When to Weed: Your Kingdom Come
Matt. 13:24-30, 36-43
Intro:
This morning we are going to look at another parable of the Kingdom of God, found in Matt. 13. And since it is an agricultural parable, I thought you might enjoy the following fictitious conversation between God and St. Francis, who was very well know for his love of nature.
GOD: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature, what in the world is going on down there in the U.S.? What in the world happened to the dandelions, violets, thistles and the stuff I started eons ago? I had a perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil, withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of color by now. All I see are patches of green.
ST. FRANCIS: It’s the tribes that settled there, Lord. They are called the Suburbanites. They started calling your flowers "weeds" and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with grass.
GOD: Grass? But it is so boring, it’s not colorful. It doesn’t attract butterflies, bees or birds, only grubs and sod worms. It’s temperamental with temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want grass growing there?
ST. FRANCIS: Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing it and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.
GOD: The spring rains and the warm weather probably makes the grass grow really fast. That must make the Suburbanites very happy.
ST. FRANCIS: Apparently not, Lord. As soon as it has grown a little, they cut it......sometimes two times a week.
GOD: They cut it? Do they bale it like hay?
ST. FRANCIS: Not exactly Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.
GOD: They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?
ST. FRANCIS: No sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.
GOD: Now let me get this straight...they fertilize it to make it grow and when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?
ST. FRANCIS: Yes, sir.
GOD: These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.
ST. FRANCIS: You aren’t going to believe this Lord, but when the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.
GOD: What nonsense! I think I like my original plan a lot better… (http://www.naturalhomeandgarden.org/lawnhumor.htm)
Matt 13:24-30
Since Jesus told us to “seek first the kingdom of God,” we’ve decided it would be a good idea for us to investigate what this kingdom is that we are seeking. The main way Jesus taught us about it was by telling stories, and today we are going to look at the parable of the weeds in Matt. 13:24-30. (read)
Context:
Those of you who are gardeners might be wondering at the wisdom of just letting the weeds grow, and sorting it out at the end of season, and might be wondering if Jesus should maybe stick to carpentry illustrations… Well set your minds at ease – the “weeds” Jesus talks about are called “darnel,” or for you botanists, “Lolium temulentum.” They were common weeds, and particularly nasty because until the heads formed, it was virtually impossible to tell them and the wheat apart. It was a familiar method of attacking an enemy, in an attempt to undermine his ability to fight. Their roots grew deeper than those of the wheat, so to pull them up after you could distinguish them meant that you would also, as Jesus warned, destroy some of the wheat in the process.
So What Does This Tell Us About The Kingdom Of God?
1. God will sort it out:
I believe Jesus is really trying to tell us two things about the Kingdom of God in this parable. First, the main point is that in the end, God will sort it all out and will burn the weeds and harvest the grain.
Anytime you get very far into a conversation about faith with people who don’t believe the same thing as you, and you present the truth that Jesus died to save us from sin and to secure for us an eternity in heaven, you invariably get a response something like this: “so you believe that everyone who doesn’t believe the same thing you do goes to hell.” Sometimes it’s an angry response, sometimes it is phrased as “what about people who never hear, or babies, or my grandma who was a great person, etc…”, but the basic question is the same.
My response is modeled after this parable. The servants wanted to try to sort it all out, but Jesus told them not to worry about it. In fact, He warned them that they would do more damage in the long term if they tried! So He says, “leave it to me to sort out at the end of time.” So my response to that line of conversation is this: Only God knows. I can’t know for certain about anyone other than me, because even the most adamant atheist can call upon Jesus in faith with their last breath, and be forgiven – like the workers hired at the end of the day in the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
You see, it was very difficult to tell the wheat and the weeds apart – it wasn’t until the fruit grew that you could make the distinction. With people, that is even more difficult because we aren’t consistent. I know for me, there are times when I am a lot more like a weed than like wheat! – and if someone came along at those moments to chop down the weeds, I might end up in the burning pile instead of the barn. Only God is qualified to judge the eternal state of a soul.
It is an appropriate place to stop and ask: are you sure which category you are in? The story sets it out pretty clearly – there will be a point where God will separate those who know Him from those who don’t. Are you confident about where you will spend eternity? In Jesus, you can be.
That is the main point of the parable: God will sort it out. After all, only God can know the heart. Only God can understand motives and intentions with perfect clarity. And only God can forgive us our sins and accept us as His children – and while He has made it pretty clear through His Word what is required of us, He is the only one who saves. It is His work, and the end judgment is up to Him.
2. In The Meantime…
The first and main message of the parable is future-looking, anticipating the time of the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom in the universe. We know, though, that the Kingdom of God is not only future – it has already begun, and we who accept Christ are already in it. The second message of the parable addresses the big question: what about evil now?
I Don’t Understand
The servants have the same reaction that we do when we see evil and pain in our world: “why?” That is their question – “Lord, you planted good seed, right? So now how come the field is full of weeds?”
You have had the same question. “Lord, why did the sales person who lied and cheated get rewarded, while I did the right thing and got punished?” “Lord, I’ve tried to obey you, why did you give me cancer?” “Why did my child get sick?” “Why did the drunk driver hit someone I love?” And you can add your own question there as well.
The servants ask the same question. “Lord, it’s not supposed to be like this. Your Kingdom is supposed to be full of good plants, good wheat, not weeds. We’re supposed to see a harvest, and now we see the field is full of weeds.”
Notice Jesus’ response: “An enemy did this.” He identifies for us the ultimate source of the evil – it is the enemy of God. And it makes God angry. Seeing the wicked prosper makes God angry, cancer makes Him angry, poverty and starvation and sick children make God angry. Death makes God angry.
If that is true, we cry, why doesn’t He do something about it? And if we follow the parable, we want to jump in and do something about it also! We want to tear it out, eradicate it, get out the big jug of “Round Up” and kill every broadleaf weed, spray the insecticide and eliminate all the pests. We want to jump in and fix it.
But the master gardener says no. He recognizes that our best efforts to eradicate evil are going to make a bigger mess of it, and destroy more than just the evil. And He recognizes that as worse, and in His great patience says “let them grow together, and I’ll sort it out at the end.”
Sometimes we can even get this far ok, and accept that we don’t have the wisdom or the skill to fix the problem. And then usually, our next response is to say, “But God you can do something about it. You can heal, restore, change things. You can fix it. Please do!”
And sometimes He does. After years of praying and a nightmare of leukemia treatments, Emma Christiansen, among others, are now cancer-free. Sometimes we see wicked people punished, we see poverty and starvation fought, we experience the forgiveness of someone we wronged and have a love relationship restored. I heard a whole bunch of stories this week about how God’s Kingdom IS coming – in healing hurting teens, in using people’s gifts, in reconciling husbands and wives, in bringing salvation to day camp kids, in the love of a bride and groom, in guiding through difficult decisions. God does change things, and has commanded us to ask boldly that He would.
At other times, He doesn’t change the circumstances. And those are hard. Pastor Fred Harter, who is away this weekend at a 50th anniversary of a church he pastored in Three Hills, reminded me on Friday that we pray regularly for God to help us grow, to make us more like Him, to know Him more deeply. Most often, when does that happen? When life is going well and smoothly and the blessings are all around us? Or is it through conflict and difficulty and crisis? That is when we grow, that is when we learn to trust God, and to accept and to forgive. And with acceptance comes this: we recognize God in the midst of the pain – not as the source or cause, Jesus is clear that is the enemy – but as present making something good out of that which the devil intended to destroy, and using even those things that God hates for the good of His Kingdom.
We do have the assurance that evil will be dealt with, and that God will be triumphant. That is the hope of the parable – evil will be punished. But it will be in God’s time, not ours. And in the meantime, living in the Kingdom of God means that we will grow side by side with evil, we might even sometimes feel surrounded by it. We will sometimes face difficulty and hardship, and the parable teaches us to hang on at those times to the assurance we have that God knows what He is doing, and will deal with evil in His time.
The Parable Interpreted:
This is one of the few parables that Jesus interpreted for His disciples, in vs 36-43. It is a pretty straightforward interpretation, which I have been following. I want to point out one final thing from this that jumped out to me, in answer to this question: what is the “field”?
You see, in the history of the church we have interpreted this parable to mean that the church will always have some “weeds” in it – we can never have a completely “pure” church. So the field represents “the church” and we read the parable to mean that some weeds might come and infiltrate. Now while that might apply, it is not what Jesus says.
Jesus says, “The field is the world” (vs 38). And we, the “seed,” are scattered into the world, where we are to grow and bear fruit even though there might be wicked weeds all around us. In the end, the Kingdom of God will be about evil being completely gone. But for now, the Kingdom of God is about bearing fruit in the middle of a field that contains both good and bad, both righteous and evil. And it is about us working for God’s Kingdom in the midst of that mixed company.
So we shouldn’t be surprised when ministry doesn’t go smoothly. We shouldn’t be surprised when we feel surrounded by weeds. We shouldn’t be surprised when, despite our best intentions and efforts, the message of the Kingdom of God gets heard wrong or distorted or twisted.
And the parable teaches us this: don’t worry, God will sort it out. Evil can grow for awhile, but it will not prevail. Stand strong, be faithful, and we will see the reward. We will see the harvest, we will see the Kingdom of God in purity, and we will celebrate.
