Sunday’s Sermon: “What Does Jesus do with the Weeds in My Life?”

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Pentecost 10 – July 20, 2008
Gethsemane Lutheran Church

Pastor Darin Elvemo

Would you pray with me?

"Proud people that we are, O God, we bow our heads before you, move our souls to praise you as we ought, and grant us humble hearts that we may receive what you have revealed and do what you command for the sake of Christ our Lord. Amen."

When I was younger I remember my dad telling me how much he hated picking rocks out of the fields each spring as his parents prepared to plant their crops.

About the only job he hated worst than the back breaking work of picking rocks was picking weeds. My dad learned more about weeds than he ever wanted to know as a farm boy growing up in Newfolden, MN. Walking through the fields to cut out the weeds was his job from the time he was a young boy.

And being a good dad, he wanted me to share in his joy and teach me to pick weeds when I was a boy. (Thanks a lot Dad!) I remember weeds so tight and plentiful around the carrots that without a microscope you nearly couldn't see a single carrot sprout. We had rows and rows of carrots. Sometimes my friends would even help, thinking it was "quaint" to help…for a short time. The difference was that they could go home whenever they wanted to, and I had to keep going. It was a nightmare. Especially when we knew that this was not a onetime thing. They would be back in a couple of weeks. Every summer at least five times we had to live in this nightmare.

But in September when we could fill an enormous bowl with newly picked and scrubbed carrots, then it was all worth it.

While remembering these stories of my dad's youth, I found reflections on our gospel reading on a website (BloomingCactus). The author shared his own story of weed-picking as a boy:

A wise farmer once taught me that all weeds were not the same and could not be destroyed in the same way. A cockle burr had shallow but widespread roots and had to be pulled out to get all the roots. If you hacked it off at the ground level with a hoe it would be back in a week. A milkweed had a very long tap root that could not be pulled out. If you did try to pull it up, three separate sprouts would be back in a week. Milkweeds had to be hacked off with a hoe and would "bleed" and die as the sap ran out. If you didn't handle the weeds right, hours of backbreaking work in the sun would be completely wasted.

Jesus knew his weeds as well. The meaning of Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds becomes clearer when we look at the specific kind of weed he talks about. Tares are bearded darnel, mentioned only in this portion of the Bible, in Matt. 13. It is a species of rye-grass, the seeds of which are a strong poison that causes severe and dangerous drowsiness. It bears the closest resemblance to wheat until the ear of the crop appears, and only then the difference is discovered. It grows plentifully in Syria and Palestine.

I have been reading an extremely exciting pastor by the name of Rob Bell. Bell likes to say that the Bible is true, not just because it happened, but because it happens. The people who first heard Jesus share this parable of the wheat and weeds knew of which he spoke. They only had to look around them at their neighbors. I can just hear them even now: [Read with an exaggerated Jewish accent.]

"You better believe it, Jesus, let me tell you about Mrs. L'chaim, that old bitty. She never has a nice thing to say. Why just last week she was hollering at my kids who were doing nothing more than playing on the dirt path between our kibbutzes!"

"Or that boy Reuben, humph, that boy ain't ever going to amount to nothin'. All he does is sit around and play with that little dreidel top, spinning and spinning and spinning. Why can't he go out and find himself a job?!"

Back in the day when Jesus shared this story, it rang true in people's ears. The Bible is true because it tells of events that happened and happen now in our lives as well.

And in our current day it seems easy to look around and decide (or so we think) who the "winners" are and who the "losers" are. But I've got to tell you, after having worked with youth as long as I have I promise you that it isn't nearly as easy as one might think.

Sometimes the ones we assume are heading nowhere fast in life turn out to be completely different. And other times the teenagers that seem to have it all together end up going nowhere.

The problem with taking our hoe to the evil weeds of the world is that good and evil sometimes look so much alike. It only becomes clear later.

And we oftentimes don't have the luxury of time…or a kind of divine wisdom to discern the good types from the bad. And truth be told, we have both the wheat and the tares within us. Again, I refer you to the website reflections:

The psychologist Carl Jung would have approved of the parable of the wheat and tares. Jung explored the nature of the unconscious "shadow" that lives in each soul. The shadow gets filled with all the things that we repress because we don't want to know them. It is the garbage can of the soul where we try to toss out our unexamined greed, narcissistic selfishness and all the other seven deadly sins of which we can never seem to rid ourselves. Out of site this garbage rots and pollutes and unconsciously drives our actions. We think we have rid ourselves of our trash, yet it controls us behind the scenes of our conscious thought.

By acknowledging our "shadow" sides—our garbage, if you will—and by admitting that it is always there, I am confident that we are better able to understand ourselves. Whether we are talking about weeds or garbage, it is a caution that our quest for purity can lead to wrong ends when we ignore what is within our own souls.

Whether we are attempting to cast out that which is deemed unacceptable in our communities or ourselves, this parable of the wheat and tares speaks to me. Truth be told, if I am looking down the street or in the mirror one thing this parable tells me is that God wants me to let God be God and decide who (or what) is deserving of his acceptance and who isn’t.

But Jesus didn’t just tell stories. He walked the talk and shared that love with all. Some said Jesus spent way too much time hangin’ out with sinners…sinners, if are honest, that look a whole lot like you and me.

Frankly my children have helped me understand this parable better than anyone else. To them a dandelion is a work of beauty, a flower of equal value as a fine rose. Do you suppose maybe this is how God looks at you and me? Maybe, just maybe, those parts in you and those people around us we don’t particularly like are the wheat and they bug us because we are reminded of our own short comings in their presence.

Weeds and Wheat. I think within us we have them both, even within the same ability, they are impossible to differ ahead of time. In the aftermath we might recognize it.

Boy am I glad I will not have to pick weeds in the kingdom of Jesus.

And boy am I glad that Jesus does not allow any angels to pick weeds in me, for afterward there may not be anything left, as all skills I have also carry a dark side.

And this is the promise—the good news—in the midst of what might be frightening for some of you: it will be Jesus who will pick the weeds at the end of ages; not his angles nor any other creature will pick them. And I have seen more than once how when I lay all I am in his hands, he can even bear fruit with what seems all too much like weeds to me.