Pentecost +5:
Romans 8:12-25 and
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43We live among the weeds—they crowd around us, their roots intertwine with ours, and sometimes the suffocate us. Surely the harvest will be less bountiful when we allow the weeds to grow among the wheat—we can imagine the full vibrant growth of their grain as they have the full resources of the soil. Couldn’t we just have some genetically modified wheat, some holy Round-Up to kill the weeds?
Perhaps, but Jesus’ hearers would have understood something important about the wheat that came out of a field of weeds—it was strong and sure, tested by the weeds and able to grow in spite of them. The seeds of that wheat will carry that strength too—it is this seed that a farmer would want to plant next year, not the untested wheat that can’t stand up to the pressures that will inevitably come. The question is one of endurance—of surviving until the apocalyptic harvest.
So how do we survive? How do we live as wheat among the weeds? For one we must realize we have no choice in it. We cannot decide the ground in which we are rooted or those who are rooted around us. We must not, and really cannot—rid ourselves of weeds so that we can have easy growth without them. We must wait patiently for the harvest and instead focus our attention on being the wheat, strengthening ourselves in the midst of the weeds.
I am reminded here of some comments by the philosopher Slavoj Zizek on authentic fundamentalism. “The difference between authentic fundamentalism and the ‘moral majority’ perverted fundamentalists,” Zizek writes in On Belief, “is that the first (for example, the Amish in the USA) get along very well with their American neighbors because they are centered on their own world, not bothered by what goes on out there, among ‘them,’ while the moral majority fundamentalists is always haunted by the ambiguous attitude of horror/envy with regard to the unspeakable pleasures in which sinners engage.” The moral majority sort of fundamentalism, as Zizek calls it, is concerned almost with gaining power among the weeds, of winning the victory before the harvest. They are obsessed with the weeds rather than with their own life as wheat.
The Amish on the other hand (at least in Zizek’s example, some may disagree with his broad characterization) are not concerned with the world as much as they are concerned with authentically living out their call as Christians in following Jesus’ teachings as most fully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. Their focus is not them, but Him—keeping fully focused on fulfilling the life the they are called to.
This way of living as wheat among the weeds is very clearly called for in our Epistle Reading, Romans 8:12-25. We are children of God, called to live according to the spirit—“heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” We must suffer in this life lived as wheat among the weeds because we must follow the path of non-violence, of peaceableness and love that goes contrary to everything in the world of weeds.
But we must remember, the growing season is short and it is not only we who are Christ’s own who are longing for the final harvest—our glory. “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God,” Paul writes. This is a striking passage. We can imagine not only the wheat and weeds, but the field in which they are planted, the soil that is being stripped of nutrients by weeds that return nothing to the soil. Not only must we endure, but all creation with us until the glorious day when the full flourishing of our lives are unleashed in the absence of the weeds we struggle against.
For now, we must grow strong and be the church we are called to be, following the teaching of Jesus and living in his suffering. We must be careful not to grow weak and wither among the weeds, or cross pollinate and become one.