Recently in the lectionary, the Jesus parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matt 13: 24-30) came up. The one where the master tells the servants to let the weeds grow with the wheat until the harvest. As an old farm boy, this is a difficult parable for me. I was trained to value that clean corn fields and pastures. I know one good way to interpret this parable is to say to myself, do not be so quick to draw lines among people. Do not be so fast to declare who is “in” and who is “out.” Patience, things may even change. And finally, God will take care of all this in due course. But that is hard, it caused me to reflect in a couple of ways.
One reflection is what is (or who is) a weed. In our impatient world, we often want to immediately determine whether things and people are in or out. Let me give you a personal example. Some years back, my new spouse and I went to what would be the equivalent of Oakland Nurseries. What I saw there were crazy people, paying big bucks for pots of weeds. Weeds that I had spent many sweltering summer afternoons digging out of pastures. And they were paying big bucks for those. Crazy people. But things change. Today, I look at those pots and I say to myself, my friends in the green industry are pretty darn shrewd. And maybe those plants do look kind of pretty. I know for sure they are hearty. Maybe weeds can become, or are, wheat that I have yet to see.
In our time, we tend to focus on the meaning of this parable for the life of the church. Like that field in which grows both healthy wheat and destructive weeds, the church in reality is a mixed-bag. Like the slaves, there are those who want to immediately weed out those dangerous, unwanted elements. For me it is like soybean farmers who must cleanse fields of every other type of plant. They will plant into cover crops, spray, may even walk the rows with a hoe if they have to, to make sure we have clean beans. This is not all economics, judgment is involved here. Clean beans means I am a “good” farmer. My neighbors, anyone who passes by knows that I am a good farmer. Not like those negligent ones with weeds in their beans. What sinners they are! I, maybe we, have this metaphor stuck in our heads? Clean rows of beans means Godliness?
I would contend this is exactly the wrong metaphor to have stuck in our heads. It to me is both dangerous and unbiblical. Yet in our modern church we see where matters of behavior and lifestyle, theology and biblical interpretation become the basis for litmus tests. What behavior is, who is a weed? Who is the chosen plant? This is not just a conservative versus liberal or reformed versus non-formed. All elements of our different church expression are troubled by how broadly or narrowly we should draw the boundaries of the contemporary church. Whom can we afford to let in, and who must remain out? Who is accepted, or not, by God, and why? In the very asking of such questions, we so often assume that it is our job to draw the line that will define the church.
God, who is glimpsed in this parable, models for us an infinite patience that frees us to get on with the crucial business of loving, or at least living with, each other. In this space created by such patience, interesting change can happen. It is not just the other that may be changed. We all may experience a larger reality. This is the sense in which we are “reborn” not just once, but over and over and over again.
Peace be with you.
Robert J. Gustafson, Ph.D., P.E, is pastor of West Berlin Presbyterian Church, 2911 Berlin Station Road.
