Weeding

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
July 20, 2014

Weeding

My guiding principle for discerning what is a good plant and what is a bad plant is simple.  If the plant is pretty, or at least more pretty than ugly, the plant is good.  If the plant is ugly, or more ugly than pretty, the plant is bad.  This is why my husband is in charge of all the plants in our house and in our yard!  By my definition, the obvious plants, like roses, daffodils, even the basil, are safe.  These plants are pretty, therefore, they must be good.  But Queen Anne's lace and those beautiful little purple flowers that grow in the grass are also beautiful.  And those plants, I am told, are weeds.  Why would anyone want to get rid of something so lovely?  On the other hand, the super food kale is quite simply ugly.  The plant is not pleasing to the eye, nose, or to the touch. Some find the leaves pleasant to the taste.  Others disagree.  I would call kale a weed.  And I would be wrong.  My criteria for separating weeds from good plants are admittedly superficial and simplistic, and you really do not want me working in your garden!

However, even I can tell that Jesus is doing some funny gardening this morning.  Our parable begins "The Kingdom of heaven may be compared with someone who sowed good seed in his field."  Even I know to sow good seed!  This is not rocket science.  But, whenever Jesus goes all common sense on us, that is our call to play close attention, because Jesus is not our common sense savior. Then Jesus tells the disciples and the crowds "But when everyone was asleep, the enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat."   Seriously?  Even I know that weeds emerge all on their own.  No enemy is needed to plant them.  Then the slaves come to the Master and said "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?"  How many masters in New Testament times did their own sowing?  This master clearly has servants, and those servants would have done the hot, dirty work of sowing.  When the slaves are ready to do a little weeding for their master and get rid of the weeds so the good seed can grow, the master stops them.  "In gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat along with them.  Let 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."  The master clearly has control issues around the wheat and the weeds.

Given the problems in this parable with the way the Master does his farming, most likely Jesus is not giving gardening advice here but is up to something else.  And Jesus explains the parable to the disciples in the next paragraph.  At the end of time the Son of Man, that's Jesus, will send his angels to collect out of the kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and throw them into the fire where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, which happens to be a favorite phrase of Matthew.  Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

Our parable this morning reminds me of  the story in Genesis 2 where God forbids Adam from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  I believe God gives Adam this command not because we are  to be ignorant about the difference between good actions and bad ones, but because we are not to judge people's final destination.  We humans are quick to leap from "that action was wrong" to "that person is bad" to "weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth."  Scripture tells us that humans are made in the image of God and redeemed in Christ, and as Episcopalians we promise to seek and serve Christ in all people in our baptismal covenant.  All people.  Not just those whose actions are righteous in our eyes, or those with whom we agree. All people.

In the story we do hear from Genesis this morning, Jacob has a dream in which God repeats the promise made to his grandfather, Abraham, and reminds Jacob that his offspring shall be like the dust of the earth and all the families of the earth will be blessed in him and his offspring.  Jacob was no model of righteous behavior.  In fact, Jacob was a scoundrel.  Jacob deceived his father and stole his brother's birthright.  Jacob certainly looks like a weed and someone who would qualify for the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth award.  But God is a different kind of gardener and has chosen to work through Jacob and this family to bless all the families of the earth.

Jesus reminds us this morning that we humans cannot always tell the weeds from the wheat, so we are not to be about the business of pronouncing final judgement about who is in the Kingdom of God and who is not.  Weeding is not our job.  This does not mean that we are to ignore violence, condone evil, or endorse oppression.  The gospel calls us to stand up against such actions, many of which have been in the news this week.  But God is the judge of who is in the Kingdom of God and who is not.  The Psalmist describes  the God who makes this decision with these words: "Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar....Search me out, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my restless thoughts."  This is the God who will separate the wheat from the weeds on the last day.  When the slaves ask the master if he would like them to gather the weeds from the fields, they are told "No, for in gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat along with them."  The gospel calls us to live our lives sowing good seed and leaving the weeding to God.                

    Amen.