All Saints’, Dorval
July 19, 2020
My chickens, 2014.
I have a friend and ministry colleague who lives in Baltimore and is deeply involved in community gardening endeavours. He remarked on Facebook earlier this week:
“I was working in the garden this morning with a man who is an ecology journalist. He said that historians have figured out that the activity that humans have likely collectively spent the most hours on is pulling weeds.
“And when he said that, I felt that in my soul. And a little in my back.”
When Jesus tells the parable of the weeds and the wheat, one has to assume that the majority of his audience had a deep understanding, at the muscular level, of what it was like to try to shepherd a crop from planting to harvest, and all the back-breaking work that that entailed. I would imagine that more than a few of them snickered at Jesus’ assertion that an enemy planted weeds among the wheat; surely that was unnecessary effort on the enemy’s part; weeds hardly need to be encouraged to take over a field!
There are a few other oddities in this story, too. Surely, when the slaves asked the master whether they were expected to go gather the weeds, they were anticipating that the answer would be “yes”; that what awaited them was yet another series of days of bending over to yank the weeds from the unforgiving dirt while the sweat ran down their faces. They must have been very surprised when instead, they were told simply to wait and watch.
When my friend Derrick mentioned his conversation with the ecological journalist, I responded by explaining my most successful weed-control strategy, which is threefold:
- Get chickens.
- Let the weeds get nice and big.
- Pull weeds in a leisurely manner and refer to it as “gathering chicken snacks”. The weeds, of course, then get dumped over the fence into the chicken yard and the chickens amuse themselves (and any people who may be observing) by scratching through the pile looking for the tastiest morsels, and any bugs that may be along for the ride.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time pulling weeds knows that it’s the smallest weeds that are the most, and the most difficult, work. Walking between the rows of plants and yanking out the occasional full-grown pokeweed or lamb’s quarter is infinitely easier than grubbing down in the dirt for tiny seedlings of bindweed or purslane. So if you’re willing to have your garden look less than perfect for a while, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by just letting the weeds do their thing until they get big enough to be useful.
And indeed, the weeds in the parable do end up being useful – they are collected and used for kindling. This is not something to take lightly in an environment where everyone cooks over a fire but wood is not in abundant supply.
The second half of today’s reading, in which Jesus is asked to explain the parable for the disciples and he identifies the weeds with “causes of sin and evildoers” who will be burned in eternal fire, makes it sound like there is only one interpretation of the parable, with exact one-to-one correspondences between each of its elements and their spiritual meaning. Textual evidence, though, indicates that it’s overwhelmingly likely that this explanation does not go back to Jesus, but was composed by Matthew as part of his process of compiling and editing the gospel. Which doesn’t make it wrong; but does indicate that perhaps it’s not the only possible way to read the parable.
Additionally, what we get in today’s reading is not a single unified passage, but rather two chunks snipped out of the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. Next week, we will hear some of the portions that were skipped today: the parables of the mustard seed, the yeast, the treasure hidden in a field, and the pearl of great price. Jesus is not interested in one, easily explainable analogy for the Kingdom of God; rather, he seems to take pleasure in multiplying parables that will make his listeners sit up and think.
And so, if we look beyond the simple equivalencies of Matthew’s explanation, what do we find? The weeds are still weeds; they are still separated from the good wheat and destined for a different purpose. We are not to try to pretend that there isn’t evil in the world, or that it doesn’t have to be rooted out and dealt with. But that work has to take place on God’s time, not ours – and perhaps even the weeds have their usefulness, providing fuel for a cleansing, or warming, or nourishing fire.
Blessing is found in unexpected places.
Jacob certainly knows this after his vision of the ladder. In the wilderness, alone, cast out of his family after tricking his brother out of his birthright, traveling so light and in a place so barren he has to use a rock for a pillow, only hoping to make it to a place where there are other people who will help him survive – this is the last place Jacob would have expected to encounter God and be blessed. But that is exactly what happens: Jacob, who has stolen Esau’s blessing, is nevertheless directly and abundantly blessed by God.
Abraham’s descendants – Isaac, his wife Rebekah, and their twin sons Jacob and Esau, who were at odds from the time they were in the womb – tried their hardest to circumscribe the blessing, to restrict it, to make it something that only one person could possess, and that could be grasped, traded, stolen, or lost. But God insists that blessings cannot be thus limited and contained. Through Jacob, God will bless all the families, all the peoples of the earth. “Rather than a limited blessing won through defeat and humiliation of others,” writes commentator Esther Menn, “God extends a prodigal blessing to all the families of the earth through Jacob and his descendants. Blessing will be as widespread as the ‘dust’, the loose dirt that covers the ground in every direction and provides the thin layer of fertility sustaining all life on earth. … The humble imagery of topsoil adds an insight about the … means for God’s blessing of all families.”
Esau’s and Jacob’s enmity flourished like a weed, threatening to take over the field of Abraham’s bloodline, and it did real damage. And yet, as God always does, God found a way to turn evil into good, cursing into blessing.
Weeds may become chicken snacks, or kindling, or any number of other uses. The wheat among which they grow is still lush and abundant. Sometimes we don’t need to exhaust ourselves, to add to the hours that humankind has spent bent over, breaking our backs to pull the weeds from the soil. Sometimes we don’t need to trick our aged father to steal our brother’s birthright. Sometimes we just need to be patient, and wait, and watch for a blessing.
Where is there a weed growing in your life that, with patience and wisdom, might be turned into something valuable – into a blessing?
Amen.
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