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(Matt. 13: 24-30, 36-43)
July 20, 2008
(Karen May, DLM)
How are your gardens doing? I know many of you do
a little gardening, and I bet lots of you grow carrots – right? Anybody
grow carrots? Carrots seeds are really tiny. It’s hard to put them in the
ground in a nice single row. Mostly, when I sow them anyway, they go into
the ground in little clumps – and each clump is about a hundred little
carrot seeds, that will definitely all germinate!
If I leave them like
that, they will continue to grow, but they will be hopelessly crowded and
all tangled up, and I won’t get very many good sized carrots. I can thin
them when they’re tiny – but I can’t thin them if I leave it too long –
because if their roots get too tangled, I will pull them all up when I try
to thin them!
Jesus knew his
followers were farmers. They planted wheat in their fields, and they
depended on a good crop for their livelihood. Jesus liked to tell his
followers stories that he knew they would understand. This parable about
the wheat and the weeds is such a story. What happens in your garden if you
let the weeds get out of control? Can you pull them up without pulling up
the good plants – the carrots, or the beets for instance?
We don’t necessarily
think of weeds or too many little carrots too close together as “evil” – but
in Jesus day and in his country, it was a fairly common practice if you
didn’t like someone for some reason, to sow nasty weed seeds in their
fields. In this story Darnel is the nasty weed Jesus is talking about.
When the plants are young, the Darnel looks just like the good wheat. So by
the time the farmer sees that he has bad seed in his field, it’s too late to
pull them out – he would pull up the good wheat as well, thus damaging his
crop. Now the Darnel seeds were a different colour than the wheat, and they
had to be hand separated from the good seed – a very laborious process. If
the farmer left them in, the wheat would be ruined, because Darnel is bitter
in taste, and poisonous.
The farmer in Jesus’
story makes the only decision he can – leave the weeds in with the good seed
until the harvest. Then gather and burn the Darnel plants first, and then
harvest the good wheat.
But who has done this to
the farmer? Jesus says “an enemy has done this”. But who would do this to
his neighbour? It’s not that big of a stretch is it? We don’t always love
or appreciate our neighbour. We may not have much love for the neighbour
who sprays DDT or some other nasty chemical on his lawn and we can only sit
powerless and watch as it drifts over the fence and onto our own vegetable
patch. Or what about the neighbour whose dog barks all night every night?
Or the one who has loud parties every weekend? Hopefully none of us would
sabotage our neighbour – but it’s not hard to understand sometimes why it
happens.
When things like this do
happen, when someone sows bad seed in his neighbour’s field, or poisons his
neighbour’s dog, or turns off his neighbour’s water supply, we can say that
“an enemy has done this”.
We can call the enemy
Satan, or the Evil One, or the evil that dwells within us. One thing is for
sure – it is an enemy. Jesus says that the bad weeds are the sinners that
dwell among us, and since we are all capable of doing evil, it is clearly
not possible for us to weed out the sinners from our midst. We must wait,
Jesus says, for the harvest to mature, for only then will it be really clear
who are the good seed, those who accept God’s leadership, and who are those
who have surrendered to evil and no longer look to the good. The bitter,
the poisonous seed can really only be recognized by the farmer – by that
which is only Good.
What I hear in all of
this, is that evil dwells among us, mixed in with the good. I also hear
that we are all capable of evil, and that many of us are redeemable, and as
we mature will make wiser decisions. It is not our job to judge one
another. We don’t know what the trials and heartaches of another are. We
can’t see the big picture of another person’s life. I believe this is why
church communities at their best, will look like the polyglot band of Jesus’
followers – saints and sinners mixed in together – those who are able
offering a helping hand to those who are struggling.
Jesus told this story to
his disciples to reassure them that it was OK to be associating with this
impure, ragtag group of followers. That in the end – at the time of the
harvest – the good seed would yield a wonderful harvest and the bad would
not survive. But we must not be hasty or presumptuous. We must always hope
for the best from people, and if we want things to get better right now, we
could ask the Holy One to help us to be more patient, more helpful, and
more loving to those who travel this road with us. “We are pilgrims on a
journey – fellow travelers on the road. We are here to help each other,
walk the mile and share the load.”
As we move into Noah’s
baptism this morning, let’s remember that as parents and grandparents, as
Godparents and aunts and uncles, and as adult members of a Christian
community, we have a responsibility to nurture and support the growth of the
good seeds, and to help the young to recognize and to resist the unhealthy
growth of all kinds of nasty “weeds” that are sure to turn up in the course
of their lives. None of us is immune. All of us have had to do our share
of “weeding out” behaviours that do not support life, or are harmful to
ourselves or to others. But we will all be more successful if we ask for
and receive the help of our Creator, and if we offer a helping hand to one
another along the way.
In our baptismal vows,
we will see that we make a lot of promises we probably couldn’t keep without
God’s help. And so we say the words, “God being my helper” or “By the grace
of God”. We need to focus on that which is greater, more powerful than
ourselves – to support that which is the best in ourselves – so that we can
be the people we are meant to be – the people of God.
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