![]() ![]() So imagine how this may have sounded to a first century Jewish audience occupied by the Romans, surrounded by Gentiles, struggling to sustain their Jewish ways. Somehow, we know, Jesus is talking about people here – human community – when he speaks of wheat and weeds, right? Where the weeds pose some kind of threat to the flourishing of the field. Put another way, applying a little parabolic twist: it might do more good than harm to leave them there… “Let them grow together,” instructs the landowner, “And we’ll see what happens.” “We’ll sort it out later.” It may do more harm than good, to pull them up. Maybe that’s why the landowner in the parable is reasonably circumspect about the situation. ![]() So long as there is wind, and birds, and furry critters, weed seeds will migrate and settle into the soil, to put down roots right alongside the rutabega or the wheat.Īs troublesome as they may be, weeds are inevitable. As tempting as it might be to blame those herbal invaders on some hostile neighbor who crept into your garden in the middle of the night, we know that weeds are an unavoidable part of every garden ecosystem. Where do they come from? From the same soil that nurtures your tomatoes and cukes, roses or rhododendrons. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’įirst: I love this question: “Where did these weeds come from?” If you’ve ever gardened, you know what it’s like to sow good seed, only to find your garden full of those pernicious intruders, the ones that seem to have sprung up overnight. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. In the first of the parables we heard this morning, weeds are sown into the field in the middle of the night. They are designed to upend our assumptions, to challenge the status quo and startle us into novel ways of looking at God and God’s world. We’ll be reading and reflecting on several of Jesus’ parables over the coming weeks, so let’s start here: with the reminder that parables are elastic, provocative, often subversive. More often than not, all is not as it first appears in a parable… They are obtuse, designed to provoke reflection, to encourage listeners to tease out multiple implications. His explanation to the disciples notwithstanding, parables rarely have a single, simple significance. Parables: stories with multiple layers of meaning. Like a tiny seed that erupts into a tree… like yeast hidden in three measures (that’s about 10 gallons) of flour… What was Jesus getting at? While it’s not really true that Jesus spoke only in parables, he did employ them over and over again. The kingdom of heaven is like this… Like a field full of wheat and weeds.
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