Weeds & Wheat - sermon on Matthew 13

Are you a weed or are you wheat? That’s the first place our minds go when we hear this parable – will I end up in the fire or the barn? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a handy little quiz to help us figure it out? I actually had a quiz planned for you – I was working up this really clever little sermon, full of wit and punch, based on a magazine quiz that would tell you at the end which you were. But as I wrote it, it sounded trite. It sounded insincere. It sounded like I wasn’t quite serious. Also, it just wouldn’t work. My quiz kept coming up inconclusive, and I couldn’t make it work. Every question just proved the point I hoped to make at the end, which is that you just don’t know. I can’t tell which I am by looking at me, much less which you are. So that’s definitely one level of this story, one place that we can carry the metaphor. That’s where I was headed with the terribly clever sermon that I was going to write. But then I started writing this one and it went a whole new place, one that surprised me as I wrote it. So I left off of the sermon I was planning and went with the one that came out. Here it is.

Jesus told parables like this because he was trying to make a point in a way that people could get their brains around. Most of the people listening to this parable would have known a lot about raising wheat – it was an agrarian society, and they spent a lot of time in and around wheat fields. They relied heavily on the harvest to get them through the year. If the harvest were to come up short, they could be certain that there were going to be hard times ahead. As for me, I know very little about raising wheat. If I want bread, I go to the store. The closest I come to wheat is buying flour and baking my own bread… with a bread machine. I might see a little bit of a change in the price if the harvest is bad one year, but not by much.

However, I have been doing some gardening in the past few years, and I’ve learned a few things about it. I’ve learned that weeds usually come up in the best soil, where you’ve tilled and amended and fertilized. They also tend to plant themselves right next to another, better established plant. They take advantage of the work that other plants to breaking up the soil and reaching for nutrients, and then they follow. That means that their roots can get wrapped up with those of the more desirable plants. If you pull one, you often pull both. Another thing I’ve noticed is that weeds have developed over time to look like the plants they cozy up to. That’s what happened in this parable.

The weed that Jesus is talking about is known as “darnell.” When it’s young, it looks just like wheat. If the workers were to go out into the field then and start trying to pull up the weeds, they wouldn’t have much idea which one they were pulling. If they pulled half of what was there, they would be just as likely to pull all wheat as they would be to pull all weeds. Better to leave it at that point. Of course, as it gets older, you can tell the difference, and you could go out and pull all of the darnell out. But by then, the wheat and the weeds have grown up so close together, that you would pull both out by their intertwined roots. Either way you’d be left with half a harvest at best.

So what if you leave it, what are the consequences? Well, having weeds in the field means that there will be a lower yield. The weeds will suck up some of the nutrients and water that would otherwise go to the wheat. This means a lower yield at the harvest. Also, darnell is a poisonous plant, so if any of it is left in at the harvest, there will be poison mixed in with the wheat that goes into the barn. The harvesters will have to be extra careful, and the harvest will take more energy this year than normal. But overall, they will probably get closer to a full harvest by leaving the weeds where they are than they will by pulling them, either early in the season or later. So that’s the background of the parable. We can look at Jesus’ time and see how there were a lot of people that were being left out of the religious and political systems, people that Jesus spent more time talking to than most. We can imagine that Jesus was trying to encourage society not to judge others too quickly, that he was telling the Pharisees to lay off with their strict purity laws, or that he was telling the Romans to ease up on their persecution. We can also imagine that Matthew, who wrote this all down, was dealing with a church full of Gentiles and Jews, and that he was trying to get both groups to chill out and live together in some kind of truce. We can all imagine, and apply lessons learned to today’s community. But there’s something else about this that was bugging me as I was trying to write that sermon, where I ended with those lessons about how we can’t judge better than God.

I think one reason that I couldn’t go with the cheeky magazine quiz sermon is that I’ve been spending this summer serving as a chaplain at Abbott Northwestern hospital. Every day, I meet someone new, who is certain beyond certain that he or she is nothing but a weed in a field of wheat. When I walked into Rosa’s room, the shades were drawn and the lights were off. Rosa was lying on her side, curled up in a ball. The nurses had told me that I could go in and see her, but they didn’t expect I’d get much out of her. Her speech was slurred, they said, and she was barely coherent. Her chart seemed to have written her off as a hopeless alcoholic. Get her sober enough to get well, and get her out of here. When my eyes had adjusted, I saw that Rosa was wearing a hospital gown, no makeup, and her glasses were on the nightstand. She was ready enough to talk to me. When I told her I was a chaplain, she sat up a little, tried to adjust herself to be more presentable. She started to tell me about herself. Her speech was clear enough, though she had a central American accent, and a slight lisp. Of course, she had been stung in the face by a bee, and her tongue had swollen up, so that was to be expected, I guess. She told me that she had been trying for some time to overcome alcoholism, and had even had periods of sobriety. She had been sober for several months before this last bender. But she had to go back to his house, back to get her belongings and her immigration papers. He talked her back in the door, and she thought she could stay sober. He started drinking around her, and she thought she could have just one drink. He started beating her, and she numbed the pain. When she came to the hospital for this allergic reaction to a bee sting she had been drunk for several weeks straight. She desperately wanted to get better and to turn her life around. At the moment that I met her, she was awash in shame. Unfortunately, that was not helped by the attitude of the doctor who came in during our visit and patronizingly told her that she needed to get sober. It was obvious that he was thinking, “this is never going to happen, but I have to say it anyway.” I asked Rosa if she ever prayed. She responded, ““How can I pray, when I am so ashamed to talk to God? How can I pray when I have been living like this?”

Rosa has bought the messages that have been given to her for years. She has absorbed enough of the attitude of the doctor and others like him that she believes it herself. She has been beaten by her fiancée, sexually assaulted, verbally abused by her mother, and God only knows what else. And she drinks. She knows she shouldn’t drink but she can’t help it. She knows she shouldn’t love her fiancée, but she can’t help that either. And worst, she thinks that because she does these other things that she shouldn’t do, she shouldn’t pray either. How can she pray, when she is so ashamed? As far as she can tell, she has let her whole patch go. She’s given up fighting them, and she’s ready to raise a weed garden. But she also senses that there are other options. She senses that there might yet be beauty and fruit to be harvested. Rosa, like the rest of creation, is longing for redemption. Rosa, like the rest of creation, waits with eager longing. Rosa, like each of us, groans inwardly while waiting for adoption, and the redemption of her body.

But Paul tells us in today’s reading from Romans, “you have received a spirit of adoption… we are children of God.” This is an already-done thing. Even though we continue to long for redemption, the promise that we have from God, the promise to which we are heirs, is that the judgment has already happened. Christ is God’s judgment on us, and that judgment is that, in spite of all that we have done, in spite of all the weeds in our patch, we are adopted, we are children of God, and we are heirs to God’s promise of freedom. God’s judgment is that while we were yet sinners, God loved us, just as we are, weeds and all. God’s judgment is that God came to earth to be with us, and in Christ took all of our alcohol and abuse, our shame and pain, and everything else that we carry. Acting in Christ, God took it all with him up on the cross, and died for it, not to deepen our shame, but to remove it, to carry it away from us, and set it aside once and for all.

Each week we come in here and confess our sins and receive the assurance of forgiveness. Each week we come to the table and receive the promise of forgiveness and redemption in Christ’s body broken and blood poured out. Each day we wake up and try to live in the freedom that Christ has won for us. But every day, new weeds sneak in. Daily, then, we are tending this field, with God’s help. And daily God sends harvest workers, and helps us to gather up the weeds and discard them; helps us to gather up the wheat and shine like the sun in the kingdom. That’s why a community garden is such a good thing. We can’t do this alone. If we do, we wind up seeing nothing but the weeds. We wind up like me the time that I pulled a whole bed of forgotten seedlings, thinking they were weeds. We wind up focusing on the weeds, forgetting about the good plants. We focus on all that we’ve done wrong, and we begin to hide ourselves from God, too ashamed to even speak to God.

It is only in community, only through the others that God has sent into our lives, that we can recognize the gifts that we have, the freedom that we have received. It is only through the others that God has sent into our lives that we can recognize ourselves as heirs according to the promise, children of God who have already received a spirit of adoption. It is a community garden that we tend. Though we each have our own patch, we help one another out, with support, encouragement, some watering, even some weeding and harvesting. And then we share the fruits of our work with one another. If I’ve got too many tomatoes, I give them to my neighbors. If they’ve got too many zucchinis, they share them with me. But we are free to work together in this garden because we are already children of God; we have already been adopted, or gathered into the barn, or whatever metaphor works for you at this point in the story. However you want to put it, it’s a done deal.

I saw Rosa again. A couple of weeks ago, I was out taking a walk at lunch time. I don’t usually take walks at lunch – it’s not like there’s a beautiful park or garden there, just hot, dirty, often smelly and noisy, city streets. But this was a nice day, and I thought I could maybe make a phone call while I walked, so I went out. I was almost back to the hospital entrance, and I had put my phone away, when a woman stopped me to ask directions. She was smoking a cigarette, and she seemed to be harried, in a hurry. I stopped to offer the best directions I could, though I don’t really know the area well. At first I didn’t recognize her. She was wearing makeup and glasses; she was dressed up and had her hair done. But then I said, “aren’t you Rosa?” She was startled that I should know her name, but said, “yes, I’m Rosa.” “I’m the chaplain who visited you when you were in the hospital here.” She grabbed me, and pulled me into a hug, and kissed my cheek. Tears began to come to her eyes, and she said, “this address is the alcohol counseling center, and I’m late and I’m lost. I overslept, and I almost didn’t come because I was afraid that I would be late, and then I stop someone for directions, and it’s you! You are a sign from God that I need to go. God sent you to make sure that I get there.” I told her that she still had almost 5 minutes and she was only 2 blocks away. She hugged me again, and went on her way, swearing that God had sent me. I think she might have been right. God sent me, as he sends all of us, to tend the community garden.

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