] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Now there’s an intense introduction to Jesus’ ministry if ever I’ve heard one!
Then in Matthew 7, Jesus says “Beware of false prophets….You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.”
In Matthew 10, Jesus says to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.””
In Matthew 12 he says,“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers!”
Then last week in Matthew 13 we herd Jesus tell the parable of the sower, who cast seed in equal measure along the path, in rocky soil, in the thorns, and in good soil.
It is pretty clear that for Jesus, faith always bears fruit, which is something that Martin Luther also spent a lot of time talking about. And it is pretty clear in Matthew’s gospel that Jesus not only makes a clear distinction between good and evil, but also recognizes that the only way to triumph over evil is to chop it down, cut it out, and burn it - that is, to utterly destroy it, which is exactly what will be set in motion by Christ’s on death on the tree of the cross.
Then we get to today’s gospel, where Jesus uses the image of wheat and weeds to describe the world in which we live. In this parable, Jesus encourages his disciples to keep the faith and keep at the work of discipleship, and not to get distracted or sidetracked by the brokenness growing up around us. He tells us not to get discouraged by the persistence of greed, violence, despair, or injustice, despite our best efforts to be a force for God’s good in the world.
Jesus tells his followers to keep saying “yes” to God’s call to seek healing, hope, and liberation in the world, because God promises to be the one who will pull up evil by its roots. Our job is to persist with the good, knowing that good will outgrow evil, and that God in Christ will, at the end of the age, destroy evil once and for all.
But there’s something else going on in today’s gospel that is worth talking about. You noticed that when I read the gospel, I read some verses in the middle that had been cut out of the lectionary this week - short parables about the kingdom of God. In these parables, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a tiny mustard seed growing up into the greatest of all shrubs and he compares to yeast in enough quantity to leaven three measures of flour.
Let’s take care not to misunderstand what Jesus here.
Mustard is a fast-growing and quickly-spreading plant. In Bible times, it was never planted; it was always a wild plant, a weed. So the kingdom of God, Jesus says, is like a fast-growing, hard to control weed, that grows large enough for birds to nest in and whose roots grow firmly enough that it would be obnoxious and difficult to pull out.
And as for the yeast and the flour, three measures of flour is not like three cups of flour. The usual translation of a “measure” in the Greek comes out to something a little over a bushel of flour. So take three or so bushels of flour, add enough yeast to leaven it, and what do you have? Something like a scene from The Blob, I’d imagine. The kingdom of God is like a giant amount of yeast invading a giant amount of flour to come up with an uncontrolled, unnameable vat of bread dough.
I think that when we read the parable of the weeds and wheat, we like to think that the kingdom of God is the nice, orderly, well-planted wheat field that grows in a measured way, and minds its own business and does exactly what we expect it to do.
Because the truth is that the kingdom of God invades our world very much like the weeds that we are so quick to want to uproot. The kingdom of God gets under your skin. It grows like vines and wraps itself around our legs and our hearts and our minds. The kingdom of God is annoying, in its relentless pursuit of justice and humility and love for neighbors and enemies. The kingdom of God is insufferable in its insistence on things like grace and generosity. The kingdom of God takes root so deeply that no amount of digging can find and end to the hope and the mercy that flower along the vine, and no amount of pruning or chopping can keep the fruits of forgiveness and freedom from growing. The kingdom of God is wheat field filled with weeds; a place where we coexist with people and situations that we would be predisposed to think of as weeds and instead of trying to destroy them, we try to out-weed them with God’s love and mercy.
I know that our gospel reading today tries to be pretty clear that the good seed represents the children of the kingdom and that the weeds represent children of the evil one, but I also think that Jesus knows that we are pretty terrible about knowing the difference between wheat and weeds.
Early this summer, we were taking a look around our yard and noticed a weed growing by the house that looked to us a lot like poison ivy. We recognized the three-leaf pattern and started plotting how to pull it up. A week or so later, we noticed the same three-leaf plant growing and overtaking the garden beds by our front steps. We pulled some of it, but it was a losing battle. We felt annoyed. And defeated. Fast forward to a few weeks later, on a hot, humid day, when I happened to look over at the supposed poison ivy, and saw that it was growing clusters of berries. Not white, round berries, which is what poison ivy grows. But red and purple berries, clustered together. Berries that looked an awful lot like raspberries. It took a thirty-second search on Google Images to realize, with great embarrassment, that these invasive weeds that we had thought were itchy agents of peril were actually wild raspberries. Equally as invasive, but not nearly as evil. Sweet, even.
This is why Jesus tells his disciples not to be so quick to pull up the weeds, because the truth is that we aren’t always so good at telling the wheat from the weeds and vice-versa. Jesus instead calls us to be an invasive species for good in the world. Jesus calls us to be the weeds of the kingdom that grow up and steal the sunshine and the soil from whatever native evil exists in our world.
May the kingdom of God take root in your heart so deeply that you are bound and consumed by its goodness. May God cause you to bear good fruit in the world. May God grant you patience and persistence to live out your faith in the midst of the weeds, and to cling to the promise of harvest at the end of all things. And above all, may you find yourself so entangled with the love of God that you go from this place to be an invasive species of hope in the world.
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