I must admit, I was a bit troubled by this scripture passage (the Parable of the Weeds). Let me tell you why I found this unsettling:
It’s about the weeds.
You see, every time I walk down the sidewalk to Church, I marvel at what’s growing beside it: along with the grass, there are these small, low-spreading weeds with beautiful, tiny yellow flowers. Many are no bigger than a pin head, but there they are – you just have to look for them. I smile every time I see them, how God adorns the lowliest of His creations with beauty and purpose. On more than one occasion, I’ve told my wife, “I want to be a beautiful weed.”
In my back yard, I could never get grass to grow properly - no matter how much seed, lime, fertilizer or water I put on it, I could never get a decent looking lawn. Finally, I decided to plant clover – white Dutch clover to be precise. And what a difference that made. That side of the yard is now a green carpet, with white flowers for the bees and plenty of tender greens for our visiting rabbits – it’s semi-perennial and drought-resistant, too, and to me, it’s just beautiful.
Yes, there are some broadleaf weeds in there too, but I don’t mind – it’s all lush and green!
But if a traditional grass lawn is your benchmark, then you’d say it was just a bunch of weeds. And in today’s scripture reading, Jesus takes a dim view of the weeds.
You can see why this is troubling to me.
Fortunately, I remembered what Pastor Ott taught us: a weed is not a type of plant, it’s a plant that doesn’t belong where it is. If you intend to grow clover, like I do, then clover is not a weed, it’s a deliberately planted crop. Farmers and ranchers frequently plant fields of clover, to provide forage for their livestock and to enrich the soil.
So a weed is not defined by what type of plant it is, but rather by where it is, and how it got there.
Okay, I’m feeling better now…
In this Parable, we see that these weeds were sown by an enemy with malicious intent: the weeds didn’t belong in that wheat field – they were deliberately put there to compete with the crop, to rob the wheat of nutrients, to decrease the harvest.
The servants wanted to pull up the weeds, but the landowner knew better: undoing one damage would create more damage, or as I like to say, fixing one problem can cause other problems. (Just ask any amateur handy man…) The landowner knew it was better to just let things run their course. The wheat would grow, in spite of the weeds.
Now you know how my mind wanders - something that small shouldn’t be out on its own… I started thinking about all the types of weeds we find in our lives – the things that do us no good, the things that don’t belong in God’s harvest.
Make no mistake about it: evil is always afoot, and Satan never sleeps. The devil is always busy sowing the seeds of evil. The question is: what do we do about it?
Above all else, we need to realize that though the devil plants the seeds of evil, it is we ourselves who water and nurture them.
More often than not, we grow our own weeds in God’s garden. God’s plan for us is to love Him and our neighbor, that we may reap the harvest of heaven. (There are 80 verses in the Bible that echo that thought – Luke 10:25-28 is perhaps the best known.) When we succumb to envy, strife and bitterness, when we’re obsessed with material things and status, when we harden our hearts and look down on others – these are all weeds that we ourselves nurture in our own souls.
So here's the lesson I take from this parable: not to be obsessed with uprooting all the weeds in our lives – we can do more damage than good. There will always be more weeds, and when all we look for are faults, that’s all we’re going to see, and we’ll lose sight of the beauty and goodness all around us – like those little flowers in the grass. Rather, we should let what God has planted within us grow and blossom. We should:
1. Water God’s Word with prayer,
2. Cultivate God’s grace with thanksgiving, and
3. Harvest God’s blessings with praise.
God’s love, grace and mercy will bear fruit that overcomes all evil.
We should always look for joy and beauty – “Seek and ye shall find.”
And let us not be quick to judge – the person or thing we see as undesirable - a weed - may actually be a beautiful wild flower in God’s eyes, planted with a purpose, to glorify Him and His creation.
So let’s not get lost in the weeds: if something leads us away from God, it’s a spiritual weed. If it brings us closer to God, it’s not a weed.
