The Careless Farmer
Text: Matthew 13:24-30
I have a confession to make. When it comes to gardening, my thumb is rather black. I can listen to agricultural guru Ed Lawrence on CBC radio… I can garner all the advice I can on raising and nurturing plants, and I will still kill everything off inside of a week. As a recent example, some of you might have noticed that I had a rather hardy-looking plant with yellow-flowers in my office for a few weeks beginning in June. It was a gift… despite my warnings to the contrary… but with some encouraging words I accepted it and tried my best to keep this bit of greenery in my office. You may also notice now said plant is no longer there. Initially, I thought it was because I forgot to water it, but the plant seemed to thrive so well… but that changed, especially when it started looking so sad beside my computer monitor. I made sure the soil was moist, but the poor thing continued to look even more despondent. Then I realized that it might not be getting enough light, and moved it closer to the window. Yet even then… only a few desperate looking leaves began to respond. My study doesn’t get enough direct sunlight in a day… and so John Dekker rescued this rather sad looking plant from the dark clutches of my office.
At this point, I think I can manage a cactus… or maybe one of those plants that look like a stone… Either that, or I could make a weed garden and be done with it… I just don’t seem to have the knack for it… Maybe that’s why today’s words from Matthew seem to resonate well with my lack of skill. As with last week, the parable from the gospel is an agricultural one… reflections on God, by using plant growth as a metaphor. But like last week, there is an uncharacteristic carelessness on the part of the one who plants the seeds… Curiously enough, if you wanted good gardening tips, this week’s parable isn’t a particularly good example either!
If last week was about seeds being carelessly planted, this week is about seeds being carelessly grown… or at least so it seems:
During the day a farmer planted grain in his field
but during the night an enemy crept in to scatter weeds among it
Later, when both appeared together, he immediately guessed what happened.
But when his servants offered to pull up the weeds,
he said to let both grow until harvest time
and then the reapers could put the grain in the barn
and the weeds in the fire.
This one is much more in our face than the parable of the sower, because for those of us who are at least aware of gardening… even someone as inept at it as I am, we know that weeds are a bad thing. Let them grow? Let them choke out perfectly good wheat? In the long-run it seems counter-productive… the farmer seems concerned about not pulling up the grain that is already planted, but doesn’t it stand to reason that if the weeds aren’t pulled, they’re going to choke off those bits of grain anyway?
Anyone who knows what end to hold a trowel knows that this just isn’t the way things are done. If there are weeds out there, and we know that they’re there, we need to get into that field and get rid of them. Leaving the weeds is a risky prospect, because it might corrupt and possibly poison the entire crop. If a few good plants need to be pulled up in the process, we’ve got to do it for the good of the entire crop. After all, if we don’t, the weeds will take over.
It doesn’t take much of an effort for us to start assigning literal labels to this parable. It is a very easy temptation to slide into. We see things in everyday life that we would deem as “weeds” that surely we do not want to let grow. Drugs on the street… child abuse that seems to go on for generations… hunger… poverty… We have plenty of societal ills that we can easily label as “weeds” that we cannot and should not allow to flourish. After all, if we don’t, the weeds will take over and destroy the good crop.
But here, Jesus is comparing the Kingdom of God to a farmer who appears on some level to be quite careless, if not incompetent, who is content to let the weeds grow. Keep in mind that those people listening to Jesus knows on a base level that this is absolutely not the way to be doing any kind of gardening… They would be insulted by hearing this… because first, that’s not the way to grow a healthy crop… and second… how dare Jesus compare God to such a careless farmer? How insulting!
But then again, maybe that is the point.
The parables of Jesus take common, familiar images, and then take an odd spin that pulls us in some very odd directions. Unexpected movements in the story are what throw us off balance, and raise all kinds of questions: Is the farmer wise or foolish? Does his strategy protect, but ultimately destroy the grain? How would day labourers hear the parable different from landowners? Is the Kingdom of God like the good grain or the weeds?
Through all of this Jesus is helping us to see the world in a new way… Not the way we see it, but the way that God sees it. Parables give us the chance to see the world with God’s eyes. It may only be a glimpse… but these images evoke strong, emotional reactions… In those brief moments of revelation, they teach us that maybe the kingdom of God is not something that we can expect or predict. The kingdom of God is where the weeds grow, and yet the crop is neither spoiled nor diminished.
Assigning such “weed” labels is not what Jesus is after… We’ll lose the message if we get too hung up on it, and that’s precisely why this parable offends our sensibilities. After all, we’re the ones who label things as weeds, and we then begin to get hung up on what is a weed and what is wheat. If we really think about it, there can be such things as “good” weeds. Some of you may know that among the four pets that Sarah and I have, two of them are rabbits. To them, dandelion leaves and clover are considered to be treats… they’re tasty food… not weeds. For those of you who have ever had a young child come up to you with a fistful of carefully arranged dandelions, ragweed, and chickweed, offering them to you as flowers, for a brief moment, they are no longer weeds. In God’s eyes, sometimes the things that we call weeds are flowers…
Maybe Jesus is trying to say to us that we should not be so hasty to judge, not so hasty to start pulling up those things that we call weeds, because we run the risk of pulling up something that really is a flower. And that is what this parable is about –leaving final judgments to God. I think perhaps we are too quick to jump in and assign labels, and then we become confused when confronted with a parable like this. This parable is not about being passive in the face of evil. This parable is not about letting evil run rampant. It is about leaving those final judgments up to God. Jesus is calling us to let go of our own labels and let God be the one to judge, trusting that God is truly the one who is in control. Jesus is trying to get us to open our eyes, to those everyday things that we label and dismiss, and see them how God sees them; a powerful revelation, from someone that we would be so quick to judge as a careless farmer.
Amen.
Sermon preached Sunday, July 17th, 2005; the Rev. John Crowdis
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church, Mississauga, ON
I have a confession to make. When it comes to gardening, my thumb is rather black. I can listen to agricultural guru Ed Lawrence on CBC radio… I can garner all the advice I can on raising and nurturing plants, and I will still kill everything off inside of a week. As a recent example, some of you might have noticed that I had a rather hardy-looking plant with yellow-flowers in my office for a few weeks beginning in June. It was a gift… despite my warnings to the contrary… but with some encouraging words I accepted it and tried my best to keep this bit of greenery in my office. You may also notice now said plant is no longer there. Initially, I thought it was because I forgot to water it, but the plant seemed to thrive so well… but that changed, especially when it started looking so sad beside my computer monitor. I made sure the soil was moist, but the poor thing continued to look even more despondent. Then I realized that it might not be getting enough light, and moved it closer to the window. Yet even then… only a few desperate looking leaves began to respond. My study doesn’t get enough direct sunlight in a day… and so John Dekker rescued this rather sad looking plant from the dark clutches of my office.
At this point, I think I can manage a cactus… or maybe one of those plants that look like a stone… Either that, or I could make a weed garden and be done with it… I just don’t seem to have the knack for it… Maybe that’s why today’s words from Matthew seem to resonate well with my lack of skill. As with last week, the parable from the gospel is an agricultural one… reflections on God, by using plant growth as a metaphor. But like last week, there is an uncharacteristic carelessness on the part of the one who plants the seeds… Curiously enough, if you wanted good gardening tips, this week’s parable isn’t a particularly good example either!
If last week was about seeds being carelessly planted, this week is about seeds being carelessly grown… or at least so it seems:
During the day a farmer planted grain in his field
but during the night an enemy crept in to scatter weeds among it
Later, when both appeared together, he immediately guessed what happened.
But when his servants offered to pull up the weeds,
he said to let both grow until harvest time
and then the reapers could put the grain in the barn
and the weeds in the fire.
This one is much more in our face than the parable of the sower, because for those of us who are at least aware of gardening… even someone as inept at it as I am, we know that weeds are a bad thing. Let them grow? Let them choke out perfectly good wheat? In the long-run it seems counter-productive… the farmer seems concerned about not pulling up the grain that is already planted, but doesn’t it stand to reason that if the weeds aren’t pulled, they’re going to choke off those bits of grain anyway?
Anyone who knows what end to hold a trowel knows that this just isn’t the way things are done. If there are weeds out there, and we know that they’re there, we need to get into that field and get rid of them. Leaving the weeds is a risky prospect, because it might corrupt and possibly poison the entire crop. If a few good plants need to be pulled up in the process, we’ve got to do it for the good of the entire crop. After all, if we don’t, the weeds will take over.
It doesn’t take much of an effort for us to start assigning literal labels to this parable. It is a very easy temptation to slide into. We see things in everyday life that we would deem as “weeds” that surely we do not want to let grow. Drugs on the street… child abuse that seems to go on for generations… hunger… poverty… We have plenty of societal ills that we can easily label as “weeds” that we cannot and should not allow to flourish. After all, if we don’t, the weeds will take over and destroy the good crop.
But here, Jesus is comparing the Kingdom of God to a farmer who appears on some level to be quite careless, if not incompetent, who is content to let the weeds grow. Keep in mind that those people listening to Jesus knows on a base level that this is absolutely not the way to be doing any kind of gardening… They would be insulted by hearing this… because first, that’s not the way to grow a healthy crop… and second… how dare Jesus compare God to such a careless farmer? How insulting!
But then again, maybe that is the point.
The parables of Jesus take common, familiar images, and then take an odd spin that pulls us in some very odd directions. Unexpected movements in the story are what throw us off balance, and raise all kinds of questions: Is the farmer wise or foolish? Does his strategy protect, but ultimately destroy the grain? How would day labourers hear the parable different from landowners? Is the Kingdom of God like the good grain or the weeds?
Through all of this Jesus is helping us to see the world in a new way… Not the way we see it, but the way that God sees it. Parables give us the chance to see the world with God’s eyes. It may only be a glimpse… but these images evoke strong, emotional reactions… In those brief moments of revelation, they teach us that maybe the kingdom of God is not something that we can expect or predict. The kingdom of God is where the weeds grow, and yet the crop is neither spoiled nor diminished.
Assigning such “weed” labels is not what Jesus is after… We’ll lose the message if we get too hung up on it, and that’s precisely why this parable offends our sensibilities. After all, we’re the ones who label things as weeds, and we then begin to get hung up on what is a weed and what is wheat. If we really think about it, there can be such things as “good” weeds. Some of you may know that among the four pets that Sarah and I have, two of them are rabbits. To them, dandelion leaves and clover are considered to be treats… they’re tasty food… not weeds. For those of you who have ever had a young child come up to you with a fistful of carefully arranged dandelions, ragweed, and chickweed, offering them to you as flowers, for a brief moment, they are no longer weeds. In God’s eyes, sometimes the things that we call weeds are flowers…
Maybe Jesus is trying to say to us that we should not be so hasty to judge, not so hasty to start pulling up those things that we call weeds, because we run the risk of pulling up something that really is a flower. And that is what this parable is about –leaving final judgments to God. I think perhaps we are too quick to jump in and assign labels, and then we become confused when confronted with a parable like this. This parable is not about being passive in the face of evil. This parable is not about letting evil run rampant. It is about leaving those final judgments up to God. Jesus is calling us to let go of our own labels and let God be the one to judge, trusting that God is truly the one who is in control. Jesus is trying to get us to open our eyes, to those everyday things that we label and dismiss, and see them how God sees them; a powerful revelation, from someone that we would be so quick to judge as a careless farmer.
Amen.
Sermon preached Sunday, July 17th, 2005; the Rev. John Crowdis
Clarkson Road Presbyterian Church, Mississauga, ON
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