Don't Be an Eager Weeder

 Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43   7-19-26

 

Wheat and Tares
Ed Morales

Today we have another parable

with another explanation from Jesus.

I told you it was a rare thing for Jesus to give

an explanation for a parable, and now we’ve had two in a row.

But I promise you, it still is really rare.

Don’t expect this from Jesus all the time.

 

So this parable is a pretty simple parable,

someone has planted some wheat, but then

someone else comes in and plants some weeds with it.

So the servants suggest that they should go and pull the weeds out

but the land owner said “no.”

He said if you pull out the weeds, then you’ll lose some of the wheat,

so just let it grow together and when they harvest them,

they’ll figure it out then.

 

I think even before Jesus explains it, it’s pretty obvious:

Don’t try and uproot the bad things because

you could uproot the good things too.

 

And the metaphor for practice is not too difficult either:

Basically, Jesus is telling the disciples not to spend their time

and ministry trying to root out the evil.

Jesus is telling us here that God has allowed

the good and the bad to grow together.

God will figure it out in the end.

I mean, I think this is pretty obvious, right?

 

But of course, through its history,

Christianity has not listened to this obvious lesson at all.

It’s almost as if we’ve willfully ignored this parable.

It seems like Christians have actually

prided ourselves on being “eager weeders”.

The thing that Jesus actually warns us against being.

I mean in the first few hundred years Christianity was

obsessed with people sharing the correct theology.

And if people didn’t align with the church’s teaching,

they would cite them as heretics, deport them,

imprison them, and/or murder them.

 

The Crusades were a series of violent Christian expeditions

sent by decree of the pope in the 11^th and 12^th century

to weed out Muslims and reclaim the Holy Land,

 

The Inquisition were tribunals in the 14^th century

decreed by the pope to weed out heresy,

blasphemy, apostasy and witchcraft.

Using torture and other horrible methods.

 

In even in the US, the KKK was found

as an organization with “Christian values”

that called for a purification of American Society,

meaning weeding out any non-white people,

scaring them and chasing them out of their neighborhoods.

We’ve had lynchings, segregation,  imprisoning Japanese

Americans during World War Two, and other efforts

to weed out the perceived evil, either started or supported by

Christians and their values.

 

The weeding tradition continues and now.

It’s done through sermons and talks and videos,

pastors and leaders never like to actually get their hands dirty.

But it leads their hearers often turn those words

into violence or legislation.

And the eager Christian weeders now seem to be focused

feminists, scientists, immigrants of all sorts –

Latinos and Muslims particularly, and of course,

for the past 60 years or so there’s been an obsession 

with weeding out on gay, lesbian, and especially transgender people,

and of course anyone who supports or speaks up 

for any of these groups of people. Apparently, we all need to be weeded out.

 

Christians are still ignoring this parable

 and trying to root out the weeds. Or what they define as weeds.

And THAT is the big problem: I don’t see any of those groups 

as weeds who need to be weeded out, 

so who gets to determine what a weed is, and who does the weeding?

 

Our history and our present is full of eager weeding 

all around, much of it with Christian leadership, support, approval,

or just silence.

 

The idea of “eager weeding” is that

evil in the world can be identified with a certain individual

or a particular group of people of a certain class,

race, religion, color, or mindset.

 

And if you just get rid of “those people”, whoever

we identify as “those people”, then all will be good.

It’s black and white thinking, dualistic thinking.

It’s either good or it’s bad.

The evil in the world needs to be locked up,

or gotten rid of in order the good to flourish.

 

Now there are people in our world who have done very bad things

and many of them need to be put in prison and separated

from the rest of society. That’s not what I’m talking about.

 

 I’m talking about the habit of Christians to spend

a good hunk of their ministry identifying people that are “bad”.

What, in their mind is evil, and only focusing on that.

And usually the weeds are the outcast of society

who Jesus was definitely a champion of.

 

I told you a couple weeks ago about the teenager

in my church growing up who everyone gossiped

about and said she was pregnant, but she just had a broken leg.

Where did that come from?

 

Because all we heard from the pastors

and from the youth leaders—subtly and overtly—

was about the evil of sex and premarital sex:

don’t make out, and don’t have impure thoughts,

all those feelings are bad, and God disapproves.

venial sins, mortal sins, weed those sins and those sinners out.

 

Everyone was ready to pounce on anyone

who messed up and identify and root out

the bad weed from our congregation

by shaming her and her family away.

And I went to, what I think, was a fairly progressive church

for the 1970’s.

There are a lot of other churches that had a lot more eager weeders.

 

Weeding people. It’s not good. It’s destructive.

And Jesus tells us that we’re  not supposed to do it.

He tells us that weeding out, doing away or banishing the bad

from this world is not our job.

It’s above our pay grade.

 

And even though we’re good, thoughtful, open minded Lutherans,

I think we tend to do the same thing too.

I do it all the time when I’m watching the news.

When I hear about another horrible legislation

or some of the hateful things that people have said,

or I read the comments on social media.

I think to myself if only “those people” were gone, locked up,

then we could get something done in this country.

In reality, I’m an eager weeder too.

I just have my own definition of what is wheat and what is weed.

 

The biggest irony would be today is if we came away from this parable saying: 

“The world would be better if we just got rid of all those “eager weeders”!

 

Christians of all ilk have often strived at being eager weeders.

Either we’ve done it with other people or concepts,

or we’ve turned this dualistic thinking on ourselves.

Against Jesus wishes, we’ve spent an inordinate amount

of time and effort Christians picking at our own weeds.

Trying to achieve some illusion of perfection in our own lives.

Somehow, if we try hard enough, we could become all wheat

 

But Jesus parable here reminds us that

Weeding in a field of wheat does

more harm to the wheat than good.

In this parable, the problem is not

actually with the existence of  the weeds.

The problem is the impatience of the servants to do God’s job.

 

Jesus knows that in our impatience to get rid of the weeds,

we end up doing damage to our own wheat.

Even if we all agreed that the weed are bad,

the weeders become a worse threat than the

weeds we’re trying to weed out.

 

And Jesus knows that if we were to spend all of our own time

trying to purify our own actions and behaving

perfectly and eagerly weeding out all the sin from within

ourselves that we would have little time to spend

on anything else but ourselves.

We could become self-focused and self-centered.

 

Jesus knows that this process of

eager weeding hurts our own integrity

it hurts our own mission,

and it hurts our communities.

 

The point of this parable, I think, is to say this:

Good and evil - The two exist together,

they must exist together on this side of God’s kingdom.

The parable doesn’t try to explain why this is,

(I told you when we were talking about Romans that “why”

is a dangerous theological question)

Jesus only says that this is the way it is,

and how we should behave in the light of that.

 

So what do we do in the face of evil in the world?

Just sit there and let it go and potentially take over?

There are a couple of options that

we can take away from this parable.

 

One thing this parable says to me is that we need

to not be looking to take out people or groups of people

but we should be looking to take out the systems

that create evil in this world.

The root cause of the problem is that the evil one

got in the garden and put their seeds in.

 

So Christians instead of targeting individuals

and groups of people, we could be focusing on

working and preaching and advocating

against the systems that create bad situations

and cause all manner of bad things to happen:

like poverty, economic imparity, racism,

lack of living wage, lack of affordable housing,

the things that cause so much despair and hopelessness.

We should focus on transforming practices and policies,

not weeding out people.

 

Another thing Christians might do is to spend

our time trying to foster the good.

Tending to the wheat, strengthening it,

encouraging the good to grow in this world.

We could spend more time living and

modeling kindness, forgiveness, openness,

understanding, hope, justice, integrity, trust in God.

As disciples, we should be spending our time

fertilizing and fostering good things instead of focusing on the bad.

 

And another thing that I hear in this parable

is that in all of our fields there are a little mix of wheat and weeds.

We remember the Lutheran doctrine

that says that we’re both “saint and sinner”

Good and evil are alive in all of us.

The wheat and the weeds are growing simultaneously.

That means no one is unredeemable. No one is beyond God’s reach.

God is always working on us.

 

And that is the good news of this parable:

Jesus did not come to us for weeding.

Jesus didn’t come to us for purification,

or banishment, or excluding, or dividing.

Jesus came for reconciliation, Jesus came for transformation.

 

Whether someone has had an abundance of wheat

in their life, or an abundance of weeds,

Jesus wants us to know that

God loves all of us and Jesus has hope for all of us.

 

Right now, we live in a messy, mixed-up garden.

where all the good stuff and the bad stuff is intermingled,

working together, growing, changing each other.

And that’s what God wants.

 

It’s not our job to sort it out.

God will do that work. God will sort it all out.

Even though it seems sometimes like the weeds

are winning, God will sort it out.

And what we are right now,

and what this world is right now

is not God’s last word for us.

 

At the present time, the world is both wheat and weed

and we are both wheat and weed.

But when we are finally gathered to God

what God can’t use will all fall away.

And the righteousness in everyone will shine like the sun.

And we will be whole again.

 

Jesus Yoke is Easy

 Matthew 11: 16-19; 21-30 July 5, 2026

 

To what did Jesus compare this generation to?

Come Unto Me
Wayne Pascal

Like children sitting in a marketplace calling out

to one another:

“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;

we wailed, and you did not mourn”

In other words, everyone didn’t do

what we wanted when we wanted it.

You were supposed to dance and be happy.

I’m a little disappointed.

You were supposed wail and cry.

I’m a little disappointed.

Nothing is good enough.

 

Jesus uses the example of he and John the Baptist.

John fasted and didn’t abstained from drinking,

and everyone complained saying he was weird or possessed.

Jesus came eating and drinking

and everyone complained and said he ate and drank too much

and besides that he hung out with the wrong people.

John was too cranky. Jesus was too friendly.

Nothing is good enough.

 

It seems like Jesus generation has a lot in common

with our own generation.

Everyone has an opinion, and everyone feels like

it’s their responsibility to share it.

 

It’s called Judgement. We judge people all the time.

We talk to them, or hear them for a few minutes

and we think we know their life and understand

all their motivation and objectives.

We judge people just by their looks and

what they wear and how they speak.

And people in the church have decided that they

can tell where you will spend your eternity.

 

Judgement has been an issue in religion definitely.

We and our ancestors have used judgement

to control and criticize people.

We’ve been slinging rules around for generations

trying to make people afraid for their mortal souls.

The church has judged people for their impure thoughts

and actions, for the things they say and the company they kept.

 

The church before the Reformation, the church used judgement

basically to blackmail people. They told people if they would

donate enough money to the church, the judgement against them

the judgment against their deceased relatives would be reduced.

The fear was real.

It garnished enough money to build St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome.

Martin Luther’s main point of the Reformation was basically

to take away the power of that judgement.

 

And we think the church has come such a long way since then.

But we haven’t really. It just takes different forms.

 

I remember when I was about 9 years old,

so almost 50 years ago now,

there was a new girl in the youth group.

She and her family had just started coming,

they seemed very involved, and then they stopped.

And I don’t know how it started,

but the rumor got around that she was pregnant.

She had a boyfriend who was not part of the church.

She was the topic of whispers and rumors.

I even heard them at 9 years old.

It wasn’t concern. It was judgment for her and her family.

I don’t know why someone didn’t call her.

I guess they were new enough that no one had their number.

Remember, it was the 70’s.

 

Well, she came back to church a month later

and her leg was in this nasty metal halo

and she was walking with crutches.

She had been in a car accident and badly broken her leg.

Now, no one let me know that the nasty rumors they started

were not true, so I remember looking at her going up to 

communion and thinking, “Wow, she’s got a broken leg

AND she’s pregnant? That’s awful.”

The church judged her and delighted in the rumors.

 

And 50 years later, we might even believe that we’re

outside of the age of oppressive Christianity,

and away from that kind of judgement,

but we have replaced this religious morality

with the constant hum of opinions.

We impose our own arbitrary rules on everyone.

Without even appealing to a higher power or tradition.

 

Look what he’s wearing,

I don’t think it flatters her,

that’s really not appropriate for someone like them,

She’s too skinny, he’s too fat,

I’m just concerned for their health

She’s too old, he’s too young.

I can’t believe she said that,

I can’t believe she didn’t say that.

They didn’t pay enough attention to me,

they paid too much attention to me,

 

Why didn’t you include those people

why didn’t you exclude these people,

You focus too much on work,

you don’t spend enough time focusing on work,

you should save more,  you should spend more,

seize the day, but don’t make such foolish choices.

 

He needs to loosen up, she needs to plan ahead

She needs to be more forgiving,

he needs to have more of a back-bone and stand up for himself.

She should be more serious,

he should have a better sense of humor.

We played the flute for you and you didn’t dance,

we wailed and you didn’t mourn.

 

We’ve all had these judgements placed on us,

and we’ve all placed these judgements on others too,

if not aloud with other people, then in our heads.

If everyone would just do everything like I wanted,

everything would be great.

Nothing is good enough.

 

This generation is not much different

than the generation Jesus was talking about, really.

The judgement just takes different forms now.

 

I was reading a story.

About 15 years ago the actress Demi Moore, had saved a woman

who had messaged her on twitter and was threatening suicide.

She kept talking to her and found out where she lived

and then called the police go to her house

and it saved her life.

 

Well, I read the comments under the article

(never read the comments by the way.)

And someone said,

“Demi Moore’s plastic surgery looks terrible.”

 

We are constantly being rated and judged.

Even if the judgement is not directed at us,

we’re internalizing it.

Even if we say, “I don’t pay attention to that sort of thing”

it’s getting in there. It’s shaping us and changing us.

 

 Especially our young people

When we hear criticisms of celebrities looks

or other things about them, we internalize them.

We hear that no matter what good we do,

we’re not good enough.

 

Just like I internalized that judgement of that girl

with the broken leg, I learned that there was a limit

for my church community’s love for me.

She was not good enough, I might not be good enough.

 

This is the wider harm in churches being so vitriolic

against LGBTQ people. It does great harm to LGBTQ people,

and young people who are negotiating their own paths

AND, it tells everyone that our love and God’s love for

them is very conditional.

 

And yet some churches are putting so much of their effort

into judging people, based on only six passages in the bible

But there are well over 40 passages in the bible

about not judging other people. It’s ironic.

 

Even without the influence of religion, we are all judged

on so much and so many big and small things.

We are basically treated like products,

and everyone has their own Amazon review section.

And nothing is good enough.

 

It’s kind of exhausting.

Not just to be judged, but to do the judging.

Making sure that everyone meets up to our

definition of what’s good and right and proper.

If only everyone did everything the way that I wanted,

this world would be a much better place.

That’s a lot of weight to put on ourselves.

Imaging that God has put all that responsibility on our shoulders.

 

 When we base people’s worth

on some outside expectation,

some set of rules and regulations

it leads to an endless hole of dissatisfaction.

 

No one will ever live up to those standards we set.

We live in frustration.

So we end up yelling at each other in the marketplace,

“I played the flute for you and you didn’t dance.

I wailed and you didn’t mourn.”

Nothing is good enough.

 

And, in fact, we don’t make ourselves happy either.

we end up living with shame and guilt

we set up hopeless expectations

and burdens we’re unable to carry.

 

Even though Jesus was living in a very different

generation than our own, I bet the people

around him were living with the same burdens.

The same heavy weight of judgement,

both external and self-imposed.

 

And this is where Jesus comes in.

Jesus yoke is easy. And Jesus’ burden is light.

Jesus teaches us another way to be

in this generation and in this world.

And to follow Jesus yoke

actually lets us put that burden of judgement down.

 

The Kingdom of God is like this:

The worth of a person is not determined

by what they do, it is only determined by God’s love.

 

Our self-worth is not determined by our achievements,

or other people’s opinions.

It is only determined by how God loves us.

And God loves each one of us unconditionally.

The Amazon review just says: “Beloved child of God.”

 

Everything we do as a church,

every task we might have

as members of this church is focused

on understanding, and reiterating, and living that truth

for ourselves and others.

 

The truth of God’s love that Jesus proclaims -

the gospel in other words -

lifts us out of that hole of dissatisfaction

that the world’s laws, standards, and expectations put us in.

The yoke of God’s grace guides us and frees us for new life.

When we become a servant of Christ,

we unbind ourselves from being servant to anything else.

 

With Jesus “yoke” on us,

we are not only freed from the burden of judgement on ourselves, 

we’re freed from the burden of bearing judgement

on others.

 

Martin Luther understood it.

He wrote these beautiful words:

"The Law says, 'Do this' and it is never done.

Grace says, 'Believe this' and everything is done already."

 

God’s love is not based on what we do, achieve, or succeed.

It’s not based on how we look, or who we love.

God’s love is given to us and each person absolutely freely.

This is the yoke that should guide us daily.

Jesus yoke is easy and his burden is light

And with this to guide us, we can finally find our rest.