Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Weeds among the Wheat” Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Christians have an image problem. 87% of young people (aged 16-29) say that we are judgmental. 85% believe that we are hypocrites. A survey undertaken last year, “Jesus in America,” determined that while Christians describe themselves as giving, compassionate, loving, respectful, and friendly, non-Christians disagree. They say we are hypocritical, judgmental, self-righteous, and arrogant.
While it is tempting to blame those sentiments on the latest televangelist scandal, I suspect that there are hurtful and hateful everyday experiences behind those conclusions. Like the neighbor who insists we’ll burn in Hell if Jesus isn’t our Lord and savior. Like the working woman who was told that Jesus says her rightful place is in the home. Like the kid with the blue hair, tattoo, and the nose ring who is called an abomination. There is nothing like the self-righteous judgment of others to make us feel unwelcome and unworthy.
In today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus shares a parable of judgment that draws upon everyday agricultural images that would have been familiar to his listeners. Jesus described a problem with a wealthy landowner’s field. An enemy had sown weeds amid the wheat. This weed, darnel, sure looked a lot like wheat, but it bore dark seeds that, if ingested, could cause hallucinations, torpor, and even death. The darnel was typically weeded, but this crazy landowner surprised his fieldworkers by instructing them to allow the weeds to grow. At harvest time, everything would get sorted out – weeds bound into bundles and burned, wheat gathered into the barn.
Later, as Jesus explained his confusing story to his friends, they learned that it is an allegory. The darnel represents sinners and evil doers. The disciples are the field hands. Jesus is both the landowner and the judge who, with the help of the heavenly host, will sort it all out on Judgment Day. As an agricultural practice, Jesus’ parable doesn’t make sense. What landowner would allow weeds to multiply in his fields? The absurdity of this is heightened because while wheat becomes the bread of life, the darnel may be the kiss of death. No wonder Jesus’s friends needed a private explanation.
Behind Jesus’ agricultural parable was a world of judgment. Insiders, like the scribes and Pharisees scrupulously observed the requirements of the Torah and then condemned outsiders, like sinners, tax collectors, the sick, demoniacs, the disabled, and foreigners. They labeled them unholy, separated from God, and best to be avoided. Jesus was an outsider. After all, he sought out sinners and was labeled a glutton and drunkard. The disciples were outsiders, too. They had the bad sense to follow Jesus, they ate with unwashed hands, and they gleaned wheat on the sabbath. Given the dualistic reality of this first century world, Jesus’ parable is an instruction to suspend judgment. Labeling people as “weeds” or sinners denies their full humanity and ignores the image of God that they bear. Judgment creates a harsh world of us and them, insiders and outsiders.
Don’t judge. It all sounds good on paper, but living in a morally complex and sometimes ambiguous world isn’t easy. We like things to be black and white, right and wrong. Come on, Jesus. Do you really expect us to not judge the brother-in-law who cheats on our sister? How about the addict who betrays her parent’s trust and robs them blind? And then there is the neighbor who is so sweet to our face but slanders us with malicious gossip behind our back. Don’t even get us started on the teacher who shames and belittles our child. Can’t we just let justice roll down like mighty waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream? It feels pretty good to judge and holding off on the weeding feels like we are enabling deeply sinful people in some very bad behaviors. That can’t be right. Can it?
I think it wasn’t any easier for Jesus than it is for us. The Lord had harsh words for pious insiders who exploited their religious standing to lord it over others. He called scribes and Pharisees whitewashed tombs and hypocrites. Yet Jesus also knew that even the most loyal and trusted of friends could speak for the devil. Just ask Peter, who earned the name Satan for trying to talk Jesus out of the cross. This world isn’t black and white. It’s more one big mixed bag in which we can sometimes be wheaty and sometimes be weedy.
Instead of judging enemies, Jesus reminded his followers that God causes the sun to rise on the good and evil alike (5:45). He taught that enemies are to be loved and prayed for (5:43-44). Even a thief, condemned by this world to death on a cross, could find his way to paradise with Jesus’s help. The bad thing about judgment is that it makes any sort of meaningful relationship virtually impossible. Just ask those sinners and tax collectors who would always be alienated outsiders in a world run by Pharisees. Just ask those 87% of young people who think we are judgmental. Over and against judgment, the willingness to love, to listen, to break bread, to be in relationship, makes change possible.
This is the hard stuff, my friends. The choice to love instead of judge confronts us with our hurt and vulnerability, our moral outrage. In the wealthy landowner’s field, in our Father’s world, there are weeds among the wheat. When we face that fact head on and learn to live with the love and mercy of Jesus, we grow, and we hold out to others the possibility for growth and change.
Many of us are familiar with the story of Cornelia Arnolda Johanna ten Boom. Corrie’s memoir The Hiding Place tells the story of her efforts to shelter Jews from the Nazis during the occupation of Holland in World War II. Corrie was ultimately arrested and sent with her sister Betsie to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, a women’s work camp in Germany. There the sisters encouraged others with prayer and worship after the long, hard days of work, using a Bible that they had smuggled into the camp. Betsie died in Ravensbrück from disease and starvation. Twelve days later, Corrie was released, thanks to a clerical error, right before all the women of her age group were gassed. It’s an inspiring and well-known story of love and mercy amid the world’s overwhelming evil.
We are less familiar with a later story that Corrie told in 1972. It took place after the war as Corrie spoke at a local church in Munich. After her presentation, she spotted him, standing in the back, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat with a brown felt hat clutched in his hands. Corrie wrote, “It came back with a rush: the huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, the shame of walking naked past this man. I could see my sister’s frail form ahead of me, ribs sharp beneath the parchment skin.” He had been a guard at Ravensbrück, where Betsie had died. If anyone deserved her judgment, this man did.
Perhaps we can imagine how Corrie felt when this man approached her, asking for her forgiveness. It was impossible. She pondered what Jesus had said about mercy and woodenly stuck out her hand to shake, knowing it was what the Lord required of her. As she did, something remarkable happened. In Corrie’s own words, “The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes. For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”
We are never so near to the Lord as we are when we follow him in the way of love and mercy for this sinful and broken world, for these sinful and broken people, for these “evil ones” who sow hate, do harm, and seem to bear little consequence for their bad, bad behavior. God is there in the clasped hand and the willingness to do, for Jesus’s sake, what we cannot do for ourselves. Sinner and saint are so deeply entangled by the circumstances of our daily living. We can work one another terrible harm, yet in the choice to forego judgment, in the choice for grace, there is the abundance of God’s love and the possibility for change.
Undoubtedly this week there will be the temptation to judge. A loved one will make some poor decisions, and we’ll just know that the consequences will not be good. We’ll catch a colleague cutting ethical corners. Another indictment will be handed down. There will always be weeds among the wheat, my friends. May the love and mercy we practice create the graced space where change happens. And if we are very, very diligent, we may even begin to change people’s opinions, like that 87% of young adults who say we are judgmental.
Resources:
Corrie ten Boom. “Corrie ten Boom on Forgiveness” in Guideposts, 1972. Accessed online at https://guideposts.org/positive-living/guideposts-classics-corrie-ten-boom-forgiveness/
Adelle M. Banks. “Study Views Christians as Judgmental” in The Oklahoman, Oct. 27, 2007. Accessed online at oklahoman.com.
Ipsos. “Episcopal Church Jesus in America Public Poll” in Ipsos News and Events, March 10, 2022. Accessed online at https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/episcopal-church-jesus-america-public-poll
Warren Carter. “Commentary on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43” in Preaching This Week, July 20, 2014. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.
Holly Hearon. “Commentary on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43” in Preaching This Week, July 19, 2020. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.
John T. Carroll. “Commentary on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43” in Preaching This Week, July 23, 2023. Accessed online at workingpreacher.org.
Carey Nieuwhof. “5 Ways Judgmental Christians Are Killing Your Church,” in Carey Nieuwhof Blog. Accessed online at careynieuwhof.com.
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
24He put before them 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!
Joann White 