Proper 11A: The Field Within Us – by Rev. Jeffrey Tooke
When we look at today’s Gospel, we may be tempted to hear it in much the same way that we hear Jesus’ story about the sheep and the goats. There are good people and bad people. There are the righteous and the unrighteous. There is the wheat, which belongs in the field, and there are the weeds, which do not. And, eventually, God will divide one from the other.
That understanding is certainly present in our parable today. Jesus speaks of judgment, of the harvest, and of the righteous shining like the sun in the kingdom of God.
But perhaps there is more here for us to notice. Perhaps there is more for us to wonder about. Perhaps we can see something else if we adjust our lens, if we adjust our perspective a little bit, on this parable.
The servants discover that weeds have been planted and have grown among the wheat. Their initial response is understandable: “Do you want us to go and gather them?”
Should we pull them up? Should we get rid of them? Should we remove the bad plants so that only the good plants remain?
I am pretty sure that we would all have that same initial response. If you were to ask any of the gardeners in the East Side Garden Walk this weekend or in the Garden Walk Buffalo event next weekend, that they would have a similar initial reaction, too.
But the landowner tells them no.
“For in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”
The roots have become intertwined. The wheat and the weeds are growing together in the same soil. Pulling one plant out might disturb the roots of another. In their eagerness to purify the field, the servants might destroy some of what the landowner had planted. And maybe this is where this parable starts to speak to us in another way.
We often want the world to be clearly divided. We want to know who is right and who is wrong, who is good and who is bad, who belongs and who does not. We want to identify the wheat and pull up the weeds.
And, of course, we nearly always imagine ourselves among the wheat.
But human lives are seldom that simple. Our lives are seldom that simple.
Perhaps the field is not only the world around us. Perhaps the field is also something within us.
Maybe each of us is a mixture of wheat and weeds, of good and not so good, of generosity and selfishness, of courage and fear. We have gifts that bear good fruit, and we have other places within us that still cry out for healing and transformation.
We are not perfect. We have our bumps and bruises. We carry wounds. We make mistakes. We sometimes hurt one another, even when that is not what we intend. We can be remarkably compassionate one day and surprisingly impatient or self-centered the next.
And yet, within these complicated and unfinished lives of ours, there are also gifts. There is growth. There is transformation.
There is the possibility of something new.
Look, God loves us and calls us into the fullness of who we are, with our goodness and gifts, but also with those areas of our lives that still need to be transformed. God does not wait for us to become a perfect field before calling us, before coming near to us.
Psalm 139 reminds us just how completely God knows us:
“Lord, you have searched me out and known me;
you know my sitting down and my rising up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.”
You see – God sees what is fruitful within us, and God also sees what is tangled up. God knows what we are proud to show other people, and God also knows what we would rather keep hidden. God sees our entire self and knows us better than we know ourselves.
“Where can I go then from your Spirit?” the psalmist asks. “Where can I flee from your presence?”
The answer is nowhere.
There is nowhere that we can go where God is not already present. There is no part of our lives that is beyond God’s knowledge, and there is no part of us that is beyond the possibility of God’s healing, God’s love, or God’s presence.
That same assurance appears in the story of Jacob.
Jacob is on a journey, and his life is complicated. He has deceived his father and taken the blessing intended for his brother. He is now fleeing from the consequences of what he has done.
Jacob is certainly not presented as a perfect person. There is both wheat and weed within his life.
Yet it is there, while Jacob is alone and uncertain, that God comes to him in a dream. God says: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go…I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
God does not tell Jacob that everything he has done is acceptable. God’s presence is not approval of every choice that Jacob has made. But neither does God abandon him.
God remains with Jacob. God continues to work within him and through him. Jacob’s story is not over. His failures do not have the final word.
Perhaps this is part of what the landowner understands about the field. What is growing there has not yet reached its final form. The field is still growing. The harvest has not yet come.
We often see something in another person, or even within ourselves, and we often decide that we know what it means. We make a judgment before the growing season is over.
But God sees the possibilities that we cannot yet see. “You search me and you know me…”
That does not mean that we ignore harm or pretend that evil does not exist. Jesus does not say that the weeds are good. Patience is not the same as indifference. There are real injustices that must be confronted and real wounds that need attention and healing. There are tangled and wounded places within our lives that need to be confronted, healed and transformed.
But the parable cautions us about assuming that we can determine the ultimate value or destiny of another person – or even make a final judgement about ourselves. It cautions us against pulling people out of the soil of the field and deciding that they are beyond God’s concern, beyond God’s love and compassion.
The final judgment belongs to God, not to the servants – and certainly, not to us.
And this longing for growth and transformation is not present only within human beings. Paul tells us in Romans that it is present within all creation: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.”
Creation itself is groaning. Creation itself is yearning for transformation.
The world is not yet what it will become. We can see great beauty and abundance around us, but we also see suffering, conflict, environmental destruction and loss.
We ourselves groan along with creation. We, too, long for healing. We yearn for reconciliation. We long for the day when the broken and tangled places within us and around us will finally be made whole.
Paul describes this groaning as labor pains, not the pain of something ending but the pain of something new struggling to be born.
In that image, I see hope.
The field is not finished. Jacob’s story is not finished. Creation is not finished. And we are not finished.
Perhaps the good news of this parable is that God does not abandon the field because weeds have appeared within it. God does not abandon Jacob because his life is complicated. God does not abandon creation as it groans for redemption.
And God does not abandon us because there are parts of us still in need of healing.
God remains present – searching us, knowing us, accompanying us and calling us towards healing and greater transformation.
Our task is not to decide who is wheat and who is weed. Our task is to tend the field faithfully: to encourage what gives life, to confront what causes harm, to remain open to transformation and to trust God with the harvest.
Because the growing season is not over.
And, by God’s grace, neither is our story.