"Wheat OR Weeds" or "Wheat AND Weeds"

Yesterday's gospel was Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, the parable of the wheat and weeds. In my pastor's bible study group, we had a lot of conversation about how to understand this gospel and who are we, are we either the wheat or weeds, are we both at the same time, are we the field?  I think we are the later two, both wheat and weeds and the field.  


Enjoy the sermon!

I really struggle with this parable – the wheat and the weeds.  Not because the weeds are planted among the wheat, that evil resides amongst good, this is quiet obvious in the world today.  Nor do I struggle with passage because the weeds are not able to be destroyed without harming the wheat – evil cannot be taken out of this world without something happening to the good that is in it.  Instead I struggle with this passage because of the concept of predestination. 

Predestination is the concept that it has already been determined by God who is good and who is bad and nothing we can do will change that.  And when people hear this passage about the good seed being the children of the kingdom of God and the weeds are the children of the evil one and the seeds were sown by the Son of Man and the devil, people figure you must be either one or the other.  A weed cannot change into wheat and wheat cannot change into a weed.  We all must be either good or bad and since we are the ones who are hearing the passage we must be good and let’s get rid of the bad. 

People have used this passage to decide to get the bad people, the weeds out of their communities, out of their denominations and out of their congregations when people do not agree with them on the “right” interpretation of scripture, the “right” way of doing worship, the “right” stance on an issue or even how to interpret scripture in the first place.  We must get rid of the weeds, we must make this field, the world pure. 

And yet the sower told the slaves to leave the weeds. That in getting rid of the weeds before the harvest would cause damage to the wheat.  So maybe we aren’t either one or the other, weeds or wheat, and instead we are the field. 

God has sown good in us, and yet as human we are also full of evil.  If we try to get rid of the evil within us, we would not be able to survive since our very being, the very fact that we are human, is sinful.  Instead both good and evil resides in us and we cannot have one without the other.  Maybe we can look at the immortal wisdom of the soon to be summer blockbuster movie Cowboys & Aliens in which Harrison Ford says “I’ve seen good men do bad things and bad men do good things.”  Or maybe we can use that famous Lutheran saying that we are at the same time both sinners and saints.

So we can’t get rid the evil of this world or even the evil inside us, but there is still good news.  At the end of the age, whenever that is, October 21, 2011, sometime in 2012, when we die, or eons from now, the good and the evil within us and within this world will be separated.  The evil will pass away, by burning, being thrown into a furnace, being wept upon and gnawed on, I do not know exactly how, but the evil will leave us.  And the righteousness, the good in us, while shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.  We will be made good, and not just human good, but godly good, perfect, pure, sinless. 

Jesus has already died on the cross for us, to save us from these sins of our, this evil that resides in us.  The weeping and gnashing of teeth has already started and it is not yet here.  Our sins and evil have been forgiven and yet we will still sin and be evil and they will continue to be forgiven.  We have already been made righteous and yet we still do evil in order to just be made righteous again. 

We are not predestined to be either wheat or weeds good or evil.  Instead we are both wheat and weeds, good and evil.  But we live in the promise that one day we will all be just wheat, just good.  And there is nothing we can do about that, for it is Jesus who died on the cross to make us righteous so that we will shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.