Theological Truth: We are ministers, not messiahs; disciples of the Way of Love.
There’s an old joke about a mother making pancakes for her twin five-year-old sons, Timmy and Tommy. Being hungry, young and boys, they immediately start fighting over who will get the first pancake. The mother, seeing the opportunity to teach them a moral lesson, sighs and says, “Boys, I bet that if Jesus were sitting here right now, He would say, ‘My brother can have the first pancake.’” The twins look at each other for a split second and then Tommy quickly says to his brother: “Okay, Timmy. You be Jesus today.”
Some days, we’d rather someone else be Jesus. Often, we’d rather know about Jesus than to act like him; to admire him rather than imitate him. But as we are about to be reminded in Marian Becker’s baptism, our shared objective is to grow into the full stature of Christ—to grow, and help one another to grow, into being Jesus in the world today. So, what can today’s parable teach us about what being Jesus in the world today looks like? Spoiler alert! It’s not easy!
In today’s parable, Jesus continues giving out bad farming advice. Last week, it was the ill-advised method of scattering (some might say, “wasting”) seeds. Today the suggestion is to abandon weed eradication—good news for lazy gardeners like me, but not sound agronomy practice. Just another reminder that scripture in general, and parables in particular, require faithful engagement to explore deeper theological truths. So what kingdom wisdom is Jesus giving us?
The first is an exploration into the existence of evil and God’s response to it. Notice that God sows good seed into the field and provides all the seeds need to flourish. God doesn’t send the “bad seeds,” an enemy—someone opposed to God’s plan—is responsible for that. No further explanation is given. It’s also important to notice that the people tending the fields are not to blame either. It happened while they slept, which is not a sign of laziness or neglect. They didn’t do anything wrong, it’s just something that happens.
These forces in opposition to God’s kingdom just are…which I realize isn’t a satisfying answer, but perhaps God knows it’s the best we can process. The more important question is what do we do about it? That’s what the farm hands do. First (a lot like us!) they ask, “Why did this happen?” But they quickly pivot to, “What should we do about it?” Both are faithful responses in our desire to love and serve God. In the face of evil, what should we do? What does Jesus’ parable say about our role in confronting evil?
Well, if we’re not satisfied with the first answer, we’re really not going to like the second! The servants are lathered up and ready to uproot the weeds and eradicate all that evil from the field, but the Master tells them to do nothing. Why? Because in gathering the weeds they’ll also damage the wheat. Again, not the answer faithful people opposed to evil want to hear. We’re ready to take action…do battle…engage the enemy! But God says in essence, “Hold your fire.” How do we make sense of that?
It helps to know a little about the weed in question. This parable is often referred to as the “weeds and the tares.” Most agree that the weed Jesus is talking about is darnel, also referred to as “wheat’s evil twin,” because when it is young they look almost identical. If the Master had allowed the servants to follow their impulse to wage war against the weeds, they would have simultaneously eradicated the wheat. These are cautionary words for the servants of God in this and every age, and also a reminder of the nature of evil’s power.
For instance, how well-equipped are we to distinguish between good and evil? In its early stages, they can be difficult to distinguish. How many people of good faith initially saw the civil rights movement as a bunch of agitators? What became of Sen. McCarthy and his ilk who sought to eradicate the evils of communism? Or closer to our time, what deadly damage are we causing with the aggressiveness of our country’s immigration enforcement? It’s not always easy to differentiate between the weeds and the wheat…until it’s too late. I’m reminded of that old saying: Don’t get into a fight with a fool, because when you’re both rolling around on the ground, it’s difficult to tell who’s who. God knows us so well.
God also knows that destroying each other is exactly the intent of the enemy, because that’s the extent of evil’s power. Author and Episcopal priest Rober Capon points out that the enemy “has no power against goodness in and of itself: the wheat is in the field, the kingdom is in the world, and there is not a thing he can do about any of it. Evil, like darnel, is a counterfeit of reality, not reality itself. It is a parasite on a being, not being itself.” (Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, p.87) That’s why the enemy goes away: because he has no power other than to turn us against one another, or as Capon puts it, to “sucker [us] into taking up arms against the confusion he has introduced.” (Ibid.) The message for us, still, is to trust and allow God to oversee the timeline of the harvest, lest in our zeal we become the very evil we hate.
That’s the conclusion David French, the evangelical columnist from the New York Times reaches in a recent article. He begins by confessing his youthful love for this quote attributed to Barry Goldwater: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” He says, “something about the zeal in those words spoke to me.” But time has a way of revealing the dangers of such zealotry. He goes on to say that in time, he developed the humility to listen to others, which leads him now to realize, “It’s imperative that we amend Goldwater’s slogan. One can and should pursue liberty and justice with courage and conviction, but we can also recognize that humility in defense of liberty is no vice, and cruelty in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/12/opinion/paxton-talarico-platner-trump.html?searchResultPosition=1, emphasis mine.)
Sounds like Mr. French has been reading our Gospel for today. The Master tells us to “let both of them grow together.” It may sound like God is saying “do nothing,” but it’s not nothing. It’s much more difficult than that! The word translated here as “let them” is the same word that appears almost 150 times in scripture. It has several different translations, including allow, permit, let go, suffer (as in “suffer the little children unto me”), and forgive. In essence, God is saying “allow them, let them, suffer them, forgive them,” which is the exact self-giving, sacrificial engagement of Jesus who uses the same word right before evil seems to win the day on the cross: Forgive them for they know not what they do. Proving once more that the way of the Cross is the way of Life: Let it be. Suffer them. Forgive them.
It’s not easy; it’s not nothing. As we seek to grow into the full stature of Christ, this is how we are called to be Jesus in the world today.
