“Life in a Weedy Wheatfield”
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Epiphany 5, February 6, 2011
Pastor Aaron A. Koch
Mt. Zion Lutheran Church
Greenfield, Wisconsin

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠

A farmer went out and sowed good seed, excellent seed in his field. In another parable you may recall that the seed was the Word of God. In this parable, however, Jesus says that the seed is “the sons of the kingdom.” The seed is no longer simply the Word of God, but also all those who through the Word of God have come to faith in Jesus and who are inheritors of eternal life. There is an integral connection between the Word and the people. God’s holy Word makes God’s holy people.

And that is what you are–by His grace and His doing. For we believe that God sent His Son Jesus to save us who by nature were not good, infested rather with envy and selfish ambition and lust and laziness, and were doomed to eternal judgment. But Jesus took upon Himself the penalty that we rightly deserved on the cross. When He died, so did our punishment. By His resurrection He restored us to the Father and made us sons and daughters of the kingdom. Through faith in that good Word of Christ, we have been made to be His good seed, which He alone sowed.

But unfortunately we are also told of another sower and another seed. And this sower and this seed are of a completely different nature. This sower sows his seed in the dark, not in the light. This sower’s mode of operation is one not of goodness and life but one of deception and destruction. The Gospel says that while everyone was sleeping, the enemy, the devil came and sowed bad seeds, tares among the wheat to harm the farmer’s crop.

It’s bad enough to have weeds in your garden or your field. But these particular kinds of weeds in the Gospel (called darnel today) were a little bit more dangerous; because when they would sprout they would be indistinguishable from the wheat. They looked the same. Only after the two kinds of plants had grown together and mingled their roots and begun to bear fruit could they be told apart. Whereas the wheat head would turn a golden brown, the darnel would turn black. That is why it took a while for the servants even to notice that the tares had been planted.

What exactly do these tares stand for in the parable? Jesus says that they are all of the things that cause sin and all of the children of the evil one. Just as the good seed is both holy things and holy people, so also the tares are both unholy things and unholy people. The weeds represent those things which might lure people from the faith or cause them to stumble and sinful people who have spurned Jesus Christ in their hearts and are therefore lost sons and daughters of the evil one, opposed to God.

And so far with this description, Jesus has given us a pretty good picture of the world as it presently exists: believers and unbelievers, holiness and evil, joy and sorrow all mixed up and existing together in an odd tension–children of God and children of the evil one living as neighbors; righteousness and sin struggling in the world–even struggling within the church and within ourselves. Truly, we live in a weedy wheatfield.

So what can we learn so far from this parable? First, we learn from the devil’s deceptive method of operating that he is actually weak and powerless against God. The fact that he has to act underhandedly means he has no real authority. He can’t openly overcome God; the very best he can do is by unrighteous subtlety try to hurt God’s good crop. A great lie of the devil is that he is somehow equal in power with God. But the devil has been conquered by Christ’s death and resurrection. He’s been overcome and he knows it. Scripture in fact says that he’s painfully aware that his time is short. So in the hours he has left before the final judgment, he’s trying to reek havoc on the world, spitefully and frustratingly sowing weeds among the wheat.

Second, we learn that you can’t always tell the weeds apart from the wheat. Sometimes the children of the evil one look like the children of the kingdom–outwardly they appear to be the same decent people. But only what is sown by God and produced by His Word is truly holy in His sight and produces His righteous harvest. Likewise, what is actually a cause of sin may appear on the surface to be good and right. This is the case with all false religion and false teaching. It has the appearance of righteousness, but it leads away from Christ in the end. Not only Satan but also his seed is deceptive. So be on guard. We cannot help being surrounded by all sorts of fake spiritualities and empty, man-centered religion. In fact this is one of the devil’s favorite tactics, to cause so many religious groups to sprout up everywhere that people are uncertain what to believe, and they either embrace falsehood or give up altogether. But to those guided by the Spirit through the Word, it becomes apparent what is the wheat of the true Gospel of Christ and what is the dark head of the darnel’s falsehood. We must always seek to have a discerning heart to distinguish between the two.

Third, we learn that God is not to blame for the fact that there is all sorts of sin and suffering and evil in the world. Those things are a result of the fact that we live in a fallen creation, a world sown full of the destructive tares of the devil. Even though God has sown His good seed in us and has indeed saved us, we must live with the weeds, and we will be threatened by false teaching and sin and disease and evil people yet in this life. Nevertheless, God has assured us that through it all He will not forsake us, He will continue to care for us, and He will deliver us from all that is sinful and hurtful. He promises to work through all things, even the evil things, for the good of His people. Just as Jesus conquered sin and death and the devil forever by His cross, so will we be more than conquerors who have been baptized into Christ’s name.

This is important to remember and hold on to, that we have a good and gracious God in Christ. Because the question that may often cross our minds is,”Why do we have to wait so long? Why does God delay in eternally judging the devil and getting rid of sin and disease and evil people and death? Why doesn’t He just pull up the weeds and the tares right now?” It can seem at times as if God’s not winning or at least not doing what’s best.

But this parable shows us that the reason God waits is precisely for our eternal good. And here is the very heart of the text, “The servants asked the owner, ‘Do you want us to go and pull up the tares?’ ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling them up, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.’” Do you see? It is out of God’s compassion and His desire that none be lost that He delays. He doesn’t want any of His children to be somehow uprooted and destroyed before the final harvest.

We may not fully understand why or how this is so, but this Gospel calls us to recognize that there is something of a deeper and more mysterious element here to the ways of God. There is a need for a time of maturing to take place. Just as wheat must grow and ripen before it is harvested, so must the children of the kingdom; this doesn’t happen instantaneously but through patient endurance in the faith. Just as God sent forth His Son to save us only when the time had fully come, so also there is something of a fullness of time which is yet to be completed for the church before the end of this age. And so God says, “Let both grow together until the harvest.”

Even among the tares God works for our benefit. When we are confronted with false teachers–when the mosque is built down the street and the Mormon church is proposed here in Greenfield and the Jehovah’s Witness comes to our door and the non-denominational Christian says we shouldn’t be so doctrinally firm–it shakes us out of our complacency and drives back to the Word, that the Lord may renew and reconfirm us in what we believe and have been taught. Or when we are confronted by evil in our lives in the form of mistreatment or suffering or illness, it leads us to trust not in our own strength but to rely on the strength of Christ alone. And even when we don’t know how God is working in our lives, we are given His sure Word here that the harvest is coming; the separation will soon take place. Your deliverance is near. Wait patiently on the Lord; those who trust in Him will not be put to shame.

And remember, among the tares God also works for our neighbor’s benefit. For we know that God has the power by the Gospel of Jesus to change even sons of the evil one to sons of the kingdom. Not only can the weeds have a bad effect on the wheat, but the wheat can also by God’s grace have a good and changing effect on the weeds. “Let both grow together until the harvest.”

So you don’t have to take things into your own hands and use vengeful power to deal with the tares and the evil in your life. We trust in God; we rely on His Word; we proclaim it as the only power we wield. God will keep you until the harvest. And when this age does come to a close, you will see the fulfillment of your hopes. The angels who now are given to watch over you will come to gather you out of this weedy field, and it is written that you will be given to shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father, even while the tares are cast into the fiery furnace.

Rest in the Lord, then, and wait patiently for Him. As we prayed in the Introit, do not fret because of evildoers, nor be envious of the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass. Turn away from anger; it only causes harm. Cast all your cares on the Lord; He will sustain you until the Day of His coming. He will never let the righteous fall. You will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord.

✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠