July 23, 2023 – 8th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11)

When I was younger, and even today – I must admit – I enjoyed watching Scooby Doo, the premise of which always involved a gang of teenagers and their dog chasing after a villain, foiling the villain’s plans, and ensuring that good prevailed. Today’s Gospel reading made me think of an episode when Scooby and the gang were after the ghost of the Red Baron, a nefarious villain who had switched the fertilizer with weed killer in crop dusters so that all the crops would be ruined. He was ruining the crops so that he could buy the farmland cheap and sell the land for a big profit.

Today’s parable sounds kind of like Scooby Doo. We aren’t hearing, like we did last week, about a typical farmer spreading seed everywhere and hoping for some kind of harvest. We have a bad farmer actually trespassing on a neighbor’s land, intentionally trying to pollute and destroy his neighbor’s crop with a crop that looks like wheat, but it isn’t. Jesus calls the bad farmer an enemy.

When the wheat and weeds first spring up, it’s nearly impossible to tell them apart. That doesn’t last, though. The farmhands can tell them apart before harvest, and they ask the good farmer whether they should intervene by thinning the crop to remove the weeds so that the wheat will have more room to thrive.

The farmer whose field was overseeded with the weeds says no, because removing the weeds would remove some of the good wheat as well. Wait until the harvest, he says, and then sort it. Put the weeds in the burn pile and the wheat in the barn.

The kingdom of God is like the good farmer. End of parable.

The parable is followed by an explanation given by Jesus, intended for his disciples, and not for the crowds to whom he offered the original parable. The explanation is an interpretation of the parable, for the parable itself was intended to get people to think, to ask questions, and to see the world differently. It’s not the one correct interpretation of the parable, but it’s a potentially useful interpretation.

How might this interpretation have been understood to Jesus’ disciples, or early Christians, or us?

Reading the explanation again, it makes certain things very clear that may not be obvious without a careful reading. Humans are not the planters. Humans are not the reapers. The Son of Man and the devil plant. We humans – no matter who planted us – are plants. We have no say in determining who is in the field and who is not in the field. We have no opportunity to determine what will become of us at harvest. The kingdom is God’s, and we just get to live and grow in it. Like it or not, we’ll be surrounded by others who may look like us but were sown for the sole purpose of trying to disrupt God’s kingdom, and even perhaps destroy us.

In daily life 2,000 years ago, opponents of Jesus were everywhere. And it seemed that they were intent on staying opponents. Shouldn’t we – or God – do something to get rid of them? Nope! To do so now would harm everyone, including us. So God won’t do it now. And neither should we.

To have weeds and wheat growing together is God’s will for the kingdom, for the common good of all. Be wheat. Live amongst the weeds. Trust God’s angels, and no one else, to sort it out in God’s time; don’t be those meddling kids who foil God’s plans. Our God is a god of love, who wants the best for God’s children. We need not fear the future. Rather, we need to enjoy our place in the fields, taking in the sunlight of God’s love.