Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

‍ I have recently returned from a family holiday in Japan. In the town where our family lives, the houses don’t have gardens, but in between almost every home are small blocks of land where vegetables and plants are planted and grow vigorously.  There are wild flowers and weeds tucked into every nook and cranny, very visible in among the plantings, also in the pavements and in all the corners of the land.  When I asked about this, I was told, the land holders don’t look on them as weeds; they are embraced as they attract birds and insects which help to keep the plantings fruitful. So, they are only pulled out, when necessary, at harvest time.  The local people frown on those who use chemical solutions to ‘kill’ the weeds, as this is seen as contaminating not only plants, but harming the larger food chain, polluting wildlife and even the air. 

This means I read Jesus’ parable with interest, as he continued his teaching from last week’s reading in Matthew (13:1-23) where we heard about the sower scattering seed with uneven results.  My own reflection is knowing soil changes over time, paths disappear, weeds become valued plants, new ways are added, rocks are moved and now, we recognise the presence of weeds isn’t necessarily all bad.  Rather, God works with what is present and what we offer in response to God and the world.  We can see differently, just as God does, and refuse the

Jesus’ parable in the NRSV bible talks about ‘weeds’ but these are believed to have been ‘darnel’, known as ‘bearded ryegrass’.  Darnel is difficult to identify from wheat in its early growth.  It is only when the heads of wheat form that the difference becomes visible, but by then pulling it out may damage the roots of the wheat growing beside it. 

So here is the parable’s challenge: the workers can’t safely pull out the darnel until the harvesting.  Pulling it out was important because darnel was known to cause sickness if it contaminated the wheat.  We also know healthy grain was the best currency of survival in Jesus’ time. To have someone deliberately sowing darnel into your harvest was a direct attack on someone’s livelihood and food security.  A ruined harvest meant debt, dependency or starvation.

Let us now think about the social context in the parable.  The land was owned, with slave labourers, and enough wealth and production to need a barn.  This wasn’t about small family subsistence farming.  However, its worth remembering first century farming in Galilee and Judea existed in a brutal environment.  The Roman colonisers demanded a tribute, in addition to Herod’s taxes, and the wealthy elite were always consolidating land holdings, stripping the peasants of their property, forcing them into heavy debt as tenant farmers or bonded labour, often very aggressively.   The parable is told from the perspective of the wealthy land owner who owns both land and crop.  Yet in spite of all these challenges which were instantly recognisable to his listeners, Jesus seeks both patience and restraint.  Let us think about where the power sits in the story, and still sits as a reality today. 

There are also differences between the parable and its interpretation, which don’t quite say the same thing.  Jesus’ parable urges restraint, while the parable’s interpretation offers apocalyptic sorting.  It is likely this interpretation comes later, from the early church and Matthew as we recognise Matthew’s apocalyptic language in the follow up. 

So, what is Jesus is describing.  The parable’s sharpest challenge is the refusal to let the righteous become the purgers. We know communities under threat often draw harder lines between ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’, and spend enormous energy policing the border between the two.  The temptation to see oneself as the purified remnant, quickly turns into self-righteousness; and the absolutely certainty of judgement is hard, strong, and loveless.  The desire to be the active guardians of the boundaries is overwhelmingly tempting for many.

When we hear rhetoric that dehumanises, excludes, is hate filled, and diminishes others; it is often when the rhetoric pours over apparent, visible boundaries and then ravages like wolves in the desire to weed out the danger to keep everyone safe. However, it is then we see that the urge to scapegoat the stranger, the alien, the one who is not like us, has finally overwhelmed the one who is meant to be guarding.  When this behaviour and response is laden with intergenerational trauma and its conflicting stories, we see the horror is beyond anything we can safely imagine. 

Yet Jesus told us clearly, we are not the reapers, and the reaping isn’t yet happening! Instead, we nurture, we wait actively and patiently, we care, watch and are ready when God calls us.   

Our challenge isn’t about doing nothing either, nor passive aggression, growling and hating, baiting, to keep the other away in the meantime.  It is so different to that: the restraint is entirely practical, as pulling up one plant could destroy the ‘other’. Sometimes faithful restraint means refusing to cause collateral damage to whatever or whomever it is we are trying to protect.  It’s a difficult practice of restorative justice and peace making for both activists and reformers, who feel the urgency of the moment.  The parable disciplines our impulse to tear everything up in pursuit of a purity we can’t yet see clearly, but saints and sinners can’t be neatly separated.  This is a very freeing idea to understand and accept.  We are a mixed field and we always have been both as Anglicans and Christians.  We practice an open table, and we refuse to require compliance with any entry rules for all who come searching.

We are reminded of this in the most recent debates about diversity, difference and war. However, Jesus, on this occasion, asks us to hold the tension gracefully, carefully, lovingly even, because as we grow together, we can refuse to be the executioner, and we can also refuse to accept the status quo.  We can let the final judgement be with God and as we hold both ends of the argument, and the people with arms outstretched, welcoming and loving, and like Jesus crucified on the cross, we can be certain God will prevail.

 
The Lord be with you.