What Would Jesus Do with the Weeds?
County Kerry is known as “the kingdom.” It claimed its kingdom status and its independence from the British longer than any other part of the island. We think and do things differently here. When Jesus talks about the kingdom, it is hard not to believe I am already in it.
Every morning I open the curtains to this vista. I sit with my prayers and contemplate a passage of scripture. Then I write something and post it on my other Substack, On the Way.
It is a quiet start to the day, and part of how my heart is reforming itself in my last quarter and in this land, this kingdom.
I was going to post today about a recent funeral. Living between two graveyards and serving five churches that are all surrounded by graveyards also is part of how my heart is reforming.
But the buttercups are out. And it is the “green season,” the time when the lectionary serves up the teachings of Jesus. Today his kingdom parable is about the wheat and the tares (weeds). So the themes of my two Substacks come together.
The graveyard can wait. (May the graveyard wait!) Here is what I wrote for On the Way:
Jesus put before them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. Matthew 13:24-25I ponder the parable of the wheat and the tares while looking out at my garden. Where is the grass? There is something from the grass family, rising high over the bits of green that somebody once wanted to grow here.
There are also buttercups. Great swaths of yellow spilled across the vista. The butterflies like them. So do the bees.
The bunnies like the tall grass. They run through it unseen when that cat enters the gate. Also the next door neighbor’s dog that races the circle around the rectory and out again to rejoin his owner on her walk.
I could mow the garden. I could bring down the weedy grass before it reseeds itself and chokes out more of that domesticated stuff.
But I won’t.
Last year we mowed in June. And never saw another butterfly.
The servants in the parable are eager to destroy the weeds. So eager. The master knows that such destruction is, well, destructive. He puts them off, tells them to let the wheat and weeds grow together.
But the servants are so eager to sort good from evil and destroy the evil. Something burns within to name and then destroy evil.
Does the master promise they can burn the weeds later to assuage that desire? I wonder.
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Jesus doesn’t tell the end of the story. Like many parables, this one leaves the ending open.
I wonder if the master is protecting the butterflies. I wonder if he is holding back the destructive hand from the weeds until the servants can finally recognize their value.
What do you think about those weeds?