Yesterday was a big day at Peachtree. At the 10am service, not only did we ordain a new class of Elders, but we also acted upon the recommendation from the Pastoral Nominating Committee’s motion to approve that Rev. Dr. Richard Kannwischer be welcomed as our next Senior Pastor.
In the midst of all of that, we also continued in a great series on Jesus’ parables. The one on tap yesterday was “The Parable of the Weeds” in Matthew 13:24-30. The gist of it is this: a farmer sowed good seed in a field and an enemy tampered with the field and sowed weeds among the wheat. When they came up together the farmer had a decision to make: to pull the weeds and try to salvage a harvest or to let everything grow up and separate them at the end.
The farmer chose the later and it may have been a shocking thing for Jesus’ audience to consider. Jesus’ parables had a way of doing that, it seems.
For whatever reason, this passage was so compelling to me as I studied and sought to create a message from it. I spent so much time meditating on the story, putting myself within it, and thinking about the ramifications of why the farmer chose this course of action.
The farmer showed great patience while under attack. An enemy of his did this and the attack from the enemy had the potential to cause confusion and to promote paranoia in the farmer’s life. Even if the farmer could take care of the weeds for that crop, nothing suggested that the enemy wouldn’t do it again the next planting season.
A more permanent solution would be to find out who the enemy was and take legal action. But the deed happened in the middle of the night and because of the nature of how seeds grow, no one would’ve been able to calculate what exact night it happened in order to gather key witnesses for a trial.
The enemy’s attack was flawless. How would the farmer respond? The expected solutions didn’t seem wise. On the one hand, pulling out the weeds could ruin his crop. On the other hand, taking up legal action would probably just cause the farmer to chase a ghost for a suspect, never having hard evidence for a conviction.
The enemy sought to confuse the farmer. The farmer’s response of letting the weeds grow out is also an attack of confusion, a counter-confusion, of sorts.
Imagine the enemy walking by the field to watch the farmer struggle under the uncertainty of his field, only to discover that the farmer is at leisure instead of plagued with anxiety. “The plan didn’t work… why didn’t it work?” the enemy might ask.
Perhaps the farmer’s refusal to pick the weeds or to take legal action is an act of grace, an act of patience against his enemy. Maybe the weeds were meant to whisper to the enemy, “This is beneath you… be forgiven, be healed.”
Indeed, if the farmer pulled the weeds he might of salvaged a crop, but he would not have healed his community.
After all, Jesus tells this parable in order to describe the kingdom of heaven, a realm in which God is in charge. What we gather from Jesus’ tale is that God is a patient God, who strives with a wayward world in our rebellion, and seeks to win us back with unexpected kindness.
The cross, then, is like the weeds we’ve sown in God’s field, beckoning us to give up the ways in which we wreck God’s world… it tells us to be forgiven, to be healed.
As we think about that cross (and the empty tomb accompanying it) may we recognize how we might be tearing God’s world up, to be changed, and to live a transformed life.
Joe Skillen 