Part Wheat, Part Weed

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A

Church of the Epiphany | Washington, DC

Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Jesus makes for a pretty lousy gardener.

Over and over, these agrarian metaphors show up throughout his parables. And time and again they come with advice that is just...not very good. It doesn’t take a certified green thumb to know weeds are bad. 

Weeds soak up more than their share of water, consume valuable nutrients, and then have the audacity to grow tall and cast shadows over everything around them! And without access to water, nutrients, and sunlight: all the other plants around weeds eventually wither away.

Weeds are needy and they have little regard for other plants. So, for anyone who wants a garden full of healthy plants, it’s necessary to first carefully cultivate good soil—and then to protect the conditions that allow things to grow and thrive. It’s important to root out all those selfish weeds, right? And don’t we know just exactly what or who the weeds are?

Well, maybe, but as our parable would suggest, maybe not… Perhaps something more is at work in this soil than we understand.

This parable refers specifically to “tares:” a type of weed commonly known as “false wheat” because it looks nearly identical; so much so that even a master gardener would have difficulty picking out the wheat from the weeds. But an overzealous gardener, intent on ripping out all the tares, might set out with great fervor. And in the process, as we are cautioned, they end up destroying much of what has been carefully grown for harvesting.

Evidently, there’s more to growing the type of produce Jesus has in mind…

Something more is going on under the surface of this soil. Which is just how a parable works.

A parable is not intended to be interpreted literally. And more than some easily applicable moral story, it aims to point toward a deeper spiritual truth. It would seem Jesus has an altogether different soil in mind than this householder’s garden.

What might Jesus’ parable mean for sharing life together with others? More specifically, I wonder what it suggests for the life of the Church…

At its best, the Church proclaims a vision of how we might live together in a way that allows for mutual flourishing. Then with this vision it gathers people together to practice that way of being so that each person's life truly blossoms.

We worship and pray and serve because over the process of doing so our lives begin to become more whole. A wonderful thing happens when we find a place to belong like this; it heals something deep in our souls. And in an age of ever-increasing isolation and loneliness, I think simply showing up to be church together is actually quite extraordinary.

All of us are searching for a place of belonging. It’s part of what it is to be human. And what a beautiful thing to discover a place to become more whole alongside others! But for those fortunate to find a place to belong, fears over how to protect it easily rise to the surface…

In the Church, those fears might sound like quiet wonderings: If we were to really practice the kind of radical welcome in Jesus’ gospel, what would happen? How would we change? Would I still get to belong? Is becoming that kind of Beloved Community worth the risk? Because if we don’t uphold some basic expectations and just anyone can claim to be a Christian disciple, how long will it take before we no longer recognize ourselves anymore as the Body of Christ?

All of these same stakes though might feel more urgent on the scale of our shared political life…

If a nation simply paid no mind to separating weeds from wheat, what might happen? What would become of a “proper society” if it abolished prisons and capital punishment? And if that nation no longer upheld some basic expectations to govern people and protect their freedoms, at what points will we no longer recognize it as a democracy?

We live in an age of mass incarceration. And this nation, in our efforts to separate so-called “good seed” from so-called “bad seed,” has championed caging persons like no other society in human history. We don’t need to look far to see the effect of all these fears we’ve named.

Much like the desire to belong, fear is natural. Fear even serves a necessary purpose. But living by fear is not freedom. And as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of these yet-to-be United States over this summer, our efforts to become “a more perfect union” might heed a lesson from this householder… Being frozen in fear evidently doesn’t yield a very good crop.

But fear is not all that’s at work. There’s always more happening in this soil of ours. Because in our parable as in the whole of his ministry: Jesus aims to set free.

Alongside what this means for community though, I also wonder what this kind of freedom might mean for us individually. What it might mean for my own life…

Don’t we all want to be “good seed?” Don’t we all want the internal truth of ourselves to be well cared for places of creation, growth and beauty? For our lives to yield a harvest of freedom? 

Speaking for myself, this doesn’t always quite look the way I’d like it to…

Anytime I’m preoccupied with proving I’m one of the “good seeds,” perhaps to others or to myself, it’s all-too-easy to tear through my life in search of false wheat. To find and uproot parts of myself I wish were different, to weed out the things or people I’m uncomfortable with, to expel from the garden all the embarrassing, shameful parts of my story.

It’s that same old fear resurfacing again. And though it may be a natural impulse it is destructive. Living like this is exhausting, and it surely doesn’t look anything like freedom.

A spiritual life offers a different path. And so often its wisdom defies conventional logic.

We are all part wheat and part weed. It’s all growing together in an unfolding process of becoming. And when we learn to make space for the whole of ourselves, whatever we’ve called “good” whatever we’ve called “bad,” it is then we will begin to know the freedom Jesus desires.

Now, I don’t mean to suggest we ought to let go of all principles and practices, throw up our hands and hope for the best. This is not what Jesus teaches, either. But whether it is in our personal lives or in our society, flourishing doesn’t come by force—by aggressive or even violent weeding. Because just as no part of ourselves is beyond being lovable, no person is disposable.

Learning to let things grow together—while at the same time trusting the long, slow work of God in all of it—is far from an easy or a soft practice. 

This counterintuitive belief is actually far more demanding. Because whether it be cultivating a discipline of embracing ourselves with tenderness, or building radical belonging in our communities, or imagining a world beyond punitive measures: resisting the urge to weed with reckless abandon is about practicing a robust, courageous faith. 

It is about orienting oneself to a belief that the harvest indeed will come.

Now, a few final words on that “harvest”—because there are some troubling parts to our gospel lesson, too.

Jesus’ parable is not shy about the reality of evil. It names the presence of sinful actions in the world. And so too, I think, should we: because there is simply too much harm and destruction around us to pretend otherwise. 

But with a similar boldness, we also hear of a “furnace of fire,” and might even tremble at its mention.

For this let me suggest we might say, with humble faith, thanks be to God! These words bring great hope to any who suffer evildoing. Because there will come a time at the “end of the age” when all causes of evil will be consumed by fire—and that day will not look the way many have learned it to be.

As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin prays, 

“You have told me, O God, to believe in hell. But you have forbidden me to hold with absolute certainty that any single [person] is damned.” 

Jesus’ parables and ministry always aim to spark our imagination toward a new way of being and new possibilities. for  our own lives, for the church, and for this nation. 

Any of the things, or people, we have identified as nothing more than merely disposable weeds may in fact be the very wheat that God intends to harvest for goodness. For as it is in all spiritual matters: all things are held and refined and made new at the hand of a loving God. That’s just the kind of gardener God is.

And this, Jesus’ gospel proclaims, is what the Kingdom of Heaven looks like.

Amem