Reading 15
The weeds among the wheat
The reading
Matthew 13:24-30
He set another parable before them, saying, "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while people slept, his enemy came and sowed darnel weeds also among the wheat, and went away. But when the blade sprang up and produced fruit, then the darnel weeds appeared also. The servants of the householder came and said to him, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where did these darnel weeds come from?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and gather them up?' But he said, 'No, lest perhaps while you gather up the darnel weeds, you root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the harvest time I will tell the reapers, "First, gather up the darnel weeds, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn."'"
The companions
Psalm 92:5-9
How great are your works, LORD! Your thoughts are very deep. A senseless man doesn't know, neither does a fool understand this: though the wicked spring up as the grass, and all the evildoers flourish, they will be destroyed forever. But you, LORD, are on high forever more. For, behold, your enemies, LORD, for, behold, your enemies shall perish. All the evildoers will be scattered.
Malachi 3:16-18
Then those who feared the LORD spoke one with another; and the LORD listened, and heard, and a book of memory was written before him, for those who feared the LORD, and who honored his name. "They shall be mine," says the LORD of Armies, "my own possession in the day that I make, and I will spare them, as a man spares his own son who serves him." Then you shall return and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him who serves God and him who doesn't serve him.
A word for the week
A farmer plants good seed in his field, and while everyone sleeps, an enemy creeps in and sows weeds among the wheat, and slips away. This particular weed, darnel, is the villain of the story precisely because when it first comes up it looks almost exactly like wheat. You cannot tell them apart until they are grown. So the two come up together, tangled in the same field, and only later does it become clear that the good crop and the bad are standing side by side, roots wound together.
The servants are alarmed. Did you not plant good seed, they ask; where did these weeds come from? An enemy has done this, the farmer says. And then the servants ask the natural question, the one we would all ask: shall we go and pull the weeds out? Let us clean up the field. And the farmer says no. No, because in pulling the weeds you would tear up the wheat along with them; their roots are wound together, and your weeding would do more damage than the weeds. Let them both grow together until the harvest, he says. At harvest time, the reapers will separate them.
This is a hard word for anyone who loves a clean field, and most of us do. We want the good and the bad clearly sorted, now, with the bad pulled up and thrown out. We look at the world, or the church, or the people around us, and we itch to do the sorting ourselves, to root out everyone we have judged to be a weed. Jesus says: not yet, and not you. And he gives two reasons, both important.
The first is that you cannot always tell. Darnel looks like wheat for a long time. People you have written off as weeds turn out to be wheat that had a hard start; people who looked like wheat go another way. You do not have the eyes to make the final sort, because the final sort is not about this one moment but about the whole of a life, and only God sees that. The second reason is patience, which is a kind of mercy: the field is given time. The weed is given the whole season to become something, and so is everyone in the field. God's patience with the world, and with you, is exactly this refusal to pull up the field early.
And notice who does the sorting in the end. The reapers, at the harvest, at God's command. Not the servants, and not now. There is a judgment coming, Jesus does not pretend otherwise; the weeds are real and they are gathered in the end. But it is God's to make, at the right time, with perfect sight, and it is not ours to rush or to run. The patience is not indifference; the farmer has not forgotten a single weed, he has only refused to tear his field apart over them before their season is done. Our job in the meantime is to be wheat, and to let the field grow, and to trust the farmer with the harvest.
At the table
Whom have you already sorted into the "weed" pile, deciding their story is finished? What would it look like this week to leave the harvest to God and simply tend your own growth?
For the watch
This parable trains the patience our watch requires. We are told that good and false grow tangled together, hard to tell apart until the end, and that the sorting belongs to God at the harvest, not to us in a hurry. That steadies us. We do not have to unmask every false thing at once, or panic that we cannot always tell true from false at a glance; that discernment ripens over a whole life, and the final judgment is God's. We keep watch, we test by the way of Jesus, and we leave the harvest to the one whose eyes are good enough to sort the field.
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (public domain). The divine name is rendered "the LORD" in the companions.