A Peaceable Parable -- Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

A Peaceable Parable
(Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43)

This summer I have been teaching through a series of Jesus' parables. I had every good intention of posting summaries of my treatments to this site, but I had every good intention of keeping family information up to date here as well. C'est la vie. Given what I am gleaning from the parables this summer I do want to honor my desire to at least post some of these summaries so, I will do so over time working in reverse order. Hopefully something here will bless you as much as this study is blessing (read "challenging") me.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds (or the tares, as it is more commonly known) is, like many of Jesus' parables, so familiar to us, so common, that it is difficult for us to hear it. We read and/or hear the words on the page, but our familiarity doesn't allow the parable to read any longer. We know what it meant the many times we heard it previously, and so we know the end of the story the minute we hear the title. Such commonality stops the parable from having the impact it had (and continues to have) on its first hearers. To disabuse our familiarity, we consider the parable carefully so that we can stop, look and listen, in hopes of hearing it again afresh so that it may turn our understanding of "the world as it is" on its head the same way it did the earliest followers of Jesus.

In the opening line, the storyteller informs us that a person plants good seed in his field. But a prankster ("enemy") comes along and plants bad seeds among the good - and no one is the wiser until the plants begin to mature. At first, the servants accuse the person, now identified as their master (likely in a patron-client, master-servant relationship common in the ancient world), of faulty farming, possibly cutting corners on seed quality. Their master declares that the seed was good, but an "enemy has done this." When the offer comes to remove the weeds, we almost expect the Master to say, "Yes, I don't want the weeds to impact this season's wheat crop. Go through the fields and carefully remove them." The servants offered, so it is not an agriculturally suspect practice. He was their master, so it wasn't outside of the scope of their possible duties. But that is not the master's response. The master says, "No" and the justification is revolutionary: "for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them." The resolution of the master is to let the plants mature side by side, separate them at the harvest and deal with them accordingly.

Because of our experience with this parable and because Jesus utters this parable in a string of veiled parables that are designed to illumine the kingdom of heaven, ("Let anyone with ears listen!" [Mt. 13.43]), we know that he is not teaching his disciples prudent agricultural principles. Jesus utters parabolic commentary intended to reveal the terms of God's reign that is revealed in Jesus Christ. This is what Matthew calls the "kingdom of heaven." So how does God run things? What is God's, to use the classic term, economy?

Matthew prepares us for this parable with the infamous parable of the Sower (Matthew 13.3-9). In that parable, Jesus explains that people receive his teaching concerning the kingdom of heaven with different results. Extending this metaphor, the parable of the wheat and the weeds keeps us in the context of the field and considers the possibility of different types of teaching taking root. As Jesus explains to his disciples, the field is the world, which we will interpret as the space in which humans thrive, or culture. Into this "soil" is planted good seed; that is, those whose seed is "sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands" (13.23). But "an enemy," "the devil," sowed bad seed among the good. The bad seed are the "children of the evil one," or those who do not buy into Jesus' teaching concerning the kingdom of heaven. In fact, they embrace a way of life and thought antithetical to God's kingdom, seeking to subvert and overrule any way of being that takes seriously God's reign in the cosmos. Jesus seems to say in this parable what we all experience on a daily basis: It is part of God's economy; that is, God's way of running the world, to allow Good and Evil to co-mingle.

Working in this frame, Jesus' parable engages the classic questions of Good and Evil. He speaks into this centuries long conversation the Word that it is in the scope of God's wisdom to allow both Good and Evil to dwell together. Good is and Evil is, rooted in the soil of human culture, sustained by God as part of God's Providence. Relative to the state of existence prior to the End, God does not answer the binary question as to whether Good or Evil prevail. Jesus simply says they dwell together as part of human existence. This reality speaks powerfully to the classic philosophical inquiry into theodicy, or the question of God's justice. How can a good God allow evil to exist? Jesus seems to say here that God's Providence defines the good in between the time of Creation and Eschaton as the wheat and the weeds dwelling together in human societies and cultures. God's Goodness - and the kingdom of heaven - is unveiled in Good and Evil dwelling together in the world.

In this regard, the parable confronts us with a difficult teaching that cuts against our often quick and simple dissection of the cosmos into good and evil categories. We often define our way of seeing things as "good" and then vilify those who dare to disagree as "evil". Whether in the realms of theology, philosophy, law, politics, or other areas of human thriving, this parable calls those with ears to hear to show hospitality to "evil" In fact, this way of being becomes paradigmatic for the life of kingdom people. We are not those who stand confidently in our righteousness, having clearly delineated the "weeds" and say, "Bring on the fire, Lord!" God allows for the planting of good seed with the bad seed and it grows in the same field. It is only at the harvest that God separates the wheat and the weeds. In the mean time; that is, in the field of human existence, we trust God to know the difference and must not get caught up in the game of categorizing who is good and who is evil. Rather, our duty is to know the master and his servants and to allow ourselves to be cultivated so that in the day of harvest we will be sorted among the wheat and not the weeds.

[NB: I believe that this parable "breaks" (as all good demonstrative narratives do) when we hitch onto a Calvinist tendency to literalize the seeds. I do not believe that this parable, based on the broader teaching regarding the kingdom of heaven in the gospels, says that good seed is eternally good seed and those sown as bad seed are eternally bad seed. That once you are a "child of the evil one" you will always be and, likewise, that if you are a "child of the kingdom" that you will always be. Pushing this aspect of the parable into this broader conversation about pre-destination does not do justice to the nature of parables or the whole of Jesus' persuasive proclamation to those who were "bad seed" and, in the course of his ministry clearly became "good seed" relative to the promise of the gospel of grace.]

More directly speaking, it is not the task of those who are in Christ to root out "evil" in either the church or the world. Disciples of Jesus who believe that it is our task to assert our righteousness over against the unrighteous and then "weed them out" from the flock (or from the world) are not involved in kingdom business. The parable emphasizes as one of its central points the revolutionary teaching that, "for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them" (13.29). That is, by rooting out evil, the wheat itself is uprooted. Just as the weed dies by being uprooted, the wheat also dies by the very process that was thought to bring death to evil for the sake of the continued existence of the good. I find this insight of the parable ironic and profoundly true. When those in Christ see it as their task to identify evil and destroy it, they become something Other than disciples of Christ because they cut against the grain of God's Providential wisdom to allow the wheat and the weeds to dwell together.

We can cite myriad examples from history and culture of these sorts of righteous witch hunts in action, but I am also reminded of another story from the Apocalypse of Abraham among the pseudepigraphic writings from the early Christian era. In the story, God grants Abraham a vision of all things from the vantage point of a heavenly chariot ride prior to his impending death. During the journey, Abraham not only takes in the grandeur of God's beautiful Creation, but also notices aberrations - evil - taking place. And, like we may expect someone with the righteousness of Abraham to do, he strikes down every evildoer he sees with thunderous bolts of lightning. God's response is not to praise Abraham for his righteous judgment, but to get him out of the sky as quickly as possible lest he destroy all of humanity! This story weaves nicely with the theme of the parable of the wheat and the weeds. God, who is Righteous, determines righteousness on His terms. He does not hand this job off to his disciples. The role of the disciple is to live faithfully before a watching world and to leave final determination of the righteous and the unrighteous to God.

So, how then shall we live in this wheat and weed mixed culture? First, I hear the call of Jesus in this parable to embrace its witness as our fundamental reality. A cosmos where Good and Evil are clearly delineated is an eschatological reality. Here in the middle, we find that even our greatest good bears the shadowy possibility of evil. The most humble act of service bears the possibility of being swallowed up by pride. In addition, evil has the potential of being transformed into good by God's redemptive providence. Hopeless life situations and hopeless people we too easily write off experience transformation and redemption all of the time. Embrace the ambiguity that we find even in ourselves and resist the temptation to divide the world into categories of Good and Evil. Second, followers of Jesus should live as "children of the kingdom." (13.38) As such, we listen to the master and submit ourselves to His reign. Seen through the lens of this parable, this means unashamedly living lives of dedicated Christian service in and for the world and speaking openly to others about our motivations for consistently doing all that we do. With our focus on God's righteousness and God's kingdom, our witness will become compelling and ultimately true for a watching world. Maintaining this stance will keep us from looking around to establish our righteousness compared to what we see in the world and, instead, keep our vision on the Master who reigns over all and is our righteousness.

Keeping our vision trained on the Master will transform the way we see a whole host of cultural, social, theological and political issues. By engaging these conversations in light of the kingdom and in the knowledge that both the feet of the good and the evil are planted in the same field, we may demonstrate a way of being that persuades evil to be transformed, which is the redemptive goal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.