Just Be Wheat

Based on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

A revision of a message first delivered July 23, 2017

Rev. Dr. Kevin Orr

            When I was young, I was introduced to the writings of C.S. Lewis. That is, the books he wrote other than the Chronicles of Narnia, his masterful fantasy novels that I devoured as a child. Someone suggested to me that I read Mere Christianity. This book is a collection of lectures that Lewis gave in which he attempted to argue for the rationality of being a believer in Jesus Christ. Lewis was such a rational thinker and a great debater. He constructed so many arguments that proved that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, that when I finished the book I thought to myself, “If a person doesn’t believe in Jesus after reading this book, they’re an idiot.” Not exactly the most charitable thought. And, of course, I already believed in Jesus so it’s not as if Lewis had to convince me of anything. But I was impressed with his arguments and it really did baffle me why not everyone believed in God and in Jesus Christ, God’s son. Surely if people would hear the gospel the way Lewis explained it they would come to belief. It seemed so obvious to me. Why didn’t others get it?

            This was a similar question that the early followers of Jesus had. I mean, here was Jesus, teaching the truth like nobody’s business. And not only did he teach with such authority, but he backed it up by the way he demonstrated a good, moral life. And not only that, he could heal people, cast out demons, and work all kinds of miracles. To those who were following Jesus, it was so obvious to them that he must be the messiah. The evidence was overwhelming. And yet, there were many who did not believe. How can this be? And worse of all, those who should have believed were not only not believing in Jesus but were accusing him of being a false messiah. The religious leaders, the scribes, the Pharisees, they were not buying in to Jesus and his message. His miracles and works of healing did not impress them. And it left the disciples scratching their heads a little bit. How is it that these religious leaders, who should have known better, were not getting it?

            Well, Jesus had an answer for his followers. And like Jesus tended to do, he gave his answer by telling a parable. He told a story using experiences of daily life that, when properly interpreted, gave a special insight or lifted up some important questions to mull over. Basically, as it seems to me, Jesus was telling his disciples that the reason why some believed in Jesus and others didn’t is because the evil one was messing things up. The weeds, which symbolize the children of the evil one, are from the seed the evil one planted in the cover of darkness when no one was looking. So those who don’t believe are like the weeds, the children of the evil one. But, importantly, the evil one is responsible, not the children of the evil one. It is the evil one that planted the seeds. The children of the evil one, the weeds, the unbelievers, they are simply being who they are. In a way, they can’t help it. They can only be pitied.

            Now at the same time, those who are the believers, the children of the righteous, are such because of Jesus. The Son of Man, Jesus, is the one who planted the seeds of wheat, which the believers are. It’s not that they had done anything special. They had the good fortune of being the children of righteousness. They were lucky enough to be wheat instead of weeds. It seems what Jesus is saying in this parable is rather than puzzle over why people don’t believe in Jesus, acknowledge that they just can’t help it. They are being who they are, weeds, children of the evil one. The disciples, the believers, are being who they are, wheat, children of righteousness. So be grateful you are wheat and don’t stress about the weeds. If anything, have pity for the weeds. Let them be weeds. You be wheat.

            I don’t know how you feel about this interpretation of Jesus’ parable. I think I’m communicating the gist of what Jesus is saying. But it leaves me feeling a bit uneasy, as parables should. The parable does give an explanation of why some people believe in Jesus and others don’t. But it also feels a bit fatalist to me. For those of theological mind, it comes across as a bit Calvinist. I believe in Jesus because I was fated to believe in Jesus. I’m one of the chosen ones. Joe over here is an unbeliever because he was fated to be an unbeliever. He is not one of the chosen ones. So, be grateful you aren’t Joe because you won’t experience his fate, to be thrown into the fiery furnace at the day of judgment. My Arminian, Wesleyan, free will theology is screaming out, “That’s not how this works!” Jesus shed his blood for everyone. It is God’s desire that everyone be saved. Those who reject Jesus were not fated to reject Jesus. Each person is free to make their own choice whether or not to be a follower of Jesus. Besides that, the image of nonbelievers being thrown into a fiery furnace on judgment day is a difficult image for me to swallow. It’s one thing if it is Hitler or really bad, evil people being thrown in the furnace. But the idea that Julie is going to be thrown into the fires of hell because she didn’t believe in Jesus seems pretty harsh.

            This is why parables are tricky and we have to be careful with them. The temptation is to use a parable to give an answer to the wrong question. The question that prompted Jesus sharing this parable of the wheat and weeds had to do with why people didn’t accept Jesus as the messiah. The question was not about what will happen to bad people on the day of judgment. Jesus answers that question later in the famous parable of the separation of the sheep and the goats, which you can read about in Matthew 25, another parable that should make us feel a bit uneasy. This parable of the wheat and weeds is addressing a specific question in a specific context. When we take this parable and start running with it, which I am about to do, we have to use some caution and make our interpretations and applications knowing that they are less than perfect. Like inspired works of art, parables are really meant to provoke more questions than to give clear cut answers.

            That said, what might this parable suggest to us about how the Jesus followers understood their situation? The first thing that jumps out at me is there appears to be a sectarian spirit among them. There are two groups of people, the righteous ones and the evil ones. Those who are believers, the Jesus followers, are in the righteous group and everyone else are outside the group and, as a consequence, are the evil ones. Insiders and outsiders, believers and non-believers.

            In those days there were a lot of sects. People would associate with their own group and look down on or be suspicious of other groups. We still have that today. We may not consider ourselves being in a sect and we may not spend a lot of energy running down or being suspicious of other groups who don’t belong to our group. But we do have our groups. We belong to our cliques, our circle of friends, our network of colleagues, our crew.

            Here’s another thing to keep in mind about the days of Matthew. The righteous ones, the insiders, the Jesus followers, tended to be those who were on the low end of the social status pole. They were fishermen, shepherds, tax collectors, prostitutes, slaves, widows, orphans, and other common, ordinary people. The non-believers, particularly the most belligerent ones, tended to be religious leaders like scribes and Pharisees. Those with greater status, education and authority were not jumping on the Jesus train. In fact, they were the loudest critics of Jesus and his followers.

            Now imagine, if you are a good person among good people, and the authorities look down on you, oppress you, harass you, and dismiss your messiah as a fraud, then the idea that one day those evil people of power and authority will face God’s wrath while you and your community will shine like the sun and be vindicated, that can be an appealing idea. We all want to believe that at the end of the day, those bad people are going to get what’s coming to them and the good people who were right all along will be vindicated.

            But there is another thing about sects, about insider groups, that we need to keep in mind. Sects desire to be separate from the unrighteous in order to maintain the purity of the insider group. For example, in the days of Jesus, there was a sect called the Essenes. They believed themselves to be the only true believers, the children of light. Everyone else were children of the darkness. The Essenes separated themselves, fleeing to the desert in order to maintain what they believed to be pure worship of God. They would stay out in the desert and wait it out until God sent down fire and destroyed all the evildoers.

            We have examples of sects who try to separate themselves from outsiders these days. Maybe not as dramatic as the Essenes. Have you heard of a Christian sect called the Hutterites? They are like ultra-conservative Amish, and that’s saying something. Hutterite communities are often found in the windswept plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan. They isolate themselves because they intend to not have any unbelievers enter their communities.

            But for Jesus followers in the days of Matthew, isolating themselves from the unbelievers was not an option. For one thing, take believers who are slaves. Separating themselves from their masters in order to get away from the unbelievers, well…the master may have a problem with that. Many of the followers of Jesus simply did not have the ability due to their life situation to just pack up and head into the desert. They needed to live in the community. There were entanglements that kept most of the Jesus followers living among the nonbelievers. They were all in it together. The roots of the wheat and the weeds were entangled. So, until the day of judgment which the followers of Jesus anticipated, the righteous will have to live with the unrighteous. In the meantime, the wheat needed to be wheat. Let the weeds be weeds. God will sort it all out in the end.

            Now, how do we apply this parable to our lives? How might this parable give us insights on who we are and how we are to relate to those who are not followers of Jesus?

            First, let’s be honest. Would any of us identify ourselves as a weed? I doubt it. I think we all would say we are the wheat in this parable without having to cross our fingers behind our backs. However, there are times when we act a bit “weedy.” That’s true for me. My mom used to say that when milk started to get sour, she said it was tasting “weedy.” Sometimes we can be a bit sour. If we think of our hearts as a field, we would find a lot of wheat but also a lot of weeds. We are all a mixed bag of good and bad. To think as followers of Jesus we are the good ones and non-believers are the evil baddies, that’s pretty simplistic. We all have some weeds growing in our hearts.

            Second, I suggest we put our energy into being good wheat rather than waste energy identifying and judging who the weeds are. I really like this image in the parable of the roots of the wheat and weeds being entangled. When the slaves asked the householder about whether they should pull up the weeds or not, the householder, out of concern for the health of the wheat, told them to leave the weeds alone. He didn’t want to risk the wheat being harmed in the process of ripping out the weeds. Just so, we are all entangled in the community in which we live. Judging and trying to separate and divide the good people from the bad ones does damage to the whole community. It harms our own well-being. Our role is to be the wheat God intends for us to be. Let weeds be weeds. Or, like Paul wrote, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” Another way to say it is to stay in your own lane.

            Last, I ask you to consider where wheat grows. One time, my family drove across Kansas. If you have ever been to Kansas, you know what I’m about to say. It is miles and miles of not much. The highway is straight. Every ten miles or so there is a town. And in every town there is a grain elevator. In other words, the plains of Kansas are boring.

            But, on those boring plains of Kansas, there is a lot of cattle grazing. You also find a lot of corn, soybeans, barley, oats, rye, and, of course, wheat. Kansas may be boring, but it is from Kansas that we get what becomes a loaf of bread, a hot bowl of oatmeal and a good sirloin steak. There is nothing flashy or interesting about growing wheat. But wheat and other grains are central to our diet. As the old saying goes, bread is the staff of life. So, living a righteous life, like wheat, isn’t always flashy or interesting. But it does provide sustenance so that society can thrive. For our community to thrive, we have the responsibility to be the kind of wheat God wants us to be. So, my challenge for us is to recommit ourselves to be the best wheat we can be, to continue to grow and flourish as followers of Jesus, so that we can be used of God to nourish and sustain our world.