Tenth Sunday After Pentecost
Year A, RCL
July 20, 2008
All Saints’ Bentonville
Gospel:
Jesus put before the crowd another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, `Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, `An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, `Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, `No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field." He answered, "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. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!"
I will admit right up front that I have a certain partiality toward weeds. If you look from the back of our house down the hillside leading to the water, you won’t find a neatly manicured lawn or the sterile uniformity of stone landscaping popular in Bella Vista. What you will see is an abundance of native grasses, an odd assortment of flowering plants, aspiring pine trees, thistles, vines, and all manner of ground cover. A winding path makes its way through this collection of what I call “natural landscaping” and my next door neighbors call “a bunch ah weeds”.
I think this affinity toward weeds began when I was on the waning edge of adolescence and my Dad decided there were too many useless plants growing in our cow pasture. He realized that he could simultaneously deal with the problem of an excess of rangy, quickly growing, almost out of hand weeds, as well as a son of a similar nature, by arming me with leather gloves and a sharpened hoe and pointing me in the direction of the bull nettles.
The particular weed my Dad had in mind has the scientific name, Cnidoscolus Texanus, and in Spanish Mala Mujer, which translates – “bad woman”. Prickly pear is better known, more prolific, and deserving of its reputation as a plant to be reckoned with. But bull nettle is more sinister. It doesn’t need much moisture and the hotter the weather, the happier it is. Its beauty belies its threat. The stalks have thorns, but the dark green leaves are the real problem. The top and underside of each leaf contain thousands of tiny hair-like thorns, each delicate thorn waiting to inject a caustic juice into the skin of the unwary. The poison doesn’t act immediately. If you inadvertently brush your skin against the leaves, there is a slight prickly sensation and then a few seconds of impending doom, waiting for the body’s pain receptors to send a signal to the brain that agony is on the way. As with much of life, the waiting for pain is actually worse than the pain itself, but the pain is real – causing burning, stinging, itching for hours.
The stand of bull nettle dotted the pasture below our house, as far in the distance as I could see. I worked among the nettles every morning for several weeks, chopping at the stalks, attempting to pull up as many of the roots as I could, hoping that the plants wouldn’t reappear with the next rainfall. The deep green of each plant was punctuated by the presence of a dozen small white flowers, three petals each, a tiny trinity amid the thorns. The scent of the blooms was slightly sweet and subtle, carrying a memory of spring across the browning summer grass. Each petal was eventually pushed aside by the emergence of a small white nut that, I discovered, contained three kernels. The nut was difficult to retrieve, and I was stung more than once as I learned the art of carefully extracting the seed from the leafy guards that surrounded each nut. Breaking through the hard shell required a hammer or pliers, but the sweetness of each morsel, made the danger and effort worthwhile. Or perhaps it was the risk and the work that made the nut so delectable.
Despite boots and jeans, a long sleeve shirt and gloves, it was inevitable that I would occasionally be bitten by bull nettle. The folk remedy Dad suggested for the sting, applying a poultice of mud pulled from the clay bottom of the nearby stock tank proved effective. Though now I can see that leaving my sweat-soaked clothes on the shore and plunging into the cooling waters of the tank was just the distraction I needed from the stinging whelps and the seemingly endless labor.
At morning’s end I would survey my work, and see a hundred wilting plants, lying on their sides, disarmed, like so many fallen soldiers – a crumpled collection of flowers and fruit and prickly armor.
We would be hard pressed to find a wheat field today that resembles the one that Jesus describes in this parable of the wheat and the weeds. Weeds are almost nonexistent in the modern wheat field. Instead there is acre upon acre of sameness, hybrid versions of plants with resistance to weeds and disease built into their genetic structure. Herbicides that make it virtually impossible for a weed to appear in row after row of monoculture. In order to maximize yield per acre and to take advantage of current high grain prices, diversity is eliminated on the modern farm, and the wheat is planted so close to houses that a farm laborer can reach out his bedroom window and touch the grain. Neither the laborer nor the owner need worry about uprooting the wheat while gathering the weeds. The weeds can’t even find a place to take root.
Beyond the wheat field, the world is, thankfully, still a more diverse and interesting place. The lowly weed, the unwanted plant, is free to find its way along with the rest of the botanical kingdom.
By definition a weed is an unwanted plant - a majestic oak in the path of a shopping mall or a rosebush in the wheat field. Jesus makes it clear in this parable that in the Kingdom he envisions, our task isn’t the uprooting of weeds. The separation of the weeds from the wheat is clearly not our work. Because to pull the weeds, we not only do damage to the wheat, but we also destroy the unrealized potential of the weed – its flower, its fruit and its fragrance.
Besides, I’m not sure we would know how to distinguish weed from wheat anyway. And when I consider the good folks that make up this mission of All Saints’ and, especially when I look in the mirror, I see a lot of weediness. And so it is that we live with our weeds. We are stung by them, fascinated by them, fed by them, have our nostrils filled with their perfume - and our lives are made richer because of their presence. It’s the bountiful harvest of a church that seeks diversity in a culture that dictates conformity.
A parable like this offers us freedom – the freedom to go about the business of being planters and not worrying so much who belongs in the Kingdom. We can go around looking for weeds or we can get on with the business of growing wheat - the liberating, fulfilling, absolutely thrilling business of growing and becoming, and not judging. We are part of the project of blessing all creation and freed from the task of deciding who merits God’s blessing.
We, my fellow saints, are a collection of beautiful weeds. And our flowers and our fruit and our thorns are what make us beautiful and true, and cause us to shine like the sun in the Kingdom of our Father. Let us bless the harvest.