"Radical Stories, Radical Christianity:
The Parable of the Sower"
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
January 14, 2007

He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to
someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy
came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants
came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the
householder came and said to him, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where, then, did these weeds come from?” He answered, “An enemy has done this.”
The slaves said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied,
“No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of
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.” ’
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him,
saying, ‘Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.’ He answered, ‘The one who
sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the
children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who
sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels.
Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the
age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all
causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where
there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun
in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!

In the mid nineties, I was asked to do my first wedding, though it was a wedding with a
little bit of a twist—things are never simple in my life, I’ve found out very quickly.  
Essentially, I inherited, by default, a marriage ceremony between two men, who had
already been together for almost 20 years, and they had decided to do a ceremony,
literally on the anniversary of the day they had met years earlier in Tennessee.  It was
first time I had done any kind of marriage like ceremony, much less something like this,
but it was a great experience because of these two really great guys.  They were kind,
gentle, good people who just wanted to celebrate their love with family and friends, and
it was to be a big family affair, because everyone had been invited, from great-
grandmothers, to nieces and nephews, and everyone, miraculously, accepted their
invitation, and many of them were going to be part of the ceremony.  It was really great,
because they were very much still in love with each other, and you could see it clearly
between them—the whole family had seen and witnessed to it for years, and logically
enough, over 20 years of seeing that kind of love lived out before their eyes, whatever
personal hesitation or concern, or even condemnation they had earlier about the
relationship between these two men, it just melted away over the years before the
obvious goodness of their life together.  

But earlier, I should have probably said that almost everyone’s hesitation had melted
away—there was a sister who had married a very theologically conservative husband,
and even though they had been guests and stayed overnight and had eaten at the
table of these two men, and had shown no real uncomfortableness or condemnation of
their relationship, this whole holy union/marriage thing was just too much for them, and
they made clear that they were not going to come to the ceremony, period.  It was a
real shock to these two guys, this decision by one of their sisters not to be present,
when, literally, the rest of the family would be there, celebrating their 20 years
together.  They came to me to ask how to respond and the only thing I could think of
was to just remind this sister that what was being asked of her was her presence, not
her approval, and to let go of trying to link the two, to let go of judgment and let God
sort who was right or wrong on this matter.  Sadly, the sister and her husband still didn’t
show up, but otherwise, it was incredible celebration of the life these two men had built
together over two decades, and there wasn’t a dry eye in that crowded backyard, full of
family, friends, and co-workers—it still is one of the most moving celebrations of love I’
ve ever presided over (and that is running into the 70’s at this point)—its not good
when the minister doing the ceremony gets choked up!

In looking at our radical parable today, I think that sister would have done well to listen
to Jesus’ story because I think it would have freed her from the terrible burden she had
taken on for herself, which is to determine who is in and who is out, who are the weeds
and who are the wheat.  Like last week, Jesus tells a story centered on farming and this
time the focus is about the appearance of weeds amidst the good wheat in this
particular farmer’s field.  Good seed is sowed in the field, and then the normal need for
sleep calls to the workers in the fields, but during the night an enemy of the farmer, in
an attempt to damage his crop, sows bad seed, weeds, amidst the good seed.  Nature
takes its course, and both wheat and weed grow up together, prompting questions from
the slaves, who probably did much of the planting, about the kind of seed that was
planted earlier.  But master of the house blames the weeds on someone’s intentional
sabotage and the slaves ask whether or not they should go ahead and rip up the
weeds, but the master declines, instead worrying that ripping out the bad weeds will
also rip up the good wheat.  

Again, it’s pretty straight forward parable, and the most obvious and interesting
emphasis in this parable, in this story, is on the farmer’s decision not to weed the
garden before the spring, so to speak, his choice not to take eradicate the bad seed
growing amidst all the good seed before its time to harvest the grain.  The bulk of the
story seems to be focused on this baffling choice by the farmer, because I think most of
us instinctively would want to clean up the field or the garden, or whatever, so you
wouldn’t have to do what the farmer in this story wants to do later on, which is to
separate at the time of harvesting.  In the parable of the sower that we heard last week,
the weeds choke the wheat, but in this story, the master has no real concern about
that, and instead allows the good to grow alongside the bad, and there seems to be no
concern that the weeds will hurt the wheat.   Now, I’m not much of a gardener, but one
of the things I’ve noticed Douglas doing while I am sitting on the couch, looking out the
window on beautiful fall and spring days, watching the football game, or something else,
is that his strategy seems to be the opposite of the farmer in this parable—he seems to
go after the weeds quickly and wants to root them up fast, so he can get rid of them
before they overwhelm the good plants he actually want to grow in that particular
space.  But, no, not our guy, not our farmer, in Jesus’ story here: he lets the weeds and
wheat grow side by side, claiming that to rip up the weeds will endanger the wheat, that
weeding the garden is as dangerous to the good plants as it is to bad plants.  

Now, that is an amazing, amazing message for us, I think, something that we need to
hear in this place, and certainly the larger church needs to hear, this message that
cautions us against the very thing that we Christians have had a tendency to do over
2000 years of our history, in our efforts to have a perfect, weed-free spiritual garden,
so to speak.  At different places, at different times, we Christians have gone after other
Christians or even non-Christians that we haven’t agreed with matters of doctrine, or
morality, or belief, and we have pulled and pulled at those that we perceived to be
weeds, by calling them heretics, or immoral, or sinners, drawing the circle in closely to
make sure we didn’t include “them” in that group we understood to be “us, the wheat.”   
In our effort to be “right,” we seem more than willing to annihilate those who are “wrong”
and nothing will do until the wrong kind of people agree with us on this issue or that
issue.  

And sometimes we forget that these stories are kingdom stories, not just church
stories—this is a parable about the kingdom, as Jesus points out, and the kingdom is
bigger, much bigger than the church.  The kingdom of God goes beyond the borders of
the church, as we saw in last week’s parable, in the reckless seeding that sower does in
the different kinds of soil, good and bad.   But oftentimes we inside the church feels as
if it our duty to go about ripping out the weeds we see both inside and outside of the
church, in the greater world, and if some people get in the way of our efforts to purify
the world, in our efforts to rip up evil in this world, then, well, you know, collateral
damage is to be expected in the good fight, right?  What is that old line—“kill them all
and let God sort ‘em out?”  And yet, Christ never chooses that road, never calls upon
his disciples to fight and destroy others in order to preserve the purity of his teachings,
or even his own life.  It’s not that Jesus is saying to tolerate evil, but he does seem to
be wanting us to acknowledge that evil will always exist in this world, and will do so until
some later date, until some final settling of the score that God alone will do, on
judgment day.  I just think he wants us to realize that using the tools of evil, like
violence, or exclusion, to purify or make the world better does not further the kingdom,
the realm he is trying to build.  By all means necessary is not the way of the kingdom.  
In doing so, we pull up the good with the bad, and all that is left in the field is nothing,
and we forget the alternatives way that Christ calls us to fight the shadows of this world,
the ways that have nothing to do with ripping, the way that loves others relentlessly, our
enemies, until that love overcomes them and changes them.  It is the way of the one
whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow, Martin Luther King, who showed us that you
can change the world without the sword, without destroying the enemy, because he
knew that wheat and weeds grow up next to each other, and by destroying our enemies
we will destroy ourselves.

Now, that message, this idea that we should let go of trying to weed the garden, that we
should let go of trying to purify the world, or purify the church of those we disagree with,
and let God do that work at some later point, that interpretation seems to be pretty
obvious, I think.  Most of the elements of this parable seem to build up to that
interpretation, though one can go in all sorts of directions, as well, of course—that is
the gift of parables, actually— but over the centuries the church, ironically enough, has
generally recognized that this interpretation sort of fits this parable, though, of course,
it has rarely practiced the truth that seems obvious here.  

But remember there is something odd here, odd about the explanation that Jesus gives
to his disciples about this parable—an explanation that seems to run pretty contrary to
everything I just said in this sermon so far, and how the church has generally
interpreted this parable.  Jesus actually does something very surprising here, because,
in relenting the disciples desire to have him interpret yet another parable that he wants
them to interpret on their own, he becomes almost comically literalistic in his
explanation of it to his disciples.  His earlier explanation of the parable of the sower
seemed to fit the parable as he told it, but now the explanation he gives them doesn’t
seem to fit the emphasis of the actual parable, the actual story he told moments
earlier.  

In Jesus’ unraveling of the parable of the weeds, he focuses almost all of his
explanation on the fate of the weeds that God will pull up at the end of time and throw
into the fire.  A half of a verse in the actual parable all of sudden becomes the
centerpiece of his interpretation of it, and that always, always puzzled scholars.  Why
put all this effort in talking about not pulling the good with the bad, and giving all these
details around the slaves asking about what to do, and them being told to do nothing,
when its seems as if, in his explanation of the parable, that the whole point of was that
the bad weeds are going to get it in the end?  Some have said that this is an obvious
addition to the authentic parable by the early church, who wanted a clear indication that
good people will be rewarded and bad people will be punished, in the end, one way or
another—I mean, that is the way we want all the world to be, and maybe the early
church was wanting to emphasis the punishment stuff rather than the more obvious
stuff about us not trying to rip each other out of kingdom of God, because they were
experiencing what Jesus was experiencing on the cross, which was the cost in choosing
love rather than hate and vengeance.    I mean this parable is all about not being
ruthless in our attempts to have a perfect world, or a perfect church, or even a perfect
self, but somehow, in Jesus’ explanation of it, it becomes a parable focused on the
punishment of the weeds—and in that moment, I think it becomes more to the disciples
liking, since they wanted a Messiah to be ruthless in chasing the Romans out of Israel.

But I wonder if Jesus knows that this is what his imperfect disciples want to hear,
because there is a tone to this explanation of the parable that connects it to the weeds
that really fits the parable better than taking Jesus’ explanation too literally
here…perhaps Jesus is being very, very sarcastic here—someone has said that Jesus
was probably “throwing them a bone” so to speak, as he done in the past (Capon).   He
knows what the disciples want, and what they want is what we all want, which is justice,
which is knowing that the folks who are the weeds in this world will get their just deserts,
and those of us—us presumably, right?—we who are wheat will get rewarded.  They
just wanted to clarify that with Jesus, because the parable contradicts their instincts and
our instincts, really, for human justice.  So, he throws them the bone of letting them get
what they want from this parable—the settling of the score with their enemies, the
Romans, the weeds they saw all around them.  

Of course, the parable is actually mostly about mercy and about not being self-
righteous, and not trying to figure who are the weeds and who are the wheat, about
letting go of being right, and letting God sort that out in the end.  But, you know,  the
disciples probably just want to check in with Jesus to make sure that the divine
punishment isn’t missed in all this mercy stuff, and Jesus gives it them, and when they
walk away, I suspect that he just sighs, and that his heart is heavier, because they still
don’t get it.   Surely there is a settling of the score in the next world, or at the end of
time or whenever—of course, that in and of itself is never quite settled in the Bible, the
“when and how” it will occur—but that this not the heart of this parable, and Jesus
knows that…but they don’t, and sometimes we don’t, and because of that inability to
get it, the church, and the world, has paid a dear price for our preference for justice,
which we confuse with vengeance, over the great gift of mercy we receive from God.  

And so I wonder, if that sister in the story I shared with you earlier would have been
able to hear what is even hard for us to hear, which is to welcome justice but to
ultimately welcome mercy even more, especially onh this side of eternity.  This sister
may have been completely right on this issue, and we may have been wrong, but she
wouldn’t let God sort that out for her, and so it robbed her of a beautiful moment with
them and with the rest of their family.  She was sure we were the weeds and she was
the wheat, and, despite what Jesus says here in this parable, she didn’t think we should
grow together, side by side.  But I think she got it wrong, because I think the Gospel
message is not found in that earlier slogan from Soldier of Fortune magazine I
mentioned earlier, its not “kill them all and let God sort ‘em out,” but instead the heart of
the matter, whatever side we find ourselves on, on whatever issue, the message of
Jesus is “love them all, and let God sort it all out.”  You know, this sister was trying to
figure who is “in” and who is “out,” and yet Jesus is all about telling them to love the
whatever garden they happen to be planted in, and to love whomever they are planted
by, whether it be wheat or weed—and who knows who we are, at any given moment, of
course—so a little humility around the issue of who are wheat and who are weeds
would probably serve us well.  Let the garden be, let it grow, and if we think there is a
weed growing beside us or before us, go ahead and grow beside it and love that other
with the kind of relentless love that Jesus did, as Martin Luther King did, and let the
gardening, let the gardening be God’s difficult and terrible work.  Amen