This life is a mess!  It’s a messy, messed-up mixture.  The news is always mixed, and our joys seem always tinged with the shadow of sadness.  This is not a happy thought.  Lord knows we want to be happy.  The world tells us we can be: just forget, ignore, all we have to do is be militant and fight for change, reshape the world into our vision for it (someone’s vision, anyway).

Have you ever experienced unintended consequences, or caused them?  We meant for one thing to happen, expected it, but something quite different happens.  We meant our words one way, yet they are taken in another.  Our intentions were good; the result was not.  But all we have to do is forget, ignore, be militant and fight for the change we want.

As for those who oppose us, those who get in the way?

The Canadian clinical psychologist, author, and professor, Jordan Peterson has said, “We like to think we’re peaceful, but we’re not.  We’re neither peaceful nor anxiety-free [. . . .] the normative human being is just as much terrified and murderous as calm and collected.”[1]  We may say, in response, that’s not so.  In The Marrow of Tradition (1901), the American novelist Charles W. Chesnutt wrote of the thin veneer of our civilized behavior; it doesn’t seem to take much to peel that back, chip it away, for the something much rougher beneath to become visible.  I have a good friend who is fascinated by true crime stories—there are plenty!  This life is a mess, and we are a mess.

Jesus tells the Parable of the Weeds, the Wheat and the Tares.  This parable is only incidentally about the church.  The church is in the world, and we are in the world.  Jesus came sowing seeds of the kingdom.  A fair amount of seed fell unfavorably—upon the hard, compacted path; upon rocky soil; amid thorns that choked the seed of the Word.  All that sounds discouraging, joy shadowed with sadness.  There is also the seed that falls on good soil, favorable soil.  Most often, in my experience, that is prepared soil, fertilized, cultivated.

The seed falling on good soil comes up and bears abundant fruit.  This is joyous, a delight to the sower.  Jesus likens the field to the world.  The wheat comes up.  The other comes up also: the plant resembling wheat, that is mostly indistinguishable from wheat, though it seems careful eyes may be able to tell the difference.  Through the growing time, they are patiently allowed to remain together, mixed, until judgment.  By harvest time the difference is apparent: the seed head of darnel, the other plant, is not like the seed head of wheat.  Beloved, we know there are those who accept the Word and those who reject the Word.  The two parables make that plain, so also our own experience, our own sometimes very painful, heart-breaking experience.  If only God would force them to believe!

This parable is about the world, and it acknowledges what we already know: evil is in the world.  We can assure ourselves that people are basically good, kind, giving; that might be our experience, most of the time.  We can rely upon believable explanations for the lack of compassion and the suffering we cause.  We can say it’s due to ignorance, a lack of enlightenment—that’s plausible because it’s true, spiritually.  If we know our Genesis, we know the origin of evil.  Scripture tells us the cause lies not in the mind—where ignorance and knowledge wrestle—but in the heart.  There’s a Cain in each of us, a Judas in each of us.  There’s a Solomon in each of us, who, despite all his great wisdom and understanding, is still seduced away from total devotion to God, seduced away through his heart.  The veneer is thin, and liable to peeling.  People are not so peaceful or calm as we like to think; these times remind us of that in ways we hadn’t wanted to know.

English is a mixed, messy language.  English begins with Anglo-Saxon, a wonderfully direct language.  Over centuries, words from French, Latin, and Greek replaced many Anglo-Saxon words.  Some words, however, remained unchanged, as if there was no better way to say the thing, as though there was something unchangeable in the word.  One such word is evil.  Evil is surprisingly difficult to define.  We can define it by what it is not—the absence of good.  We can define it by what it is like—malevolent, malicious, perversion, corruption—Latin words.  How do we name evil for what it is itself?  In Old Irish, the word is adbal, which also has the sense of excess, excessive.  That’s our clue.  Evil is excess: the excessive something that causes suffering, more than can be borne.  Evil is also that which promotes and maintains that excess.

Whatever removes suffering, then, will naturally be regarded as good, at least under the circumstances.  Under the circumstances of users, alcohol and drugs are regarded as good: they remove the suffering—well, deaden it, muffle it—hopefully, maybe, mostly.  But there are consequences.  We can say unintended consequences, but it’s not as if we were truly ignorant of the consequences.  We turn to many such things: wealth, food, protests, Socialism.  The trouble is in the depths of the heart, the broken, sorrow-shadowed heart.

The social turbulence we are witnessing—cultural convulsions, political contortions—we are told this is what happens as part of the serious, virtuous work of removing suffering: the suffering of racism, in this instance, though it was the suffering of COVID-19 earlier.  Now it’s all a jumbled, sad, sorry mess.  These plausibly commendable efforts to combat racism and COVID-19 seem to have caused even more suffering, though some seem able to bear it [. . . .]  I’m willing to allow that much of this suffering is inadvertent, unintended, undesired, but not all of it.  There is that in us that wants to make others suffer, and submit.

When someone hurts us, our natural reaction will be either to attempt to run away, avoid, or we will respond in kind, attack, fight.  We can apply face-saving terms to either action: taking the high road, practicing forbearance, being the mature one, or, alternatively, protecting, preserving, standing up for yourself.  It’s running away or fighting.  What’s a Christian to do?

That’s where Jesus is going with this parable of wheat and weeds.  The servants of the owner of the field see weeds in among the wheat.  God sowed good seed, yet weeds spring up too, and where did that seed come from?  If you’ve ever taken an interest in gardening, you’ve wondered the same thing.  The servants see the weeds and want to do something about them.  So do we.  Weed the garden.  Seems like I’m always weeding the garden.  I’ll say this: those weeds are devious, clever.  The top breaks off, but the roots remain.  The problem really comes when the roots are in among the roots of the plants I want.  That’s delicate work.

That delicate work becomes enormously complicated when the garden is the world and the plants are human beings.  There is suffering caused by the natural world, but the overwhelming majority, and the costliest suffering we face, is that caused by human beings: evil, intended or unintended.  The old comic strip Pogo got it right: we have seen the enemy, and he is us.

Not everyone regards the matter that way.  For many over the course of history, the problem hasn’t been us but them.  We have seen the enemy, and you’re it.  The veneer is peeled back, the peaceful person becomes a murderer, because the peaceful person, in some way we decline to examine too closely, the peaceful person, underneath, is a murderer, a betrayer: that’s there, too.  Cain is there, and Judas.  We look back in nauseous, disgusted dismay at Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, Slobodan Milosevic, the Klan: pogroms, genocides, purges, lynchings, homicides.  Why were we surprised by any of it?

We fight.  We fight against all that.  We seek justice: we want them punished.  We throw ourselves, personally and as a society, into the war: the war on poverty, on hunger, the war on drugs, on racism, the war on trans-phobia.  We can’t just sit by and let evil happen; we know evil when we see it.  We have to fight.  We must eradicate, a word that means root out.  We must weed the garden of our world.  I understand all of that.  I feel all of that.  The weeds crowd, the weeds seem to take over, the weeds threaten to choke out the wheat.

Yet, somehow, the wheat still grows.  There is still wheat beloved.  We know there are weeds!  There is also wheat.  Jesus speaks of the kingdom.  You are the kingdom; the church is the kingdom: the fruit of the seeds planted by God, by the Son.  The church is people.  The kingdom is people, orienting their lives by the power of the Spirit toward God, aiming at lives that honor God, that return praise to God—fruitful lives.  I don’t bring in the kingdom.  We don’t bring in the kingdom.  God will bring the kingdom: Thy kingdom come.  We press on toward the goal.  Our work in the kingdom, for the kingdom, is not changing others—as though we had such power!  Our kingdom work is and must be work upon ourselves, our own discipleship, our faithful obedience.  But why work on yourself when you can work over others?

I’ve fretted about fruitful living.  That “angst” is with me continually.  Matthew paid particularly close attention when Jesus spoke about fruit: no other Gospel account speaks of it so much as Matthew’s.  I hear the words of Jesus: “You shall know them by their fruit” (Mt 7:16, 20), and I start to squirm.  I should be doing more.  I’m not doing enough.  Maybe you feel that way, think that way too, but if not, maybe you are blessed.

What does this parable tell us?  The wheat grows.  How?  Does the wheat make itself grow?  The wheat produces what is in it to produce.  How does the wheat produce fruit?  Does the wheat will itself to produce heads of grain?  Does the wheat even fret over its fruit?  No.  The wheat does as God has made wheat to do.  In Christ, through the Spirit, God gave us rebirth from weeds into wheat.  God prepared the soil of our lives for His Word, consider that and marvel!  God gives us light, gives us water, gives us air.  God feeds us.  Jesus tells us to trust in God, to have faith.  He will weed the garden of His world, in His own way, in His own time.  In the meantime, He continues to give His wheat all it needs.  God shall supply all your need (Phil 4:19).

We aren’t here to tear the weeds out of the earth—that’s God’s work.  If God is doing it, what is there for us to do?  Do we just sit around, letting evil happen all around us?  No.  We are here to be the Church, the kingdom, the wheat in the world, doing what wheat does: growing, sprouting, fruiting, becoming ready for the harvest.  Perhaps that’s not what we truly want to be doing, though; just growing where you are certainly is not what the self-righteous of the world would tell you that you ought to be doing.  This work, this living after Jesus Christ, requires patience, time, faith, hope, and love.  It is God’s work, Spirit-work.  It is not the work of men.  We do not enter the kingdom by our works.

Be a disciple of Jesus Christ.  Be guided by the Spirit.  Read your Bible regularly, with attention and devotion: strive to understand.  Remember what Jesus says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).  Pray daily, serve willingly, testify.  Let your life speak.  Have faith, live in hope, rejoice in the love of God, share this love with everyone.  Cultivate patience, humility, and endurance.

We want to combat evil.  We want to bring an end to suffering.  We want to make things better.  These impulses are commendable when they come from God and are guided by the Spirit according to the Word.  Jesus tells us suffering and evil will be finally, fully overcome by God.  God is overcoming them now.  It can be hard for us to perceive!  God tells his eager angelic servants to refrain, not to disturb the weeds for the sake of the wheat.  For the sake of the wheat—consider that!  God promises that the harvest will come.  He tells us there is a place for the wheat and a place, also, for the weeds.  Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJSJcPKA1Ug .  See beginning at approximately 13:00.