Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30
One of the benefits of having a “brown thumb” is that nobody asks me to work in the garden. They don’t want to risk it. After all, there’s no telling what I might do if left unattended. My lack of knowledge makes me a liability where gardening is concerned. I don’t know weeds from annuals. I don’t know weeds from perennials. I don’t even know weeds from vegetables. When Kris says, “Why don’t you go out and do some weeding?”, I respond: “Of course. But you’ll have to stand right beside me.” More often than not, she says: “Never mind. I’ll do it myself.”
Not that I am totally ignorant. I can identify some weeds. And there are several varieties I positively hate. Crabgrass would top the list. I can’t stand the stuff. Dandelions, too….although I loved them as a kid. I remember picking them and taking them to my teacher. Once or twice, I even took them to a girl in my class. Now, when I see dandelions, all I can think about is what they are doing to my lawn. And then there are those weeds with sharp, thorn-like prickers. You can’t pull them. You have to dig them. I can’t find anything good to say about them.
But I recently gained a new appreciation for weeds. Kris and I were at the Community House for the annual antique show. We wandered from room to room, looking at all the furniture and jewelry. Suddenly we were in a basement room looking at art. I was thumbing through a bin of “horticultural engravings.” They were extremely old….and beautifully rendered. They were also incredibly expensive. I didn’t find one priced less than $500. And most were well above that. “What do you call these?” I asked my wife. “Botanicals,” she answered. “They’re weeds,” I said. “So what’s your point?” she countered.
But back to our story. A landowner sows good seed in his field. His enemy sows bad seed. Which can happen, I suppose. I heard tell of a fraternity prank that involved “bad seed.” On “Fraternity Row” at a southern university, there was a great rivalry between two of the houses. At one fraternity house, a new lawn was being prepared. Topsoil had been brought in. Seed had been laid down. But late one night, members of the rival fraternity threw kudzu seeds in the cultivated plot. Which may not mean much to you who have lived your life in the North. But a Southerner would understand the implications of such an act.
Kudzu was brought to this country in 1876 to decorate the Japanese pavilion at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition. As an exotic import, it became popular as a shade plant, and was seen as a God-given solution to the soil-erosion problem, following the Great Depression. Between 1935 and 1942, government nurseries produced 84 million kudzu seedlings, planting them wherever they would grow. By 1943, there was a Kudzu Club of America with 20,000 members and an annual “Kudzu Queen.”
So what’s the problem? I’ll tell you the problem. Kudzu is a vine with phenomenal growth. Twelve inches in 24 hours is not unusual. And 50 feet in a single growing season is well within the norm. People in the South have a saying: “If you’re gonna plant kudzu, drop it and run.” Which explains why some have called it “the vine that ate the South.” It can cover anything and choke everything. It can twine itself around fruit trees until it kills the entire orchard. It can strip the gears of farm machinery. And railroad engineers have even accused it of causing trains to slip off the tracks. Which is why the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) eventually demoted kudzu to “weed status”….with the definition of a weed being “any plant that does more harm than good.”
The weeds in Matthew’s little parable are “darnel.” If you grew up reading the King James Version of the Bible, you call them “tares.” If you spend your days immersed in botany books, you call them “lolium termulentum.” Just so you’ll know. They are members of the wheat family. They look like wheat. They hide out in wheat. But they are poisonous in the end, capable of causing blindness….even death….if too many of their little black seeds end up in the bread dough.
But back to our story. This is a judgment parable. Matthew is big on judgment parables. Matthew is big on judgment language. Whenever you read words like “weeping….wailing….gnashing of teeth….outer darkness….consuming fire”….you can pretty much figure you are reading from the book of Matthew. But, in this parable, it is clear that judgment is God’s business. Meaning that it is not our business. We are not the sower in the story. We are not the judge in the story. We are not even the seeds in the story.
Who are we in the story? We are the would-be “helpful servants”….that’s who we are. And you will remember that the helpful servants approach the owner of the field, having noted the weeds growing in the wheat, and suggest that they go out and do a little culling. Instead, they are told to keep their hands off. “Let the weeds grow along with the wheat,” the owner says. Then he adds: “I’ll take care of things at the harvest.”
So who are the “helpful servants?” I think the “helpful servants” are the church….meaning us. We are the ones who want to sift, sort and separate. We are the ones who want to thin the house. Turn us loose with our shovels and machetes….not to mention our wonderful bottles of Round-Up….and there’s no telling what (or who) we will chop down, pull up, or spray into oblivion.
Picture me as the “helpful servant.” Picture me going through your yard with my handy clippers and trowel. Better yet, picture me going through Christ’s church.
Weed. Wheat.
Weed. Wheat.
Weed, Weed, Weed. Wheat, Wheat, Wheat.
All weeds in this pew. All wheat in that pew.
Which I could do. Except that I wouldn’t know where to start. But that doesn’t stop my colleagues. I have colleagues who think they know exactly where to start.
This one goes. That one stays.
This group’s all right. That group we can do without.
I have colleagues who continually want to cull the field, making decisions on the basis of belief….behavior….even baptism. As many of you know, my wife is into genealogy. She’s traced portions of her family back over 500 years. Just a few months ago, we learned that she had a relative who was burned at the stake in Switzerland. Why? Because he had the wrong understanding of baptism, that’s why. They weeded him out. Then they burned him up.
As for me, I don’t always know whether I am weed or wheat. Wasn’t it Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Which, I suppose, includes my heart. For all I know, I may even be the weed in somebody else’s garden. Perhaps in your garden.
Once or twice a year, I tilt my head back and sing those wonderful words of Fanny Crosby about “vile offenders.” I am not sure I always believe myself to be a “vile offender.” I mean, I don’t have a long history of black deeds. One reason I could never make it as a tent evangelist is that I don’t have a “sordid past” to describe in graphic detail….meaning that “meeting Jesus” did not force me into an “about face,” so much as a slight “veering to the right.” But when I read the Apostle Paul, it forces me to look in the mirror and acknowledge some measure of offense, “vile” or no. With Paul, “if I say I have no sin, I deceive myself.” Seedy and weedy….that’s me.
But I don’t always know whether you are weed or wheat, either. I used to think I knew. There was a time in my life when I was less reticent to make judgments. I remember shouting at the younger brother of my best friend: “Pat Max, you are rotten to the core.” I can’t remember what he did that made me feel it….or say it. And his brother (my friend) never let anybody forget it. His brother would walk around saying: “My brother’s rotten to the core. Ritter says so. And everybody knows Ritter’s gonna be a preacher.” Today, Pat Max is an upstanding citizen and a successful attorney. Don’t make anything out of that. Just accept it as an admission that I was wrong.
And there’s a third thing I don’t know. I don’t know what God can do with weeds (or wheat) on the way to the harvest. I mean, if we believe that grace is as amazing as we sing it to be, then what we see in the morning is not necessarily what we are going to see at night….what we see in the springtime is not necessarily what we are going to see in the fall….and what we see in the beginning is not necessarily what we are going to see in the end (when God gets done working in the garden).
I look around and notice that you are a pretty weedy lot. I hope that doesn’t surprise you. I mean, you didn’t think you were a field of “American Beauties,” did you? And even if you did, I suspect the film of the same name shot that designation full of holes. But don’t worry about whether I find you weedy. You have no fear from me. Thanks to this parable, God has taken the shovel and machete out of my hand.
Toward that end, let me recast the parable (courtesy of the wonderfully innovative work of Barbara Brown Taylor).
One afternoon in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farm hands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they began to argue….about which of the wheat-looking things were weeds. Did the Queen Anne’s lace, for example, pose a real threat to the wheat, or could it stay for decoration? And the blackberries? After all, they were weeds. But they would be ripe in a week or two. And the honeysuckle….it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.
About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field. Dejected, they did as they were told. Back at the barn, he took their machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field. At first, all they could see were the weeds and what a messy field it was….and what a discredit to their profession. But as the summer wore on, they marveled at the profusion of growth. Tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, accented by a mixture of ragweed and brown-eyed Susans. Even the poison ivy flourished beside the Cherokee roses. It was a mess. But a glorious mess. And when it had all bloomed and ripened, the reapers came.
Carefully….gently….expertly….they gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked. And the fire the weeds made was excellent. And the flour the wheat made was excellent. And when the owner called them together….farm hands, reapers, along with all the neighbors….and broke bread with them (bread that was the final distillation of that messy, gorgeous, mixed up field), they all agreed that it was like no bread they had ever tasted before. And that it was very, very good.
Let those who have ears….and half a brain….hear and consider.
Note: My treatment of this parable was inspired by Episcopal priest and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor. The final recasting of the parable is drawn from her sermon on The Protestant Hour, delivered in 1990.
