Delivered by Amy Higgins on July 23, 2023

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

My grandmother had red geraniums every summer. And the summer after she passed away, my dad put an oak barrel planter by our front door which he filled with red geraniums every summer until he passed away himself. I love geraniums of any color although, I am partial to red, and I love to put pots of geraniums on my front porch steps. They really are glorious when they fill out the pot with their big green leaves and full, beautiful blooms. But if you know anything about geraniums, you know those big blooms are made up of several tiny stems connected by a larger stem. And often, one little stem will wilt before the others. And I don’t know about you, but I have a bad habit of pinching off those dying little stems to keep the whole thing bright and beautiful and end up pulling off the entire bloom.

          Jesus spells out for the disciples, and us, the meaning of The Parable of the Weeds. The field is the world. Good sows the seed that produces wheat and in the cover of night, evil sows seed that will produce weeds. And at the harvest, the end of the age, the angels will separate the bad from the good, the bad will be burned up in a fiery furnace, which many see as hell, and the good will take their place in the kingdom with the Father. The passage is self-explanatory. But what else can the passage tell us?

          If we take the passage solely at Jesus’ word and see the field as the world, then we must heed what he tells us about waiting. Like the disciples, our ear goes to the weeds, the bad, and that is what we focus on. And like the slaves we want to pull the weeds so that they do not infect the wheat. We see the bad as a disease when truly the disease is our dis-ease with our proximity to what we deem as bad. We do not have the patience or the faith to wait for God to sort us all out in the end. We want to sort ourselves now. We believe we know best how to divide ourselves and if a few of the good get thrown out with the bad, it is worth the risk. But is it?

          Why would the owner say to the slaves wait until the harvest to separate the weeds from the wheat if it were as easy as we may think? In Greek, the word for wheat is translated as zizanion, which is a common Middle Eastern species known as bearded darnel-grass which, looks very similar to wheat. The owner understands they cannot tell the weeds from the wheat. And in this parable, seeing the field as the church, we cannot tell the “real” sinners from ourselves.

But what does that mean for the church? Allowing the so called bad seed to remain challenges our place, our identity as the good seed. What does it mean to have faith in a world where things do not work the way we want? And this dis-ease with others creates the disease of division. Paul tells us in Romans Chapter 1, elevating our own thinking above our understanding of God is idolatry, therefore, our willingness to do away with others is an idolatry. Just as the wheat and the weeds must grow together, so must the church grow together. And we do so by recognizing that none of us, including ourselves, is all good or all bad.

It is not good people from good seed and bad people from bad seed. We are all both. In the fields of our hearts, there is both wheat and weeds. Both are necessary not only for our faith to deepen and grow but, to also be in right relationship with God. Life is full of good and bad, joy and sorrow, praise and lament. In the article, 5 Reasons Lament and Praise Must Stand Together in Worship, Dan Wilt describes praise and lament as two sides of the same coin. Praise without lament can create a superficial spirituality that does not acknowledge the pain of life. And lament without praise can turn into self-pity, leading to a question of faith without remembering all that God has and will do. He says, “Praise brings heaven to earth; lament brings earth before heaven. Together they express the suffering of the world before God and proclaim that one day we will lament no more!”[1]

The seasons of our lives plant and harvest wheat and weeds. And as the flawed humans we are we grow with each harvest as the weeds of our lament, our struggles and heartaches, are bundled and burned; offered up to God as the only meaningful burnt offering He seeks of us. It can be hard to admit we have more in common with the weeds than the wheat. And in acknowledging the weeds in our own lives, we recognize the weeds in others. But this recognition must come with compassion not separation. We must allow the wheat and the weeds to grow together not just in the fields of our hearts but the field of the church and of the world. And that will leave us all growing together in the field of God’s grace.        

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[1] https://www.danwilt.com/5-reasons-lament-and-praise-must-stand-together-in-worship/