The Wheat and the Tares (Matthew 13)

A homily on Matthew 13: 24 - 30; 36 - 43.

     In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
     It seems, almost, that there is no need to preach on today's Gospel, called, in the old translation, the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. Our Lord teaches the parable, and interprets it as well, making its meaning hard to mistake. It is perhaps a little arrogant to add my own interpretation to that of our Lord. But it is still possible to comment on our Lord's words, and perhaps expand on a few of them.
     First, a word about what a parable is. The word comes from the Greek 'parabole,' meaning 'comparison, illustration, analogy.' The verb 'paraballein' is put together from two words, 'para' and 'ballein,' which combined mean 'to throw alongside.' So our story compares two things, an agricultural illustration, and its interpretation as an analogy of the coming judgment at the end of the age.
    Our reading begins, "He put before them another parable." The "them" in this case is a large crowd on a beach, to whom Jesus is speaking from a boat on the Sea of Galilee. The whole thirteenth chapter of Matthew's Gospel is what scholars call 'Matthew's Third Discourse' of our Lord, and it is made up entirely of parables. The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares is roughly in the middle of the chapter, and because it is in the middle, or central, position in the narrative, it is the key to understanding the whole discourse.
     "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field." The "someone" of course, is the Son of Man, planting good seed in the farm, the garden, the world, the universe that God has created. This recalls the Garden of Eden, in Genesis chapter 1, where, according to verse 31, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good." The notion that all created things are good, and that God is planting and tending them, helping them to become what he intends them to be, is the idea behind our Lord's remark.
     "An enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat." There is an echo here of an old idea, that there are two forces in the world, one good and one evil, and that they work independently of each other. Our Lord does not mean this, of course. Christians know that evil is always subordinate to good, and that evil loses in the end. Today's parable proclaims this in verse 41, in which Jesus says that "the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers." So evil is not independent of good, even though the enemy in the story may appear to be at the beginning.
     "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?" He answered, "An enemy has done this." This is another way of asking the age-old question: How can there be evil in a creation which God himself has said is good? Our Lord says nothing more than, "an enemy has done this," and does not allow speculation or argument about it, but moves on immediately to the practical matter of working out the consequences of the enemy's activity.
     And what does our Lord tell the slaves to do? Nothing! Nothing at all, but wait until the harvest. Wait until every plant is grown up. And then the reapers, not the slaves, will do what is required. So the slaves drop out of the story at this point. In fact, their only function has been to ask questions and to listen to the Lord's answers. They listen, as the disciples also listen, when it comes time for the Lord to interpret his own teaching. The point here is that questions and answers are necessary, since there is more to the story than the apparent surface meaning suggests.
     Wheat and weeds, or wheat and tares, as the old translation has it, grow up together. It may not be obvious as they are growing, which is which. It is interesting that the household slaves claim to know the difference, and point it out to the householder. They are eager to gather up the weeds. But the householder, the Son of Man, prevents them. The message here is clear: do not be too quick to distinguish wheat from weeds, good from evil. Things may not be as clear as they appear to be, and the time may not yet be ripe, to be able to know the difference. We remember that the parable says that the reapers, not the slaves, will collect the weeds. The reapers will distinguish wheat from weeds, good from evil, when the appointed time comes, and not before. The reapers will make the correct distinctions.
     We may equate ourselves with the slaves of the story. We may be eager to collect the weeds, certain that we can always distinguish weeds from wheat, evil from good. But our Lord is telling us that we are not qualified to make that distinction. Only the reapers are qualified, and they will act at the appropriate time.
     "Then he left the crowds and went into the house." Up to this point, the crowd included the disciples, and they all have heard the same story. Now it seems to me that the meaning of the story is rather clear. There is no indication that the crowd did not get the point, and so our Lord does not find it necessary to explain the comparison, the allegory, to them. But the disciples need an explanation! This does not have to mean that the disciples are slow to get the point, but it does mean that the point needs reinforcing, and some details need looking at. The disciples, the Twelve, will preserve their Lord's teaching, and pass it on to the larger community.
     "The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one." It is easy to think that the good seed and bad seed are humans, and we would not be wrong to think so. But that is not all that they are. They can include angels and other spiritual beings, and all that holds the creation in bondage to decay, which Paul refers to in the Letter to the Romans. They can include all influences and phenomena that help make the world a better place, and all the things that work against it. There is no need, in other words, to suppose that the story is all about us, although we are certainly part of it. The reapers, the angels, at the end of the age, will collect "all causes of sin and all evildoers," which include, not just evil people, but "all causes of sin," whatever they may be, and which are not limited to humans only.
     Overall, of course, our Lord's interpretation of the parable is a rather stern one. Good and evil coexist in our world, but this situation will not continue indefinitely. There will come an end, a judgment, the "angels...will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Now, we have to be realistic about our Lord's words here. It is difficult for us to hear them, and more difficult for us to interpret our way out of them. At the very least, these words mean that "causes of sin" and "evildoers" have consequences in our world which cannot be ignored, and they have consequences in eternity as well. Our choices, our actions, do matter, to us and to others, and to God. We must do our best to ensure that our choices, our actions, help us and others, to become like "the righteous [who] will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." This is a promise, remember. The righteous will shine like the sun! And it is a promise intended to benefit us and all who hear it. As our Lord says, "let anyone with ears, listen!"

In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.