24He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Matthew 13:24-30
I know some flowers by sight, but others I need help with. This becomes very problematic when I am weeding my flower beds for the first time every Spring. All the plants are beginning to grow, including the weeds. I want to keep the flowers and I want to pull the weeds. The problem is I cannot always tell which is which. I have to ask someone who knows better than I what is a flower and what is a weed. But at times I mistakenly pull a flower while grabbing a weed and when the weed is growing amid the flower, I pull out both. Keeping the weeds away from the flowers is not always easy.
Perhaps then this is why Jesus cautions his disciples about weeding out people instead of weeds. They ask Jesus, do you want us to go and gather them? And he responds with No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. You try and pull weeds and you get flowers instead; you try and pull the weed growing in the middle of the flowers and you get both, the same happens with people. The moment you try and exclude an unbeliever and you will exclude the believer also. The moment you try to remove the enemy among the brothers and sisters is the time you remove everybody; and we cannot run the risk of harming a brother or sister.
The difficult lesson is that the church has both wheat and weeds or children of God and children of the evil one in it. We have in our worship services and in our membership both people of faith and people of rebellion. At times we think we can tell which is which, but what we can never do is to remove the problem makers and keep the siblings in faith. We will always damage the good to remove the bad. We will always cause trauma in our fellow believers by removing the unbelievers; and we must never do anything to harm our siblings in Christ.
Does this mean that the Church will always be this way? No, Christ promises a time when the grain and weeds will be separated, it just isn’t now, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn. At Christ’s return, the Angels are commanded to separate the believers from non-believers, one to blessing and the other to destruction. But the point is that today is not harvest day. It will come, and soon, but as long as we are waiting for the Judgement Day, that day is not to-day.
So, what day is to-day? Let both of them grow together until the harvest. Up until harvest time the farmer does everything to nurture the growth of the grain, even if the weeds grow instead. One can till the soil, one can administer fertilizer, and one can irrigate the fields. But the task is to plant and grow, not to harvest. Until Judgment Day, the church’s task is to plant and grow, not to separate. That time will come, but to-day is about planting and growing: to till the soil of the human heart with love, to administer to the barren mind the fertilizer of hope, and to irrigate the deserted soul with the water of faith. But it’s growing time, not harvest time, and both grain and weeds can grow, both believers and unbelievers together.
But to only grow instead of judge takes patience on the part of Christ’s people. Patience to “put up” with people. Patience to suffer the slings and arrows of difficult and even adversarial people. Patience to plant God’s Word of love in a hateful heart. Patience to spread hope over a mind filled with conspiracies and suspicions. Patience to water faith over a soul unable to trust and depend. But it will take patience to plant and grow. But the gospel is not that we must achieve patience, who could do that? The gospel is that through the grace of Jesus Christ, we can receive his patience as a free gift. This means that we can put up with each other: to till, to fertilize and to irrigate people, both challenging and easy because it is the patience of Jesus Christ living in us. This means that until Christ returns, let us nurture instead of judge. Let us plant and grow instead of judge and pull. Amen.
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