Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
This past early spring, when we were still waking up to frost on the ground and the rains had not come, I started sowing seeds. In tiny starter pots, I planted tomatoes, and bell peppers, basil and dill and chamomile and zinnias and sunflowers. In each little pot, I planted more seeds than could fit, just in case some weren’t successful. Through the gifts of good soil, good seeds, and a lot of luck, I ended up with way more seedlings than could fit in my army of starter pots. I had to do the thing I dread, which is thinning the seeds. The first few times I did this, I did what the master warns against in today’s parable. In my ignorance, I yanked out the extra seedlings, and in the process destroyed the good strong root systems of the plants I had hoped to eventually transplant into the earth. I learned, but in the process I sacrificed seeds, and good soil, and time. In my attempts to make room for my baby plants to flourish, I caused harm.
You see, when young plants grow up together in the same soil, they can seem perfectly spaced apart on the surface. But underneath, the roots can become intertwined, tangled into an inextricable network of precious tender growth. To uproot one young plant, even an unwanted or unhealthy one, can destroy or set back the entire crop. It is better to thin seedlings by waiting until the plants have grown large enough to recover from the damage of uprooting. As an inexperienced gardener, I had to start over with this wisdom, with the understanding that we cannot know what is going on beneath the surface, what harm we might do if we make choices based solely on outward appearances. Sometimes, we just have to be patient, and have faith.
Last week, Jesus told us a parable of a prodigal sower, who sowed seeds in all kinds of places without care for where they landed or what kind of harvest they had the potential to yield. By contrast, this week we have a careful sower, an experienced farmer who sows good seeds in healthy soil. This sower is wise, and patient, and knows that there is more happening in their fields than what is evident from the surface. But this sower has an enemy, and that enemy has interfered with the seedlings. As a preacher, I know this parable is probably describing a disgruntled neighbor or jealous relative. But as a gardener, I tend to imagine this weeds-planting enemy as a squirrel, or a strong wind, or the dreaded groundhog, the same forces that are always putting unwelcomed seeds in my garden beds and disturbing my potted plants. Whether the enemy was human or critter or force of nature, the weeds have been sown right alongside the wheat, and valuable space and resources are now being split between intended and unintended crops.
The folks who tend the fields on behalf of the sower are shocked and appalled by this turn of events, even going so far as to accuse the sower of planting shoddy seed. They offer to do what I myself would likely have done, what many of us would probably want to do if we saw such a mess in our gardens. They offer to do the weeding, to pull the unwanted plants straight out of the soil to make room for the grain to grow. The experienced sower, of course, knows what they do not, what I have only recently learned. There is too much at stake, too much risk of ruining the very thing they aimed to save, should they try to separate out the wheat from the weeds. They must wait, and let the two plants grow up together until the harvest, when they can be separated safely.
Oh it would get under my skin, looking out at my garden every day and watching weeds grow wild alongside my carefully sown and tended produce. The wise farmer clearly has more patience than I do. They are also much more resourceful than I am. I think I would have trashed those weeds out of sheer frustration come harvest-time, but the sower knows they will make good kindling to warm the family in the coming winter. See, even the weeds are not wasted. The nutrients and water they took up and the energy they stored will become fuel for the ovens into which the wheat will go in the form of bread. Even the unintended harvest will be appreciated, given purpose and meaning. The entire harvest will be transformed, weeds and all.
We as the Church do an awful lot of fretting about weeds. We tend to think we are experts in separating out the unwanted from the wanted, the useful from the waste. We can be downright ruthless, yanking out weeds and wheat alike in our attempts to keep our rows neat and tidy. We disrupt entire networks of delicate relationship and connection by deciding who belongs and who does not, what is wanted and what is unwelcomed, what gets watered and what gets pulled. We cause harm, simply by appointing ourselves reapers. We forget that there is only one Lord of the harvest, and he is not picky about where he sows the seeds. We forget that a weed is simply a plant, existing in the soil where it was planted, growing in the way it was created to grow and thrive. It is not for us to tell the difference, to make distinctions between who should and shouldn’t grow in the kingdom of God. We are not the sowers, or the harvesters. We are the soil. We are the seeds.
This parable grants us permission to release the stranglehold we have on our own ideas of judgment. It is our reminder that the ultimate word on righteousness belongs to Jesus, not us. It is our promise that the things that separate us from God and from one another will not have the final say. When we look at one another and see only wheat or weeds, useful or unwelcome, we are entirely missing the point. We are forgetting the growth and change that is taking place among the roots, and we are denying ourselves the hope of our future transformation. It is, thank God, not up to us. Judgment belongs to God alone. The rest is up to God’s timing. Our only job is to love one another as Jesus taught us, and to trust that God has sown only good seed. This is faith, and its the only way to grow.
Mother A Writes 