Wheat and Weeds – A Parable about Judgment
On the face of it, this parable is quite straightforward (although I wonder what they’d say on Gardeners Question Time). It’s about judgment. You may be more inclined to convert the weeds, and turn it into a parable about evangelism. Jesus certainly talks about conversion elsewhere, but not here. So you have a field full of wheat and weeds, all growing together. Should you try and pull up the weeds? No, says the farmer, because you could damage the wheat. Leave it until the harvest and then the wheat can be sorted from the weeds. Most parables don’t explicitly tell you what they’re trying to say, but in this case Jesus has thrown in an additional bit of decoding for you. The field is the world, the wheat is God’s followers, while the weeds are evildoers inspired by the Devil. At the end of the age, there will be a final reckoning and God’s angels will separate God’s people from evil people, and those evil people will be consigned to a terrible fate.
But what’s Jesus’ point? Well the point that is particular to this parable seems to be the bit about pulling up the weeds. Jesus says that if you pursue that policy, you’ll do more harm than good.
The world doesn’t see it that way. Throughout history it has been pretty commonplace for political regimes to want to remove opposition, to get rid of the people who are undermining what they are trying to do. I was listening to a Tony Blair interview recently. He was asked what he made of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and he replied by talking about the Russian leader’s different ‘incarnations’. Initially he was a member of the KGB, then he tried to pursue democracy until he felt it wouldn’t work for Russia, and now who can tell how big a monster he might become? Anybody who opposes him is swiftly arrested and thrown into prison. Alexei Navalny is a high-profile opposition leader. You may remember he was poisoned, spent time in Berlin recovering, and then on his return his flight was diverted, he was detained and then imprisoned, initially for 2½ years, then 9 and now, as of a few days ago, 19. He was obstructing the growth of Putin’s new Russia, a threat to what the president was trying to achieve. In terms of this parable, Putin felt he was a weed that needed to be removed.
Now you might quibble and argue that Putin is the weed and Navalny the wheat, but what I’m saying is that removing your enemy is a way of consolidating your position. It’s how the world has always worked. Believe it or not, Hitler described himself as the emissary of the Almighty. He was angry at Germany’s capitulation to the Allies in 1918, and blamed it on Jews and communist sympathisers. After he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he began a purge, initially targeting political, military and trades union leaders, but then introducing mercy killings and eventually the holocaust. Homosexuals, prostitutes, JWs, gypsies, alcoholics, pacifists, beggars, hooligans and criminals were all rounded up and sent to concentration camps. That massacre of his own people beggars belief. But he was determined to root out the weeds, as he saw it.
So no big surprises when powerful people get rid of undesirables, or when decent people try to avoid them. Gated communities and home-schooling are often methods of self-protection. None of us wants horrible people disrupting our lives.
But here’s the thing. Jesus slaps a ban on good people trying to get rid of evil people. You’d think that ridding the world of evil people would be a good thing, but Jesus says ‘Absolutely not’. And there are probably two reasons for that. Scholars will tell you that when Jesus talked about the weeds, he was probably referring to darnel, a lookalike plant. During the growing season, wheat and darnel were almost identical, but come harvest their respective colours changed, and the difference became more apparent. But in addition, below the soil their roots became entangled, so if you pulled up the darnel you might finish up damaging the wheat.
So think about that. It can be hard to pick the good-uns from the wrong-uns. And that’s probably true in the Church as well. From my experience, we Christians all get very judgmental. We label other people as non-Christians or unbelievers, but perhaps we should be looser and more inclusive, and leave the wheat and weeds judgment to God. He knows people’s hearts and motives, and He alone judges fairly. But sadly, the Christian Church has a long history of trying to do His job for Him.
Two things happened towards the end of the 12th Century. Firstly, there was a French merchant called Peter Waldo who started reading the NT and noticed that there was an enormous gulf between what Jesus taught and what the Church was teaching. So he gathered a group of interested friends and they read the Bible together, and tried to imitate Jesus in the process. They became known as Waldensians. Harmless enough you might think, but the Roman Catholic Church felt threatened by them and other dissidents, so it started a thing known as The Inquisition. The Inquisition used what was considered to be ‘gentle persuasion’ to get people to change their views and embrace orthodoxy (we tend to call it torture these days). The thumb-screw was so simple and yet so effective. You crushed a person’s thumb or fingers until they confessed the error of their ways and fell back into line.
I know what you’re thinking – that’s Catholics, we’re Protestants. We Bible-believing Christians would never do anything like that. But you’d be wrong. There was Huldrych Zwingli, the Protestant Mayor of Zurich. The first Baptists appeared in the 1520s, and in Zurich they started rebaptising his citizens, so Zwingli took one of them, Felix Manz, tied him up and threw him in the lake: Let him who talks about going under go under himself, he commented from the shore. Another celebrated reformer and Mayor of Geneva, John Calvin, had to deal with a deviant preacher called Michael Servetus. Servetus was what we today would call a Unitarian, and Calvin tried to persuade him to become a Trinitarian. Servetus refused, believing his views would help relations between Jews, Muslims and Christians. So in 1553, frustrated by his stubbornness and in an attempt to protect his citizens from being corrupted, Calvin had Servetus burned at the stake.
Even our Protestant heroes took the easy way out and disposed of those who opposed them (and don’t get me started on Martin Luther). We may not execute people today, but the intolerance persists. Interestingly, and in stark contrast to this parable, our intolerance of others tends to have more to do with their orthodoxy (or otherwise) rather than their conduct. American comedian Emo Philips captured it well:
In conversation with a person I had recently met, I asked: “Are you Protestant or Catholic?”
My new acquaintance replied: “Protestant.”
I said: “Me too! What denomination?”
He answered: “Baptist.”
“Me too”, I said. “Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?”
“Northern Baptist”, he replied.
“Me too”, I shouted.
We continued to go back and forth. Finally I asked:
“Northern conservative fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1879
or
“Northern conservative fundamentalist Baptist, Great Lakes Region, Council of 1912?”
He replied: “Council of 1912.”
I said: “Die, heretic!”
But let me go back. Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God. The language was not unfamiliar, because kings have kingdoms. They have territory under their control. If an invader attacks, the king’s army is mobilised and they look to neutralise the threat. But then it becomes clear that Jesus is not interested in territory or armies. He’s interested in people who embrace the call of God and who live their lives by the values of this King whose concerns transcend territory. And so the Christian movement spreads and you find small pockets of Christians all over the place. And those Christians aim to be good citizens wherever they live, whatever the culture, and they promote Jesus’ way of living. But as time goes on it becomes frustrating for them. They want to make their communities wholesome places, but they encounter opposition. The towns in which they live include people who are not interested in their gospel – they just want to have a good time. They don’t care about their neighbours or about justice and equality. What should they do? This is the question being posed by the parable. Clearly Jesus is saying that they can’t dispose of their opponents, so what should they do?
40 years ago, the late Evangelical leader, John Stott, wrote a book entitled Issues facing Christians today. In it he wrote a chapter examining this very question. He talked about the two extremes, imposing your views on people or, alternatively, laissez faire – letting people do whatever they want. Neither way is good, he argued. Instead he suggested a 3rd way of persuasive dialogue.
You may remember Jesus’ words to His followers – you are the light of the world. But that’s not all He says. He goes on: People don’t light a lamp and then hide it under a bowl. They put it on a stand so it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before people, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify God. In other words, get yourselves out of the church building and into society so that through your words and deeds people can visualise what the kingdom of God is all about. We need Christians in local politics and business and education and the caring professions and volunteering, modelling with integrity this kingdom way of living, and of course also in the family.
The reality is that good and bad will always exist, and we must accept that reality. There are good and bad people in society, just as there will be genuine and non-genuine Christians in every church. Even Jesus hosted a small group of twelve disciples that included a Judas. It remains a puzzle as to why He knew and yet didn’t root him out. Perhaps He nurtured hopes of him changing.
And it’s also true that those good and bad labels are not exactly straightforward, because we’re all a mixture of good and bad. But more of that when we get to the parable of the dragnet.
What you do and how you live is the one thing you can control. Other people must make their own decisions. In Matthew 25, He told that disturbing parable of the sheep and the goats, and in Matthew 7 you have those disconcerting words: Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, evildoers!’
So here and now, in this broken world and often hampered by our own broken lives, we choose to overcome evil with good. We strive to be imitators of Christ, holding firmly to His principles, calling others to follow Him yes, but leaving the ultimate judgments to God Himself, and praying that, in the meantime, our lives may have a positive impact. So, let’s let our lights shine! When we choose the path of integrity, who can tell the impact? As Jesus hung on the cross, he prayed “Father forgive them” – who can measure the impact of that one supreme act of love and sacrifice, but I, for one, am eternally grateful that He made it.
St. Luke's Church Ramsgate 