In a “Peanuts” newspaper cartoon, Lucy explains to her little brother Linus about the existence of good and evil. She tells him that he, like others, has inside him these two forces. Linus looks at his stomach with a distressed look on his face and declares, “I can feel them in there fighting.” Humorous, but true.
With such pain and injustice, the big life question of why evil has perplexed philosophers through the ages. How are good and evil related, and why does God allow the bad?
Jesus’ parable that uses a similar image – good wheat and evil weeds, fighting it out in the farmer’s field. It is the story of our world and the story of our lives. There is a force at every level of existence that works against what is good and what is God. There is a force that seeks to destroy the loving nature of creation. There is a force that exerts every effort to suck the lifeblood out of everything that promotes prosperity and health and hope and peace and joy. Throughout the ages, the faithful have personified this sinister force by many names: Satan, the devil, Beelzebub, Lucifer, or “the evil one.” By whatever designation we choose, its intent, its nature, is to unmake what God has created and to deface, distort, and destroy whatever good it may latch onto, as it eats away at it with parasitic intensity.
Jesus describes weeds growing alongside wheat, imitating the good grain and intertwining its roots. Darnel weed, which was likely common in Jesus time, looks just like wheat. In fact, Roman laws provided harsh penalties for planting darnel weed in the fields with malicious intent. Jesus says simply that the weeds came from an enemy, the devil, the evil one. Others worry that some weeds indeed in Jesus culture would literally choke out good wheat.
For the sake of functioning in society, we must have laws and punishments. Discipline, from mild to severe, including separation or excommunication, is necessary at all levels of a common life.
Author Kenneth Haugk writes about “antagonists in the church.” By any name—antagonists, weeds, wolves, false prophets, false wheat—they are a reality in the community of faith. Jesus’ parable acknowledges that hard truth. Certain actions, behaviors, beliefs become litmus tests of what is unacceptable. How broadly or narrowly we should draw the boundaries? Whom can we afford to let in, and who must remain out? Who is accepted by God, and why? Conversely, when and how will there be accountability to all the corruption?
Jesus parable clearly cautions against a rush to judgment. We cannot always tell initially what is a good plant and what is not. So much of what looks and seems good is evil. Evil usually looks okay and close to what we really want or need: money can lead to greed, or the traps of the flesh described by Paul in our second lesson for today can enslave us rather than the freedom of God’s spirit. All goodness, gold and glitter can have even its limits and corruption. I think of Joseph after he had been wrongly sold into slavery by his brothers in the Hebrew Scriptures, he later tells his brothers, “what you intended for harm, God intended for good.”
Saint Augustine concluded that it is impossible to maintain absolute outward holiness in the visible church and that an unholy action by a someone does not prevent the possibility of future holiness.
Matthew tells the story; the master in this parable has greater wisdom. “No,” he says, “for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest” (v. 28–29), he says, because one cannot always tell about these plants.
The danger is when we feel it is our task to weed out the evil. History shows the folly. Witch hunts in history reveal that they were more about making the hunters feel secure than actually doing something about evil. Still, we often have a strong urge, when threatened and fearful, to find something to cut out, weed out, push down, crush, or otherwise stop and destroy. At times, it can be easier to be anti-war, anti-abortion, or anti-death penalty rather than tending the wheat of peace and life. The farmer insists, until time for the harvest, because the process of ripping out the weeds will certainly destroy the wheat in the process.
We can quickly make enemies for those on the other side of the tracks, politics, other socioeconomics, those of various skin colors, and various legal statuses. Here in Disability Pride Month —the month of July, we can realize the gifts in our own and others’ so-called disabilities rather than rushing to judgement. Otherwise, we can even make enemies of those who are in our own families and church.
Sometimes our own lives and bodies resemble the farmer’s infested field, with weeds and wheat intertwined in our souls, hearts, and minds. The apostle Paul certainly knows it: “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). Members of AA or Alcoholics Anonymous do too. The First Step confesses, “We are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable.” The Fourth Step is to do a “fearless moral inventory,” sorting out the wheat from the weeds within. Our personal experience of the enemy’s sowing may be more subtle, as in the countless distractions we let derail us. E-mails, phone calls, and endless meetings can make it look as if we are doing God’s work, but they may simply be distractions getting in the way of other’s help, love and gifts.
Jesus himself did not stop, eliminate, or ignore the bad but took on all the sin and suffering injustice of the world in his own body on the cross.
The parable’s ending affirms that there is One who is stronger and smarter than the weed-sowing enemy. God will sort out the good from the bad. Again, that may sound harsh of the furnace of fire and gnashing teeth but this harvest time judgment is good newsier the one living out the pain of corruption in their workplace or those living in times and places of oppression. In a world where seeds of hatred and injustice are daily sown, the parable affirms unequivocally that God is still in charge. As the hymn lyrics read: “Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the Ruler yet.”
Like Linus of the Peanuts cartoon, we feel a fist fight in our gut: good and evil. We can keep learning from the saints and martyrs to nurture faith. Jesus did not weed out his enemies who sowed. Rather, from the cross, Jesus forgave them. The sorting here is in the hands of the God of judgment and grace, justice and forgiveness.
