We read today a continuation of the parables of the kingdom in Matthew’s gospel. This time, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to a field where weeds and wheat get planted together and are only divided at the time of the harvest.

How many of you have ever spent time weeding? I must admit that I am terrible at weeding. I can stoop down and look at the plants and not be sure which ones should be pulled up. I know what I planted where but sometimes I am surprised at some unexpected plants coming up where I did not plant them. After all the definition of a weed is a plant growing where you don’t want it to grow.

Presbyterian minister and author, Kathleen Long Bostrom, shared an experience where she was playing with her children at the playground. The kids were sliding down the slide when she noticed that there was something green poking out of the mulch. It was a couple of small plants, just a couple of inches high with two broad leaves coming out of the stem. Rather than pulling up these plants growing where she did not want them to grow – these weeds – she dug them up carefully by the roots and planted them in a flower bed. She watched with great curiosity as these little weeds grew taller and taller until finally, when they were taller than her, they burst out into beautiful sunflowers. She marveled at what she would have missed had she just pulled up those weeds.

We live in a world that has been sown with good seed and with the seeds of weeds. Sometime we have a hard time telling the difference. Sometimes wheat can sure look like a weed.

There was once a man who fought non-stop with his brother. They started fighting from the time they were born. They would each try their own little ways to get under the other’s skin and take advantage of each other. Nothing between them was done out of kindness. Everything they did was to gain the upper hand. Even when their father was dying, these two brothers were still at odds and each sought to gain their father’s greater favor.

The brothers fought so much and they were so angry at each other that they even looked to kill one another. So one brother ran for his life. But his bad ways did not end when he got to his new home. Even when he had children, he favored some over the others and so he passed on the rivalry between siblings.

The brother kept to his swindling ways with everyone that he met. He took advantage of most everyone he met and once again found himself running for his life because of how he had treated other people. But he was really in a pickle now because the only place he knew to run to was to his old home and he knew that his brother would be waiting to meet him. He knew his brother would probably be none too happy to see him after all that had gone on between them. So as he approached his brother’s home, he began to think about how he could once again gain the upper hand over his brother. He plotted and schemed to think about how he could make his brother think he was more powerful than he really was.

Now this man had been dishonest, a con man, and all around bad person. Surely we could label this person as one of the weeds that Jesus is talking about in the parable. It’s clear that this is not one of the sheaves of wheat that God has planted and will welcome into the barn, right? Does anyone care to guess this man’s name? Does anyone know who this lying, cheating, dishonest man is? (Answer: Jacob.)

Jacob and Easu fought even before they had even left their mother’s womb (not such a fun experience for Rebekah). Jacob cheated Esau out of his inheritance, and he cheated his father-in-law out of a great deal of sheep. He favored one of his sons more than the others and needless to say – Joseph and his brothers did not get along that well – they sold him into slavery!

But as Lucy read earlier, God came even to this liar and cheat and promised Jacob that he would inherit a great deal of land and be the father of a great people. God then becomes known not only as the God of Abraham and Isaac but the God of Jacob as well. Huh? Who would have thought that? Jacob turned out to be a sheaf of wheat in God’s eyes when he certainly looked like a weed to us.

In the parable that Jesus shared there are two types of responses when it is discovered that there are weeds growing with the wheat. There is the response of the servants and the response of the master.

When the servants discover that there are weeds growing in their nice field of wheat they immediately go to the master, alarmed and edgy. They question the master, "Are you sure it was good seed that you planted?" There must be some reason that there are weeds in the wheat and the servant’s first reaction is to question the master’s choice of seed.

Once the alarmed servants are assured that their master did plant good seed, they want to immediately go out and do something about the situation. They want to go out into the field and begin to rip up these weeds that have disturbed their beautiful wheat field. They want to take matters into the own hands and as Charles Cousar wrote, "pull up the weeds to maintain a pure crop."

As I read that sentence, a shiver went up my spine as I thought about the many times throughout our history that ripping up has been done in the name of purity. As a people, we have fallen short and many times not resisted the urge to try to figure out who’s a weed and who’s a sheaf of wheat. Murders have been carried out in the name of purity – from the Crusades to the Holocaust to racially-motivated killings to hate crimes against gays and lesbians.

We try our hardest to categorize people. We want to be able to believe that we can tell the difference between weeds and wheat. But the master in the parable tells the servants that the reapers will sort it all out. The servants are not to touch the field because that is not their job. They don’t even have the eyes to see the difference between the weeds and the wheat. The master urges patience because he knows that in the servants frenzy to try to pull out weeds, some wheat would be damaged as well. How many sheaves of wheat have we seen damaged in our frenzy to rid the world of suspected weeds? In military terms this is called collateral damage. But in reality these are people and their livelihood that are destroyed all in our pursuit to eliminate what we see as weeds.

The response of the landholder is very different from the response of the servants. While the servants are alarmed and want to do something about the weeds, the master is content to know that there are weeds there but the specialists – the reapers – will be able to sort it all out in the end. The master knows that the servants are not qualified for the work of sorting out the weeds from the wheat.

I think that might be the most challenging part of this parable. We want to respond the same way that the servants respond. We are appalled that there are weeds in God’s garden. We want to roll up our sleeves and do something about it. But Jesus tells us that ripping up weeds is not our job. Finally, we have to accept that the job of separating the weeds from the wheat is God’s job and we are not God.

The master tells his servant to let the weeds and the wheat grow together. They are not told to do nothing for the field. They are to continue to tend the field, watering and caring for what looks like weeds and wheat alike. Who knows – some of the plants that looked so much like weeds may in fact turn out to be beautiful sheaves of wheat when the harvest comes.