The Gospel reading today seems to suggest, once again, that there are only two types of people in the world: the wheat and the weeds, the good guys and the bad guys, and that the good guys will be OK, as far as God is concerned, but that the bad guys are headed for weeping and gnashing of teeth. It always makes me nervous when I hear Jesus talking like this, because sometimes I think he might mean it; he might want us to believe that there are only two kinds of people in the world. After all, so much of the way we have organized ourselves as a society these days encourages us to think this way, and insists that we should choose sides, and decide precisely which side of some imaginary divide we are on. You don’t need me to rehearse the various choices - they are stark.
Someone has sown weeds among the wheat; that’s the contrast here. And an enemy has done this, Jesus says; an enemy. “Do you want us to go and gather them?” the disciples ask. This question seems natural enough - weeding is as ordinary a task as you can find in a garden, though it’s true that sometimes you risk taking up the good stuff with the bad.
Now, you would think that the key to understanding this parable comes in the explanation that Jesus provides in the latter part of our reading today: “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.” It sounds like that’s all you need to know. But I suspect that that explanation was recorded by someone who was more inclined than Jesus is to push the idea that there are only two kinds of people in the world - weeds and wheat.
And I think that the key to understanding the parable is in hearing the instructions that the Master gives when the slaves ask if they should go out and collect the weeds. “No,” he says, “Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”
Let both of them grow together. A literal reading of this text would point out that if you let both weeds and wheat grow together then both simply grow to become bigger versions of what they started out to be: bigger wheat, bigger weeds. But I don’t want to read this parable like a literalist, and I don’t think we need to. I would rather read it like a poet, or a person of faith, or a child of God who knows himself to be in need of saving, amazing grace and forgiveness. I want to read this parable as a person who is not so sure that there are only two kinds of people in the world. Or, that if there are, the two kinds of people in the world are good people, and good people in pain.
And isn’t it possible that as you survey the field that is the world, the good people in pain might look a lot like weeds? Which is why it’s so important that the Master tells the servants not to rip the weeds out yet. “Let them both grow together until the harvest,” he says. Is it possible that in the kingdom of heaven, when the weeds are allowed to grow alongside the wheat, that some of the weeds (maybe most of them? Maybe all of them?)… is it possible that in the kingdom of heaven, when the weeds are allowed to grow with the wheat, the weeds become the wheat? The weeds become what it seemed they could not be? Or that when their pain is taken away, relieved, and soothed, the weeds are shown to have been good people all along - it’s just that they were good people in pain? Jesus’ way of managing the crop allows for the possibility of transformation while both weeds and wheat are allowed to grow. And nothing will be determined - nothing - until the harvest at the end of the age.
You might say that my reading of this parable is all very fine and good, but that it doesn’t seem to match up with the plain reading of the text, which clearly indicates that there will be “causes of sin and evildoers” who, at the end of the age will be thrown into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But I say that there is hope in the Master’s willingness to let the weeds grow together with the wheat. I say that the hope of transformation is precisely the hope of the Cross. And I say that what Jesus calls the “children of the evil one” only became his children by abduction, since all of us are born in the Spirit and are “children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,” as St. Paul said. And maybe some of us who think we may be only weeds in the field of the Lord are actually wheat that just needs to grow; maybe we ourselves “groan inwardly while we wait for adoption,” to become the children of God we were always meant to be; to become the wheat, to bring forth fruit, and to “shine like the sun in the kingdom of [our] Father.”
It might be that there are only two kinds of people in the world: wheat and weeds. But by God’s grace, we are all given hope that we can become what God means for us to be, so that at the end of the age, the angels are surprised to find out how easy their task will be. And all of us - both good people and good people in pain - all of us, when our pain has been taken away, will shine like the sun!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
23 July 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
