Some of Jesus’ parable is lost to us city dwellers. He was speaking to members of a much more agrarian society. They probably understood this in much more vivid terms than do we)but I think that we can learn some valuable lessons from this parable. I know that none of us here are farmers.
However, a few of us grew up on a farm. Despite our lack of agricultural experience, I’ll bet that most of us have tried to grow something in our lives. Whether they were beans, beets or begonias, we all know that whatever seed you sow, you should expect to get that type of plant. When you sow carrots, you expect to get carrots. When you sow carnations, you expect to get carnations.
We are not supposed to get what we did not plant and when we do, we get angry. Weeds are an annoyance to anyone who has tried to grow something before. We try anything to get rid of them. We pull them. We spray them. We dig them out. We go to the store and find something, anything to get rid of the weeds!
When I was growing up, I lived in a house that had a brick patio in the backyard. The people that owned the house previously had put the bricks in place. They had not done a very good job. They had not made it level. This was bad enough but the part that really infuriated my father was the fact that they had not put anything under the ricks to prevent the weeds from growing between them. After a few years of pulling the weeds out every few weeks or so, my father had enough. It took him about a week to pull up every brick, clean it, level the dirt, put down plastic and put every. . . brick. . . back. All that to make sure that no weeds would ever grow back again.
By nature we always want to get rid of the weeds. But not Jesus. But not Jesus? What do you mean, "But not Jesus?" I mean, NOT Jesus. That is what He said. Let me read that again. The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, "Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?" And he said
to them, "An enemy has done this!" The slaves said to him, "Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?" He said, "No!"
Strange don’t you think? Sounds awfully strange. Strange indeed. Why not get rid of the weeds? They are just using up the valuable nutrients in the soil. They
are using up soil space. They are preventing other plants from getting enough light. Why not get rid of the weeds?
In trying to get rid of the weeds, have you ever considered what you are doing to the plants that you do want? I know we ask the guy in the gardening department whether the weed killer will hurt our pretty petunias but what does it really do to them?
Nothing apparent. And even if it did, it is only one growing season, right? If I kill the flowers, no big deal, I’ll just make sure that I don’t do it again next year.
What if there was a problem with the big oak tree in your front yard that shades your house in the summer and the kids like to play in? If it were that big oak at stake would you be a little bit more careful? Would you get a professional to come and look at the problem? Would you take some extra precautions?
When we moved on to Whiteman Air Force Base this past spring, the house we moved into was "posessed". It had a lot of things wrong with it. One of the worst was the infestation of termites. We had so many that the maintenance folks sent out the entomologists to get rid of our termites. They dug a trench around our house and poured some wicked chemical in the trench and covered it up. Pretty soon the termites were nowhere to be seen. However, a week later all of the plants that my wife had put in were dying. And then a couple weeks later the big oak tree in our front yard started to die. We called the entomologists back (they also are horticulturists) and asked whether the chemicals affect plants. They said no. By the end of the summer, the tree was dead and they cut it down. Would you take some extra precautions if a tree was on the line? Of course you would.
That changes the picture a bit doesn’t it? We want to get rid of the weeds but we want to make sure that the plants we do want are protected as well.
How about some of the other "weeds" in our lives? Do we feel the same way about the guy that tailgates us? Do we feel the same way about the young man who revs his engine at the corner more often than we would like? Do we feel the same way about the kids who scream and play in the neighborhood? Do we feel the same way about the people in church who are not dressed up enough for our taste? Or the ones that don’t have as much money? Do we feel the same way about them? We wouldn’t mind getting rid of them, would we?
We are all a bunch of hypocrites! We are named after Christ and we would take better care of a tree than a person. Why do we act that way? Are we really that self-centered? Do we really believe that we are the only ones that have our act together? If you don’t know this already, let me be the one to break it to you. We don’t have it together. We are just as dysfunctional as everyone else.
The slaves said to him, "Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up? But he said, "No, for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them." What does that mean?
When I was going to seminary I worked on grounds crew, I was put in charge of a special task. I was to oversee the labor of three other workers. We were suppose to clean up the yard for our new Dean of Student Life. There were a lot of different plants growing in a bed around the front of the house. My boss took me around and told me what plants were weeds and should be taken out and what plants were good and should stay. Now I am no green thumb. The only plant that I can identify on my own is a rose. After he explained to me for about five minutes what we were to do, I promptly forgot about half of it. So as not to embarrass myself by asking him to explain it all over again, I developed a plan. I remembered that a few plants were good. To make sure that we got all of the weeds we would pull everything else out. I know we got all the weeds but I know we got a bunch of good plants too.
That’s the problem. It is difficult to tell which plants are the good ones and which are the weeds even for some green thumbs. Okay. You have color and leaf
shape and size and plant size. You can look at books and try to identify the plants. Maybe you can take a sample to a flower shop. Maybe you can even go to a
horticulturist.
How much more difficult is it to tell who the teal Christians are? Can you judge by the way they dress? Can you judge by how much money they give to the
church? Can you judge by their deeds? No! A Christian is not one outwardly but inwardly and even surgery and X-rays can’t tell you.
But why would Jesus allow the tares to exist among the wheat? Because of love. Jesus did not want any of the wheat to be destroyed. He wanted all of it to have
a chance to grow up strong and healthy. He did not want any of His wheat to be misjudged and thrown into the fire. He wants all of you to go to heaven. That is why He came in the first place. He saw our great need of being saved. He knew that only He could accomplish our salvation. He came to earth in the form of a man. As Jesus said, "Truly, truly, I say to
you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." So, He died on a cross on a hill outside Jerusalem some two thousand years ago. And that accomplished the forgiveness of all of your sins here
today. You are the fruit of His death. He rose from the dead three days later to show that He is God and that not only did He conquer sin but also death and the devil along with it.
Jesus forgives you for judging others. Jesus paid the price for your condemnation of others. Jesus has forgiven ALL of your sins. He has baptized you into his death so that your sins were buried with Him in His
death. He has raised you to new life with Him as He was raised from the dead. He assures you of your forgiveness as you kneel at the altar and receive His body, broken for you, and blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. And as you confess your sins to Him, you receive the assurance of full and complete forgiveness of all of your sins as the pastor absolves you saying, "Almighty God in his mercy has given his
Son to die for you and for his sake forgives you all of your sins. As a called and ordained servant of the Word I therefore forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."
What then, as forgiven sinners, do we do with all those people that tailgate or those that rev their engines or laugh and play too loudly? What do we do with those that don’t dress or talk or act the way we think they ought? What do we do with them? We love them. We show them how much Jesus loves them by loving them. We don’t slam on our brakes or slow way down. We don’t yell at them. We don’t look down on them. We love them. We pray for them. We tell them about how Jesus died to take away all of their sins. We invite them to church so that thepan hear the blessed words of Jesus every week. We don’t rip out the weeds. We leq them grow because they might actually be wheat and not tares after all.
This parable is a warning to us not to judge lest we judge wrongly but it is also wonderfully comforting. Jesus will not allow us to be uprooted prematurely. He will allow us to grow to maturity. He will keep us in our baptismal grace until He calls us home to be with Him. He will continue to forgive us. He will continue to sanctify us. Even when we are not faithful He will be faithful. He judges perfectly. He doesn’t make mistakes like we do in our judgements. He knows His own and His own know Him.
