A moment of reflection for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity

Read the reflection in full:

“Jesus said, ‘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.’” Matthew 13:24–25

Not for the first time, one of Jesus’ parables will cause a few agricultural eyebrows to raise. It is one thing for weeds to grow among the wheat. Every gardener in the world knows that weeds are a problem. But to specifically instruct your staff not to pull them up – as Jesus does here – is surely ridiculous. 

Two undesirable consequences follow. The wheat is choked by the weeds (as an earlier parable reminded us). And, second, the seed from weeds, once they flower, will guarantee another bumper crop of unwanted weeds next year. 

What is Jesus playing at when he says they should be left alone?

Okay, so it might be, as Jesus also suggests, that by pulling up the weeds you will pull up the wheat as well. Fair point. But many farmers seem to manage it. But even this doesn't quite take account of the slightly troubling, actual word Jesus uses in Vs 30 to ‘accept’ that they are growing up together and must, in Jesus' view in this story, stay that way until the harvest. 

The word translated here as ‘letting something be’ is translated in many other places in the New Testament as perhaps rather surprisingly ‘Forgive.’ 

And by the same word, I do mean exactly the same Greek word; the word translated forgive when, for instance, Jesus says to the soldiers who nail him to the cross, ‘Forgive them, Father. They don't know what they are doing.’

Is this what is going on in this strange little story?

The seeds have been sown - but we are told an enemy has come and sown weeds as well. 

The servants, of course, are concerned about this. 

They want to know where the weeds have come from. 

But the only answer they get is that an enemy has done this, i.e. someone who is opposed to our desire to grow the wheat, someone who is obstructing our best efforts, someone who is against us. ‘Let us pull up the weeds,’ the servant say, and Jesus responds, no, because you might pull up the wheat as well; much better to let them grow together until the harvest; or even, perhaps, here is the challenge of the story, forgive the weeds and leave – and now I have to introduce the concept which is the lens through which Jesus translates the parable a little bit further on, and the way in which we inevitably see it – leave judgement till later.

We do indeed live in a world where the weeds and the wheat grow up together. 

Sometimes, as is often the case with real weeds growing among real wheat, it is hard to tell them apart. 

Like the two houses in another of Jesus’ famous parables, before the judgement of the storm, the two houses appear identical. We cannot tell them apart. 

So it is with so much good and evil in the world. It is tangled together. Why, it is even tangled together in our own hearts. 

In our own lives the weeds and the wheat are alongside one another, twisted together in our muddled motives, muddles actions, and muddled predispositions.

Life would be much simpler if the devil really did dress in crimson, carry a toasting fork and sport a pair of horns. Or for that matter if angels always had wings.

But it is not like this. Until the harvest of that great day when we see the Lord face to face and give an account before the only one who is both merciful and just - and is therefore to only one who is able to separate wheat from weeds -  we not only have to do our best to live in the ways which God intended, ie keep growing the wheat, but we must also forgive.

First of all, this will mean recognising how much we need forgiveness ourselves. And learning to be penitent.

But it will I think letting go of the fantasy that we can know and judge these things ourselves. Judgement belongs to God. And only to God.

There is terrible evil in our world. We don't really understand why. And the consistent answer the Bible gives is actually what Jesus that says here. An enemy has done this. 

That which is opposed to what is good is always at work in the world - and in our hearts. This is a profound mystery. The mystery of the great goodness that we see in our world and cherish in each other. And the great iniquity that lives alongside it.

Put simply, there are no unqualified good people in the world. And no unqualified bad people either. As Robert Farrrar Capon has put it, “a truly dedicated campaign to get rid of evil in the world would have to mean the abolition of literally everyone!” 

Rather, we learn to forgive and we learn to be forgiven. 

Of course we pull up the weeds where we can, but not because we think this will take evil away nor mean that we can be the judge. 

But because we are learning to be like Jesus who saw the good and evil in the world and in us and said, ‘Let them both grow together – forgive them - until the harvest; and at the harvest tell the reapers, collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ Amen.