It’s weed season in North America – hot, humid weather, storm-fed downpours. Everywhere we look, in our yards, on city streets, there are weeds to be pulled.
It’s weed season in Jesus’ parable too - an unnamed enemy has sown weeds in the wheat field in the dead of night. The servants propose to pull them up. The field’s owner has a different plan:
The servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let 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.'
I had a friend who used to say, “Weeds are a social category.” Meaning, there is nothing innately wrong with many of the plants we deem weeds – except that they are not what we planted, not what we envisioned in our beautiful gardens. She may have glossed over the fact that undesired plants take nourishment and water and sunlight from plants with more fruitfulness – but she has a point. Who are we to decide what’s in and what’s out… or, more importantly, who’s in and who’s out, who’s wheat and who’s weed? Jesus’ story implies that it is not our call.
If we are to co-exist, then, what are we to do with people who manifest themselves as quite obviously weed-like – net takers, abusers, manipulators, terrorizers? The parable doesn’t tell us - parables are limited. In this one, the weeds and wheat are inanimate, rooted, fixed. There is no provision for their choices or for them to interact with one another. No parable was meant to tell the whole story.
So then, what is to be our position toward weeds? How might we help transform weeds - or accept them? We start by remembering that we share a common nature with all people, that even the worst possess innate humanity which is worthy of honor even if all their behavior and presentation to the world is not. Somewhere in the most disagreeable person is a child of a mother and father, a hurt and broken child worthy of our prayers, worthy of asking God to bless and heal and forgive. Sometimes we ask God to forgive someone before they are ready to do so for themselves.
We can ask the Spirit to tell us if we’re being called to more interaction with a given “weed” than just praying for God to bless and heal her. Are we invited to be in relationship with him? To listen, to help?
Today, let’s bring to mind some people we’ve deemed “weeds” in our gardens. As we pray for each of them, bringing them to mind and envisioning them bathed in God-light, we might also imagine them transformed from weed to glorious bloom, from pinched of face to relaxed and smiling, from mean to nurturing. It is a way of giving specificity to our prayers.
Above all, we remember Paul’s word that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 6:12)
The weeds are not the enemy, and the wheat is not in charge. Thanks be to God!
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