Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace be to you this day and always. Amen.

20 years ago, my husband and I moved out to far western MN, 10 miles outside of the town of Dawson, to begin our first calls (my husband served as a pastor for 10 years before he became an elementary teacher). My husband served what’s called an “open country” church, which in this case meant a church that’s surrounded by farm fields. We moved into the parsonage across the gravel road from the church, which meant our parsonage was also surrounded by farm fields (and that the men of the church would wake us up at 6am every Friday in the summers when they would mow the cemetery).

I grew up in Brainerd, in the lake country of north-central MN, and had no experience with open country living. One of the first things I wanted to do was plant a big country garden. Our nearest neighbor, who was a church member, lived a quarter-mile from us and farmed the fields around the parsonage property. He volunteered to leave a tiny section of the field next to our yard unplanted so we could start a garden.

I had so much fun buying seeds and getting the garden plot ready. We planted potatoes, peas, carrots, beans, lettuce, corn and squash. I excitedly dreamed about the harvest. And we waited.

The plants started to grow and I watched them every day. They looked pretty good at first. But soon we could tell that something was preventing the plants from thriving. As days passed, they looked sadder and browner. Our harvest was sparse.

My husband and I wracked our brains to try to figure out what happened. We planted our seeds in fertile farm soil. The corn right next to our plot looked green and lush. Why didn’t our plants do as well? The only thing that did well in our garden was the sweet corn…hmmm…

Then we figured it out. Herbicide.

When the farmer sprayed his corn, some of the herbicide drifted into our garden, killing our plants. There was probably residual herbicide in the soil as well. In his effort to get rid of the weeds in his corn, he also got rid of our little garden plot.

The weeds among the wheat.

Last week we heard Jesus tell the parable of the sower, about a terrible farmer who throws seeds every which way. Today we hear the parable of the weeds among the wheat, about another terrible farmer who decides not to weed anything. Or is he a terrible farmer…? Because if our neighbor farmer had followed this parable’s advice and didn’t spray his corn, if he let the weeds grown among the wheat, our little garden probably would have done well. But it may have affected his efficiency and his yield—for the sake of our little plot. Yet in God’s kingdom, that may be good farming.

In Jesus’ parable, the farmer plants his crop and overnight an enemy sows weeds among the wheat and goes away. When the workers in the field discover the weeds, they ask the farmer if they should pull them. But apparently these weeds grow deep and tangled roots, because the farmer tells them to leave the weeds, as pulling them would also damage the wheat. At the harvest, the farmer will tell the reapers to separate them.

I’ve tried gardening a few more times over the years, and I’ve discovered that I don’t like it. I dislike the bugs and getting dirt under my nails, but I mostly dislike the unpredictability of gardening. There’s no way to know if your hard work is going to produce a harvest. There are too many ways a garden can be ruined, from bunnies to pests to drought to weeds. Today I happily grow a few herbs in pots that I don’t have to weed.

Be careful, Jesus says in this parable. Don’t assume you’re an expert gardener or farmer, even if you’ve been gardening or farming for years. The process of growing something is unpredictable. New plants are tender. Focusing only on destroying the weeds will also ruin the harvest.

Plus, the definition of a weed is subjective. A weed is a plant in the wrong place at the wrong time. How do we know we’re identifying the right plant as a weed? In this parable, the farmer doesn’t give that job to the field workers. It’s all done at the harvest, taking the decision and the action out of their hands.

Sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference between a good plant and a bad one, especially when it can act both good and bad depending on the circumstances. And if we can’t tell the difference between good plants and bad plants, why do we think we’re any smarter about ourselves or other people? Give us a gardening hoe and who knows what plants we’ll dig up. Give us other people and we’re quick to judge and make assumptions about their value and worth. We’re capable of both goodness and harm, as people and as communities.

It’s terribly tempting to want to garden our way. We think we know the best way to garden and we forget to leave the harvest to God. We think we know what’s right for others and our world. And we so often get it wrong. The best intentions can still lead to the worst consequences.

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about meeting an engineering student who was visiting from Europe. He excitedly told her about going wild ricing in Minnesota with his friend’s Ojibwe family—they started the day on the lake at dawn, and all day they poled through the rice beds, knocking down ripe seed into their canoe. He reported that the method wasn’t very efficient—at least half the rice just falls is the water and is wasted and they don’t seem to care. He decided he wanted to design a new grain catching system for the family who hosted him, as a sign of his thanks. He sketched it out and showed them how his technique could get 85 percent more rice. The family listened to his ideas respectfully, then said, “Yes, we could get more that way. But it’s got to seed itself for next year. And what we leave behind is not wasted. You know, we’re not the only ones who like rice. Do you think the ducks would stop here if we took it all?” Kimmerer ends this story with, “Our teachings tell us to never take more than half.”

Be careful, Jesus says in this parable. If you think you know what’s right for the fields, step back. Your timing may be wrong. Your talent for organized plant beds may not be needed right now. Your need for efficiency will only make more problems and not leave enough for others. The kingdom of God is a messy field where the weeds and wheat grow together, where good farming may look like bad farming, where God’s gardening plans are more important than ours, where we step back and watch rather than assume we know what’s best, where we are taught to recognize the truly dangerous weeds that need eliminating. Trust in God’s slow growth and harvest, where the tools are love and mercy, where glory is in the chaos, where God is constantly reshaping us into beloved community. Amen.