Let Them Grow Together
By William E. Hull, Research Professor
Samford University, Birmingham, AL
What we call the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (Mt 13:24-30) is a little story that Jesus told, based on first century Palestinian farm life, about what to do with some weeds that threatened to ruin a crop. He did not tell such tales to entertain his hearers but as a way to communicate with them in a context of controversy. Indeed, the seven parables clustered in Matthew 13 were in response to the mounting conflicts recorded in Matthew 11-12.
To skeptics with closed minds that made it hard for them to give his message a hearing, Jesus reached for fresh images, clear comparisons, even curious riddles in an effort to prompt them to think in different categories. This account, for example, is full of surprises, many of them deliberately enigmatic despite the fact that they are rooted in ordinary experience. So beware: if this sermon is true to the strategy of Jesus, it may try to slip up on your blind side, breech your defenses, and provoke you to ponder some challenging perspectives that you might prefer to ignore. We begin, as did Jesus, with a story that is not easily understood or forgotten.
I. The Story
The plot seems simple enough: a farmer sowed his field with seed to prepare for another crop of grain (v. 24). But no sooner had this work been done than an adversary slipped in under cover of darkness while others slept to sow bad seed among the good (v. 25). No clue is given as to why a neighboring farmer would do such a diabolical thing, except to identify him as an "enemy," for the ultimate sources of such animosity are hidden deep within the human heart. We are left with the sober realization that even our best efforts can be undermined by spite and jealousy when least expected. There is a mystery to human meanness that defies any explanation.
In order to grasp the cunning of this dark deed, we need to identify the kind of bad seed that was scattered on top of the good. It was not "tares," as traditionally translated, which is a kind of vetch. Rather, the Greek word here (zizania) referred to bearded darnel, which we sometimes call "cockle," "thistle," or "cheat." The problem is that it cannot be distinguished from wheat in the blade but only in the ear after it has ripened enough to make a head which becomes poisonous from hosting a fungus. If harvested and ground together with the wheat, the flour is ruined and the whole crop lost. Because the Hebrew name for darnel was derived from a word meaning "to commit adultery" or "to play the harlot," it was thought of as degenerate or "bastard" wheat.[i]
With this clarification we are able to grasp the dilemma that confronted the farmer once his crop was discovered to be corrupted. The field hands wanted to pull up the wretched weeds immediately so as to keep the field clean and thereby protect their labors (v. 28). But the owner realized that, by now, the buried roots of the wheat and the weeds had become so entangled with each other that to yank out one would uproot the other as well. Concerned not for appearances but for a maximum yield from all their efforts, he wisely decided, "Let them both grow together until the harvest" (v. 30). Then everything could be reaped and the separation take place in such a way that the weeds would be bundled up and dried for fuel while the wheat would be gathered into the barn (v. 30). To be sure, this approach required more time and patience on the part of everyone, but the results would be well worth the wait.
II. The Setting
Why would Jesus tell such an earthy story and liken it to the grandest theme of his gospel, "the kingdom of heaven" (v. 24)? For one thing, his parable warned against the dangers of a premature separation between good and evil that the Judaism of his day was attempting on every hand. The Pharisees practiced a rigid code of conduct that built a wall of exclusion between them and those less observant of religious Law. The Essenes relocated to a desolate wilderness so that they would not be defiled by what they considered a corrupt priesthood in Jerusalem. The Zealots were agitating for a decisive break with Rome even if it meant all-out war with a fight to the finish. Because of this apartheid mentality, many expected that a primary role of the Messiah would be to gather a purified remnant of the righteous, but here was Jesus consorting with publicans and sinners, harlots and centurions-letting bad weeds infest good wheat!
Closer to home, John the Baptist had prepared for the ministry of Jesus by picturing the coming Messiah with a winnowing fork in his hand that would separate the wheat from the chaff so that the latter could be burned "with unquenchable fire" (Mt 3:12). Arrested for these fiery denunciations and facing imminent execution, John sent his disciples to Jesus with the wistful query, "Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?" (Mt 11:3). This was but a polite way of asking, "Why are you letting me rot in prison without lifting a finger against Herod who may kill me any day?" And the answer of our parable is, "I know you have enemies. I have them too. But, in the mercy of God, it is not yet time for the unquenchable fire. Judgment tarries, but God is patient. Time is on his side, if not on ours. He can afford to wait for a better day."
Closest to home, a terrible weed was growing within the innermost disciple band. Judas seemed to have Zealot sympathies, which would have put him at the opposite extreme from a Roman collaborator like Levi. Surely the innermost core of followers needed to be purged of its poisons if the movement was to have any integrity. But if Judas were suddenly uprooted and cast out, who might leave with him because their "roots" were entangled with his? James and John were called "sons of thunder" (Mk 3:17), which suggested an impatient itch to take militant action, and a Simon other than Peter "was called the Zealot" (Lk 6:15). Rather than satisfying those who may have wanted Judas expelled, or angering others who may have shared his misguided dreams, our parable explains why Jesus stuck with him to the very end. After love`s last appeal was rejected in the Upper Room (Mt 26:20-25), Judas finally excluded himself from the Twelve by an act of betrayal in which none of the others joined him.
III. The Meaning
In light of these challenges to his ministry from without and within, what new insights did Jesus seek to plant in the minds and hearts of his hearers by telling this little story? Let us look at four of them:
First, inclusivism is a hard sell and its foes abound on every hand. Jesus sought to sow the seeds of the kingdom on a field as wide as the world (v. 38), to universalize the grace of God by making it available to every person regardless of race, gender, ideology, or nationality. But the custodians of the status quo felt so threatened by outsiders that they restricted their legacy to only one small group, arbitrarily limited by ancestry, willing to embrace a common culture. And so Jesus warned, "My kind of kingdom makes enemies. If you follow me, expect opposition (Mt 11:12). Realize that a lot of weeds come with the turf. There is no way for me to broadcast the good seed of unconditional acceptance without provoking those who scatter the bad seed of narrow exclusivism." To this day, most people prefer sameness to otherness. They find more security in homogeneity than in heterogeneity. Especially in times of tension, they would rather circle the wagons and huddle up with their own kind than to risk openness to those who are different.
Second, in this kingdom under siege, often driven underground like seed planted in soil, it is hard to tell friend from foe, for weeds may come disguised as wheat. The devil never likes to be noticed, but works in the darkness as an imitator of God, sowing seed that grow into counterfeit disciples. Because authenticity cannot be determined until their fruits are known (Mt 7:16-20), it is always dangerous to attempt premature separation, which is precisely why it is so difficult to be a zealous reformer. As Robert Farrar Capon put it provocatively:
the enemy turns out not to need anything more than negative power. He has to act only minimally on his own to wreck havoc in the world; mostly, he depends on the forces of goodness, insofar as he can sucker them into taking up arms against the confusion he has introduced, to do his work . . . he simply sprinkles around a generous helping of darkness and waits for the children of light to do the job for him. Goodness itself, if it is sufficiently committed to plausible, right-handed, strong-arm methods, will in the very name of goodness do all and more than all the evil ever had in mind.[ii]
Third, the presence of so much ambiguity, even in our most idealistic impulses, calls for the practice of patience to give people and ideas a chance to prove themselves. As Gamaliel wisely counseled when religious hotheads wanted to stamp out early Christianity, "let them alone; for if this . . . undertaking is of men, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them" (Acts 5:38-39). Paul reduced this reasoning to an axiom: "Pass no premature judgment" (1 Corinthians 4:5, NEB). As we might put it, "Live and let live! Wait and see! Since anything new can seem suspicious, at least give it the benefit of the doubt." Our story takes this practice of patience one step further by suggesting that we learn to tolerate differences even when they seem to be the work of an enemy. In such cases, we may need to buy time and put up with what is bad for the sake of a greater good. Our options do not always involve a clear-cut choice between black-and-white; sometimes, like wheat and bearded darnel, both sides seem to be a tattle-tale grey.
Fourth, none of this means that Jesus encouraged an easy relativism that was indifferent to moral reality. Both the story and even more the interpretation come to a climax at harvest-time when there will be an absolute separation between the wheat and the weeds with the former destined for the barn and the latter for the fire. This is but a vivid way of saying, "Judge not" (Mt 7:1) but let God do the judging (Rom 12:19) for, as the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats makes clear (Mt 25:31-46), the One who knows the secrets of every heart renders verdicts that are very different from our own. Meanwhile, as we await that final reckoning, we are to "let both grow together until the harvest" (v. 30) when the fruit of every life is fully known, even if it means that the kingdom of heaven must make its way on earth as an embattled reality contending with alien kingdoms for the human heart.
IV. The Application
These insights may be given the widest possible application because, as the interpretation of our story explains, "the field is the world" (v. 38). I have selected three areas in which the truths of our text are especially relevant for today:
(1) The individual. When we experience a transforming encounter with Christ and are ushered by him through the door to the kingdom of heaven, it is easy to be gripped by a certitude that approaches perfectionism. Having found ultimate answers to the riddle of existence, we yearn to remake all of life in conformity to our new-found convictions. But once we try to implement those impulses, two problems arise. In regard to ourselves, certainty easily gives rise to over-confidence, and over-confidence to pride, and pride to arrogance as if our way is the only way. In regard to others, this sense of superiority then leads to intolerance of those who resist our claims and we end up viewing them as the "enemy." In demonizing anyone who gets in the way of our holy crusade, the poisonous weeds of polarization begin to grow from the good seed of the gospel that was sown in our hearts.
One of the greatest threats to human survival today is a creeping fundamentalism in the culture of every major world religion that would absolutize its understanding of good and evil to the point of justifying violence in the name of the sacred. Whether it be the ultra-Orthodox Jew who gunned down Yitzhak Rabin in Israel, or the Protestant and Catholic Christians who mercilessly murdered one another in Northern Ireland, or the Shiite and Sunni Muslims who daily terrorize each other in Iraq, they are all united with the field hands of old in saying, "Let`s pull up and destroy the bad weeds we don`t like in order to protect the good wheat that we have." And it all sounds so sensible, even "godly," until we realize how many weeds of bigotry, prejudice, and hatred are sown by such misguided zealotry. There are enough weeds even in the best of us, as Paul confessed in Romans 7, that we dare not reach for the winnowing fork lest it pierce our own hearts.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn experienced evil of unimaginable horror in Stalin`s Gulag and devoted his life to exposing its atrocities, yet even in that crusade he came to see that the issues were not so simple:
It was on rotting prison straw that I felt the first stirrings of good in myself. Gradually it became clear to me that the line separating good from evil runs not between states, not between classes, and not between parties — it runs through the heart of each and every one of us, and through all human hearts. This line is not stationary. It shifts and moves with the passing of the years. Even in hearts enveloped in evil, it maintains a small bridgehead of good. And even the most virtuous heart harbors an uprooted corner of evil.[iii]
(2) The nation. The recent presidential campaign permitted the mass media to engage in a year-long orgy of divisiveness on the theory that everybody loves a good fight. The political gurus urged their candidates to disparage their opponents so relentlessly that whoever was elected would be discredited before taking office. When the results were in, the states were divided into red or blue and every voter made to feel like a winner or a loser so much so that some Republicans prepared an obituary on the Democratic Party and some Democrats investigated what would be involved in migrating to Canada. Pundits peering into the future predicted a massive realignment of America into conservative and liberal camps that would oppose each other ever more bitterly over a whole range of irreconcilable issues. For any who bothered to look, there was no longer any middle ground left, and no one seemed to care. Some even celebrated this disuniting of America which has left us with plenty of pluribus and not much unum.
But is it wise to divide up our country into a party of wheat and a party of weeds? Every day I deal with those who have nothing but utter contempt for "the other side," whichever it may be. The issue here is not whether you preferred George Bush or John Kerry but the simple fact that only one of them could be elected president of us all. Grateful that we were offered a free choice, the question remains whether the presidential campaign prepared us to unite in support of the candidate who prevailed. The vote was 51% to 48%, some reply, and "to the victor belongs the spoils." But does it make our nation stronger for the 58 million who voted for Bush to disenfranchise the 55 million who voted for Kerry? The wisdom of our story is, "let them grow together"-even if each side thinks that they are the wheat and the other side is the weeds! The two-party system has served our nation well throughout its history. The majority party in office needs the critical scrutiny and informed dissent of the minority party to protect it from the intoxication with power that is the Achilles` heel of every politician.
(3) The Church. You doubtless know that every major denomination in America has been engaged in outright civil war over the past generation, none more so than Southern Baptists. At the root of the conflict is an unwillingness to tolerate some of the sharp differences that characterize contemporary life. Thus we have the culture wars with their pitched battles over such issues as abortion, homosexuality, and social welfare. Or the theological wars over biblical inerrancy, evolution, and the role of women. Or the ideological wars that pit conservative hardhats against liberal eggheads, rural traditionalists against urban innovators, and older preservationists against younger progressives. When this volatile mix of issues is seized upon by religious absolutists, the predictable result is polarization. Nowhere is there a greater tendency to divide all of life into wheat and weeds than in a church with an authoritarian mindset. Remember the medieval Crusades, the religious wars that wracked Europe after the Reformation, and the splintering of Protestantism into a thousand denominations once it reached our shores.
To be sure, there are plenty of weeds in every church, superficial members who join only for the business contacts they can make, or for the free babysitting their children can receive, or for the use of facilities in which to hold their weddings and funerals. But where better for such "counterfeit Christians" to be? To throw them out only denies them the opportunity to hear and see a witness that might one day change their lives. When the Southern Baptist Convention ostracized thousands of its members as heretics by a self-defined orthodoxy, all that this did was impoverish its own internal life by sealing itself off from the contribution that the excluded part of the family was able to make. The comment of Helmut Thielicke points to a better way:
Must we not rather love, in order that in this very venture of love we may learn to realize that wheat is sown even in the most weed-ridden lives and that God is waiting and yearning for it to grow? Dostoevski once spoke this profound and unspeakably helpful word: "To love a person means to see him as God intended him to be."[iv]
Do these applications, and the story on which they are built, imply that we are to be moral pacifists who fail to oppose evil until the weeds overwhelm us? No, "let both grow together" (v. 30) is the imperative of our text. We are not to give up sowing good seed and let bad seed take the field. If we cannot eradicate evil in our kind of world, neither are we to let it eradicate the good. Rather, we are to be busy growing an ever stronger faith that can more than hold its own even in a weed-choked field. Further, doing this "together" rather than in isolation points us to the life of dialogue in creative coexistence with those who differ.
After all, people are more than plants, and in the give and take of honest sharing change can occur. Luther Burbank once remarked that "every weed is a potential flower."[v] All it needs is the right kind of cross-breeding and cultivation such as Jesus offered the human weeds of his day. That is why it is so easy to get in our church but so hard to get out: easy to be accepted because we are welcoming of all whom Christ calls to discipleship, hard to be rejected because we are patient with those who allow weeds to grow in their lives in the hope that one day the good seed will prevail. But what about the weeds that never seem to change? God will know best what to do with them.
[i] For details see A. B. Bruce, The Parabolic Teaching of Christ, second edition (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1887), 45-47.
[ii] Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), 102.
[iii] Cited by Richard John Neuhaus, "Solzhenitsyn`s Discovery," The Religion & Society Report 2, no. 3 (1985): 1.
[iv] Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1959), 81.
[v] Cited by Charles B. Templeton, Life Looks Up (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955), 161.
