May the words of my lips and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to You, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Well Northwood, it is good to be here with you again. After I received the invite from Rev. Scott, I wasn’t expecting to get the announcement Rev. Scott that he would be leaving Northwood and heading to Vernon. I am grateful for his introduction to Northwood, but especially grateful for the continued support of you all and to be with you today and will be again in September.
Now this is a Gospel passage that I both love and let’s just say not so much love. It is a passage that has brought comfort and fear, understanding and confusion, hope and despair, and all those other responses that come when scripture is used to both unite and divide and to raise up and condemn.
Jesus offers these words through a parable, and so we need to cast our imaginations to a place that may be just out of reach of understanding and yet invites a certain knowing through the One whom we continue to grow to know and to love and to be loved by.
And all that to say, we find ourselves with Jesus and his disciples in the midst of a crowd and we read that he put before them another parable. Now I like to say that a parable is kind of like a riddle – and we need to look for the meaning behind the words rather than just the words themselves. And in reading some commentaries for today, I learned that parables are not necessarily about instruction but to consider the mystery of hearing and understanding. And the parable in today’s Gospel is just one of the parables that Jesus speaks of when he is standing with the crowd.
"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.” Jesus had already told a parable about a good seed and the different types of soil it could be planted in, but this one might be more about the planter of the seeds. We learn there was a sower of good seed which was wheat, and there was a sower of not so good seed – which turned out to be weeds. And when the wheat started growing so did the weeds start growing as well.
And how could this be, how could one who was most likely determined to be a good owner of the field, sow not good seed. And those working for the owner basically asked what the heck?!. Didn’t you sow good seed, how could there now be weeds in the field?
So within the parable the owner now responds, “An enemy did this.” And this is the first moment in the passage where my little wiggles of uncomfortability start to happen because I don’t like using the language of the enemy or the devil, with all the damage that it has caused. But if we first focus on the seed itself, we can just let this word be for a moment.
The weed seed that is referred to is a Darnel, which apparently is considered “wheat’s evil twin” or “false wheat” in the agriculture world because it grows in the same zones as wheat and actually looks quite similar to wheat. And it's not until the final ripening that the difference can be seen with the coloration of the grain and the structure of the leaves that hold the grain as it matures. It is toxic and can be fatal if eaten. But if removed wrongly or prematurely, there is both a risk of removing the wheat seeds but also contaminating the wheat, leading to issues with the wheat’s quality and quantity at harvest time.
So, it is even trickier than we thought. But it makes more sense why the owner would tell the workers to “let them grow together” because the risk is greater in its removal. The separating, removing and destroying needs to be done at the time of the harvest. But my curious mind, which also wants to see the good in everything, needed to ask Google if there was any benefit to darnel in the wheat field. Because I wanted to say, but wait, there has got to be something good in this story. But Google told me “while darnel grass could be used for agricultural foodstuff and for erosion control, these cannot compensate for this plant’s overall negative impacts.” So, in a word, no.
Which is why the instruction was to “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.”
Now there is so much more to say but for a moment it might be good to take a deep breath and hear that last bit again. “And gather the wheat in my barn.” I'm not sure about you, but there is something in those words that
brings comfort – both the gathering and being brought into that place that speaks of warmth, welcome, and space.
And somehow it feels like we should not lose focus on that when the conversation keeps returning to the weeds. And it is the disciples themselves who keep the focus there because, as we go right into the next verse, when Jesus left the crowds and went into the house, the disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable of the weeds.
And their interest in the weeds is highlighted by the fact that the verses that didn’t get included in this week’s reading took place before the disciples were alone with Jesus. Jesus told the parable of the weeds, but then he also told the parable of the mustard seed, and then the parable of yeast. So whether the other parables made more sense or the parable of the weeds just made less sense, this is the one that the disciples asked about when they had Jesus to themselves in the house.
And where Jesus may be telling the parables for the sake of understanding faith and our call of discipleship, the disciples seem to be focused on the weeds that will be destroyed. Which could also be because, as my friend said yesterday when we were talking about this passage, “Humans are way too gleeful about the suffering of others.”
We can trust that Jesus would have known what their hearts were really asking, but he still 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.”
Yep, that helps a lot Jesus!
So there is still so much to unpack in this and it feels like the risk of getting it all wrong is great and yet there is some assurance that it doesn’t need to get figured out until the end of the age but yet I wonder if we should be more worried about the planters of the weeds, the weeds themselves, or about those who are trying to take out the weeds before it is time?
And what might that even mean? We have heard so many stories of those who have been hurt by the church (both inside our buildings and out in the world) when good wheat was thrown out when it was wrongly judged as being a weed. We have heard of stories when those who proclaim themselves to be the harvesters don’t take any care in how they separate the weeds from the wheat, or who gets hurt. We know of those who have deliberately acted in the way of a weed to intentionally harm. And we know of situations where its seems that weeds have been deliberately planted to cause division and destruction.
We see this in the world, in our communities, in our families, in our churches, and even in our own hearts sometimes. And it can even feel like there is more weed than wheat.
But for Jesus this is a long game. This is not about reacting quickly with the risk of doing more damage than good. And this is more about what is to come rather than what is to happen in the here and but while also remembering that this is a parable and there is metaphor and imagery found within that is not to be used in the ways that it unfortunately has already been used when these words have been taken literally with the intention to harm.
But what does it mean when Jesus says 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.
It sounds kinda fun to say that – if you appreciate church humour – but not funny when we think that there are contexts in which it is used for the purpose of wanting someone to suffer or threatening someone to such an experience – why is why these words are not my favourite. But if we consider the metaphor, what might be its actual meaning found within the metaphor, we need to see the final verse in this passage at the same time.
Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Now the harvest has come and the wheat has been gathered in the barn and it will be cause for celebration and those who now see dwell in the Kingdom of God will shine like the sun. Within the metaphor of shining like the sun we can find the expression and emotion of joy.
But what about the weed– it has been binded and bundled up and we read will now be thrown into the fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Within this imagery there is metaphor of sadness grief and anger. Sadness instead of joy. Anger that is more like resentment for having been cast out. Grief in the isolation.
Friends, we don’t know what the end times will look like, but somehow, we can trust in the promise of Who will be with us at the end of the age. And while it seems like the good wheat can't influence the darnel weed to be anything but weed – somehow with the realm of the Kingdom of God there is more happening that what the eye can see. Things are happening within the heart.
The destroying of the weeds is not our task – we are called to live out in the world in the way that Christ has called us to live. To care for the least, the last, the lost, and the little. To create spaces, in the world and in the church, that are nourishing and life-giving and to be a place of welcome and a place of rest.
And why is that important for this time at Northwood. As a community going through a time of transition, I do encourage you to be kind to one another. Transitions can be stressful and communities can forget, for a moment, to keep walking together and in the same direction. This is very understanding as you are all holding different responses to the transition and what the future holds. My home church just went through such a transition, and we recently installed a new minister. It always takes a minute to remember who we are as a community, but also as wheat out in the world.
And so my friends, I pray, that you will know yourselves to be growing in the fullness of who God has created you to be. I pray that you will be protected from all that threatens to snare, to tangle, and to block your growth as a disciple of the living Christ, and I pray that today and at the end of the age, your face will shine like the sun, for you know that you are home.
Amen.