my favorite parable

I suppose every Christian has their favorite parable of Jesus:  The Parable of the Good Samaritan or the Parable of the Prodigal Sons would probably rank among the most popular is my guess. 

I tend to feature the Parable of the Goats and Sheep from Matthew 25 quite heavily  in my theology.  But it isn't my favorite parable.  My favorite parable is the Parable of the Wheat and Weeds from Matthew 13.24-30.  Why?  First, here's the text of the parable:

Here is another story Jesus told:  "The Kingdom of Heaven is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field.  But that night as the workers slept, his enemy came and planted weeds among the wheat, then slipped away.  When the crop began to grow and produce grain, the weeds also grew.

The farmer's workers went to him and said, 'Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds!  Where did they come from?'

'An enemy has done this!' the farmer exclaimed.

'Should we pull out the weeds?' they asked.

'No,' he replied, 'you'll uproot the wheat if you do.  Let both grow together until the harvest.  Then I will tell the harvesters to sort out the weeds, tie them into bundles, and burn them, and to put the wheat in the barn.'"

To be sure, later in the chapter Jesus goes on to discuss the eschatological judgment at the end of the parable.  And as I've repeatedly said, I have no problem with God's judgment.  It's critical that such judgment exists to have any coherent notion of God's love and justice.

But as with the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, and Jesus's teaching as a whole, I don't think the parable here is about Judgment Day.  What Jesus is doing is using judgment -- the pathos of God -- to illuminate this day, right here and right now.  The focus in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats isn't about the ultimate fate of the goats. It is, rather, about what God wants the Kingdom to look like today, in my life and yours.  The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is about calling us to the works of mercy. 

Same for this parable.  It's focus is on the now, not the later.  So what is this parable calling us to do?

I think the answer is found in the question of the workers:  "Should we pull out the weeds?"

Should we pull out all the weeds?

Let's be honest:  This is something we would love to do, ask Jesus to do often, and even find ourselves doing if we aren't careful.  This question goes to the heart of one of the greatest temptations amongst religious people wanting to serve God:  The impulse to sort the good people from the bad people, the saints from the sinners, the church from the world, the saved from the damned.  

In fact, to non-Christians, churches seem filled with this sort of thing.  Time and again, the one argument given to me by folks outside the church is that folks inside the church are so judgmental.  And that's something Jesus warned about; see Matthew 7.1-6.  We seem so adept at our righteous crusades against sin that we love to play gardeners in this story. 

So, right from the start, notice the farmer's response.  The farmer says, Don't get into the weeding business.  If you do you'll pull up the good with the bad.  Weeds are no good, but weeding?  Weeding is worse.  So just let the good and the bad live alongside each other.  Trust that God will sort it all out in the end.  Sorting saints from sinners isn't your job.  So let it be. 

Thing is, what kind of farmer doesn't weed his garden?  That's a plan for failure.  What the workers are suggesting is the right thing to do.  From a farming perspective, the farmer is an idiot. 

Against all logic the farmer says, Leave it alone.  Let the weeds and the wheat grow together.  On this farm we aren't going to weed.

And that's a recipe for disaster.  Doesn't God need our help in sorting out the good guys from the bad guys?  Doesn't God need Spiritual Minutemen to monitor the borders of the Kingdom?

Apparently not.  Our job is to live alongside one another, wheat and weeds. 

And truth be told, I think a part of the logic here is that we're horrible, often tragically so, in making these distinctions. Who are the real good guys?  Who are the real bad guys?  Are churches getting this distinction right?

My take:  I think the churches get this wrong more often than they get this right.  Churches, way more than they'd care to admit, get into the weeding business only to discover that they can't tell the wheat from the weeds. 

That's not even the exciting part about this parable to me.  The exciting part is in one little word -- let -- that we so often glide over.  

Let in Greek is aphete.  In the command of the farmer ("let both grow together") has two related meanings in the Bible.  One meaning is the meaning found in the translation above (NLT), the notion of "to permit" or "to allow".  But the more common meaning of aphete in the NT is "to suffer" and "to forgive".  This is the word Jesus utters from the cross:  "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

Wow.  Talk about turning a parable around and making it exciting. 

This really amps the meaning of the parable.  Rather than weeding the farmer is asking the workers to forgive the weeds, to suffer their existence.  

This parable is really giving us two different options (visions) of Kingdom life.  On the one side are the weeding Christians, those wanting to identify, sort out and burn the weeds.  And on the other side are those Christians who live alongside the weeds manifesting forgiveness and patience.

I know this much:  Weeding Christians have all the best arguments on their side.  Weeding is good farming practice.  It's the sensible thing to do.  I'd even go so far as to say, it's the right thing to do. 

But it's what we're not supposed to do. 

But the logic of forgiving the weeds and allowing them to grow alongside?  That's no logic at all. 

That's only the foolishness of the cross.