Out of Sorts

Isn’t life easier when everything is sorted? When everything has a place and a purpose? After recently moving, you really appreciate when things finally feel sorted out again and put away.

We want things to have their place and function, but what about people? What would it be like if we all could sit under the sorting hat in Harry Potter and be told where we are meant to be? Hufflepuff. Ravenclaw. Slytherin. Gryffindor. Wheat. Weed.

Jesus tells a story about sorting this morning. Right on the heels of the parable of the soil that we talked about last week, Jesus offers us another parable of farming, but this time it’s different. Here in the parable of the wheat and weeds, a sower (the Son of Man) has sown all good seed that has grown into a beautiful field of waving wheat that sure smells sweet. All is well, until it isn’t. While everyone was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds (children of the enemy) among the wheat.

When the slaves noticed the weeds, they came to their master and asked if he wanted them to go and remove them. But apparently to remove the weeds would risk uprooting the wheat as well. So the master said to let them grow together, and when it came time for the harvest, both would be gathered but the wheat would go to the barn and the weeds would be fuel for the fire.

Last week we talked about the God who sows God’s word in our hearts in a manner that is excessive and almost wasteful with grace. God’s grace is great but makes for terrible farming advice. This week Jesus tells us a parable in which the the master tells the farmers to leave the weeds alone until the harvest, to let the weeds and wheat to grow together.

What kind of gardening advice is this? Who when growing a garden just decides to let the weeds hang out and choke the plant? Why not just get rid of them now? Can’t you just take care of it with some Roundup?

I have many a memory helping my mom pull weeds when I was younger. I would join her out early in the morning or after it had rained and she would show me the difference between a weed and the good plant. She would tell me how to dig it up,making sure I got the roots. I loved pulling weeds. I felt like I was conquering the world, one weed at a time.

Weeds and wheat are meant to be separated, kinda like laundry. Mom sent me off to college with a bag that said “one more day and I’ll be naked.” I took notes from her on how to appropriately care for everything. I once again had to sort things out. But eventually the rules of sorting wore on my patience and I just sorta threw it all in together and hoped for the best, resulting in clothes that now looked like I was ready for Woodstock. Everything bled into the other.

So if things are easier sorted out, why does Jesus tell the disciples to leave the weeds and the wheat together? Furthermore, why not take care of the weeds now? This is the body of Christ we are talking about. Shouldn’t that be a field of wheat?

Perhaps you are already aware that church, the fellowship of believers, is a mixed bag or as St. Augustine refers to it, a corpus permixtum. David Bartlett says “Each of us is some mixture of wheat and weed, of holy and unholy, of potentially fruitful and potentially destructive.” It is as Paul says in Romans 7:15 “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” In 1974 Mr. Rogers sang a song entitled “Sometimes People Are Good.” The last verse says “Sometimes people are good, And they do just what they should. But the very same people who are good sometimes, Are the very same people who are bad sometimes. It’s funny, but it’s true. It’s the same, isn’t it for me… Isn’t it the same for you?”

A mixed bag. All the laundry thrown in together. The weed and the wheat. All out of sorts. If each of us is part weed and part wheat, how on earth do we sort ourselves out?

The church has a long history of trying to clear the field on its own, to sort the weeds. To determine who is in and who is out. We try to take over the role of the sorting hat, but it isn’t always that easy.

What if like the M&M’s, we can’t really tell the difference? The weeds in Matthew’s gospel likely referred to what is called bearded darnel. Sometimes it is referred to as wheat’s evil twin, fake or mimic wheat, it looks and appears like wheat but its fruit is like poison. Talitha Arnold says “Known in biblical terms as “tares,” bearded darnel has no virtues. Its roots surround the roots of good plants, sucking up precious nutrients and scarce water, making it impossible to root it out without damaging the good crop. Above ground, darnel looks identical to wheat, until it bears seed. Those seeds can cause everything from hallucinations to death.” The fake wheat and the real wheat look too much alike. One feeds the world, the other kills. One shines like the sun, and the other is kindling. We want to sort it all out, but God tells us to wait.

The kingdom of God, though small as a mustard seed or a small amount of yeast, is hidden and at work. And although there may be weeds and wheat together, it is God’s harvest, and God will sort it out. God has holy patience. So much of division in the body of Christ deals with our impatience. Division in the body of Christ happens when we as the body of Christ think that we can do a better job than God at sorting things out. And this always leads to casualties.

Rachel Held Evans in reflecting on this parable shared how “this parable challenges our notion of ‘precision airstrikes’ of getting rid of the ‘bad guys’ without hurting the ‘good guys.’ The fact is, we don’t see the world as God sees it. We are not equipped to call the shots on who deserves to live and who deserves to die, who is evil and who is good—especially when, if we’re honest, we can feel both impulses coursing through our own bloodstreams.”

Instead of sorting the body of Christ based on what they earn, how they vote, who they love, where they live, or how they stand, maybe we need to resort to loving our neighbors. What if we exercised some holy patience and trust, that in the end God’s kingdom will not be thwarted, that in the end God will gather what is God’s, and that in the end we the righteous will shine like the sun.