Weeds and Wheat
Proper 11
Fr. Tim Nunez
May my spoken word be true to God’s written word and bring us all closer to the living word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Last week we heard Jesus describe God’s extravagant sharing of the Word of the Kingdom as scattering seed on all sorts of soil. This morning’s Gospel touches on one of the most challenging issues of our existence. There is other seed. Not only do we see a lot of evil, there are, apparently, evil people in the world. This is more than flawed people making bad choices. It’s real evil, evil seeds sown by the evil one, the enemy, the devil, Satan himself.
Weeds are a great analogy because we all get that. They are a persistent issue everywhere from our landscaping to the cracks in our sidewalks. Weeds are a real problem in agriculture, and the problem can cut several ways. If you don’t control them, then they can hurt the crop yield, which not only affects the farmer but also the consumer. The lower the yield, the higher the price and the more people go hungry.
To recap Jesus’s explanation, the field is the world, the sower is the Son of Man, or Jesus himself. The good seeds are the children of the Kingdom of God. The weeds are the children of the evil one, which the enemy has sown to ruin the crop. The harvest comes at the end of the age.
The weed here is almost surely bearded darnel, which looks almost exactly like wheat for most of its life. When it matures, it’s head drops, whereas wheat stays tall. But you can’t pull it even then because its roots wrap around the wheat’s roots. If you pull it, you pull everything. Darnel is just a grass, but it hosts a fungus that is poisonous. Eventually, after the harvest, it must be sorted out and burned.
There are a few sobering lessons in this parable. First, we must recognize that there is actual evil in the world, evil people who are sown by the evil one and driven by the evil one. Part of us wants to see hope in everyone, and we will get to that in a moment.
Second, we are not to be discouraged by the evil we do see. Some may say the Kingdom has failed because evil remains. Jesus says no, the Kingdom is growing alongside the evil. His own ministry shows us that. Of course it began that way. As he is sharing this Good News, opening God’s word, healing and rescuing people, there are people actively opposing him and undermining him. That carries all the way to the cross and continues into the life of the church as soon as the Apostles start proclaiming the Resurrection. People mock the church to this day, and at times we deserve it, but that only underscores our need of a savior, our need of Jesus.
Do not be discouraged by evil’s existence. Look for and participate in the growth of the Kingdom.
Third, our impulse is to stamp evil out.
Controlling weeds is problematic in several ways. It is labor intensive, whatever you do. Pulling weeds is great therapy, but as we’ve learned it doesn’t work in this analogy because of the ways Bearded Darnel’s roots wrap around the wheat’s roots. That is like the ways our lives are intertwined.
Herbicides have helped us feed more people at lower cost, but they can kill too much in the soil, diminishing organic compounds that crops need. And some of our herbicides can create health problems like cancer, Alzheimer’s, ALS and so on if not used properly and/or properly washed away.
A few months ago I learned about an amazing alternative: the laser weeder. The laser weeder is mounted on a trailer and pulled by a tractor. It uses artificial intelligence to identify weeds, no matter how small, then it shoots them with industrial lasers which reduce the weeds to ash, all the way to their roots. Zap, they are done, and they aren’t coming back.
Onion farms in south Texas are already using them. An 8,000-acre onion farm was spending $1500 per acre per season on weed control, including chemicals and labor. Now it costs them about $300 in labor only, saving about $1200 per acre. The laser weeder cost them $1.4 million dollars and pays for itself within just a couple of months. And they are seeing a 30% rise in crop yields because it’s far more efficient and the carbon from those fried weeds is very good for the soil.
We are tempted to wish we could eradicate evil that way. Part of us would like to zap those weeds before they cause real trouble. Burn them to the roots! After all, I’m talking real evil here, so evil there is no need to name it because we all know it. But we don’t see as God sees. Our vision and perceptions are very limited. How often are we surprised by people we think we know well?
People are not weeds. People can and do change. The best evangelism program we have in our tradition is Alpha. Its founder, Nicky Gumbel, describes himself as a “very argumentative atheist” before he came to know Jesus in his first year of law school. He wasn’t exactly evil, he just didn’t know Jesus yet. So we are happy for his conversion.
Millions of people have found Jesus through his course. Many of them were leading evil lives, violent offenders who were real problems and dangers to their communities. Some of them are now stars of the course. They looked like weeds to be zapped, but they are now bearing tremendous fruit.
We have to trust God in his judgment, his mercy and his timing for others just as we trust him with our own. Our job is to be faithful in the midst of our struggles, holding fast to his promises.
None of that answers the question of why there is evil in the world, but that’s not the point. It’s the wrong question. Evil is. What is God doing about it? Here we are. We find that Jesus is God’s answer to it right now, and ultimately in his Kingdom, which is growing in us and through us as we are faithful.
Paul affirms the fact of our struggles and the joy to be held in this passage from Romans. He says, “For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us…the revealing of the children of God.”
There is a process underway. Trust God, trust Jesus as God’s answer to the evil and suffering in the world, and recognize your place in being and your role growing the harvest.
AMEN!