Last week, many churches read the famous parable of the sower and the seed and its later explanation of the parable-This week the basic image gets extended, (Mt. 13:24-30, 36-43) and it is given an explanation as well. First, let’s clear away some underbrush. The kingdom of heaven is not only entrance into God’s dwelling place after we die. It is the totality of God’s vision for and god’s way in the world now. It is the alternative to a new way, a paradigm shift fi you will, from our culture, our ideas, our common sense. A weed, darnel, looks like wheat when growing, so one cannot easily discern the wheat from the weed.It is put in an apocalyptic setting, at the end of the age.
Jesus pictures God’s good world as under assault, this time a covert, sophisticated assault by evil. God in this story does not cause the evil.Thomas Long, one of the leading preachers and teachers in our country retired recently.He devoted a chapter to this parable in his book, What Shall We Say. He sees it as an introduction to thinking about theodicy, the thorny question of God and suffering.I haven’t noticed that the parable starts with question we all may ask about the cause of trouble and evil in the world. We do not receive an explanation,but we do get an answer that evil, not God, is its cause.
Long also sees the parable has given a trace of vision of God’s power.God does choose to clear up the matter at the end, but God’s power is not one of uprooting, of coercion, of waving a wizard’s wand. God works with the world as it is and works to draw good out of it at an appropriate time and place.
Augustine picked up this image of weeds and wheat in his notion that the church itself is a mixed community, not a perfect one.Elizabeth Johnson reads it as a partial parable about “judge not.” Maybe some "weeders" in Matthew's congregation wanted to purify the community by ripping out the weeds. Maybe it had romantic people who thought that the weeds would turn into wheat; the weeds weren't really bad after all. The parable tells us that rooting out the weeds will only do more damage to the good crop. In part, this is where churches get the reputation of being judgmental, heedless weeding. As soon as you hear someone say, ‘what kind of church would we be if we permit…” then we are in the world of this parable.Some Christians have the nerve pronounce judgment on people and see them as destined for damnation. Jesus makes clear that we simply cannot be certain who is "in" or who is "out." In fact, God's judgment about these matters may take many by surprise . Thank God it is not up to us! We can leave the weeding to the angels, and get on with our task, our calling, to help with God’s garden, east of Eden. Sometimes, it gets interpreted as being willing to let evil go unabated, as fighting it would do more harm than good. In some instances, this may well be correct. I think of the statement during Vietnam: “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” The parable then leads us to an examination of the virtue of humility. We have a hard time being able to determine weed from what in our mixed up world. We do not judge consequences well.
God works in ways large and small. God’s time frame differs from ours. Mature faith realizes what a complicated, complex, situation we all share.
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