Gospel: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
1st Reading: Isaiah
44:6-8
2nd
Reading: Romans 8:12-25
After reading this Gospel
reading, I have to reverse my decision from last week. I was going to pull up the volunteer tomato
from my yard, which was crowding my kale, but now I think I should leave it In. “Let both of them grow together,” the master
tells the slaves. However, maybe it
isn’t that great of a plan to shape your gardening plans and advice from Jesus’
Parables. After all, they aren’t about
plants, or are they?
I have here, this week a showy
milkweed plant. This plant has the word
“weed” right in it. It has a lot of traits
of weeds. It grows and spreads quickly,
both by seeds and rhizomes. It is low
maintenance, not very picky. For years
milkweed was called a noxious plant, that must be eradicated. People removed the plants. They were sprayed and destroyed until very
few were left. Then we all became aware
that the milkweed plant is the only place a Monarch butterfly will lay its eggs,
the only food monarch caterpillars can eat.
So with the decline of such a magnificent butterfly, we begin to realize
that a weed to us, an annoyance and troublemaker, is home to someone else, and
someone we might even care about.
This particular milkweed plant
was placed in the yard of a member of this church and this plant began to
spread and spread and started to take over, so these kind people offered it to
us at church. We’ve been talking since
the beginning of the garden group of putting in some showy milkweed here on the
church property, so when it was offered, I said yes. Why not bring in a plant that will attract
butterflies, and maybe take over some of this bare ground that just keeps
producing weeds that we have to keep pulling.
The milkweed may even be able to choke out my arch-nemesis weed, the
horsetail.
Whether something is a weed or
not is in the eye of the beholder. I
remember as a kid being baffled by what my mom and grandma told me were weeds. Delicate little blue and salmon colored
flowers that grew in the yard that made beautiful little bouquets for my
Barbies, dandelions that we would give our mom to show her how much we loved
her and whose seeds we would blow and make wishes as we observed them floating
like little fairies, little yellow flowers we would hold up to our chins to
make sure we liked butter, and on and on.
As kids, we
scoffed at the other flowers. They
needed all this special attention and care.
They had to be babied: they had to be watered, they had to weeded, they
had to be deadheaded, they had to be fertilized. They were wimps! Who wanted to do all that work, when you had
these perfectly good weeds everywhere, providing beautiful flowers?
In the eyes of some, I’m sure Jesus would have been
considered a weed. He was born to an
unwed mother, came from Nazareth, of all places. This weed was popping up where none would be
expected. He was a wiley weed,
resilient, a little thorny, not conforming to popular views of beauty, and
decorum. He wouldn’t stand in his row,
he wouldn’t flower when he was supposed to, and all those pests kept buzzing
around him, like women, and tax collectors, the homeless, and sick. Jesus was seen by some as a weed, but we know
he is God’s own Son.
In the readings from Romans, it says, “The Creation
waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” It isn’t just people that wait for
redemption, for healing, for unity with God.
All creation does. And not just
the roses and the cedars, but the so-called weeds. God created them, too, and not just to make
extra work for us. But they do what God
created them to do. They convert carbon
dioxide into oxygen. Their roots break
up rocks and aggregates of soil. They
shade the ground. They provide food and
homes for animals and insects. Some of
them fix nitrogen in the soil so that other plants can grow. God created them and God created them
good. We can’t put them in categories
like “bad” just because they are inconvenient to us. The weeds are waiting with eager longing,
too, to take their rightful place in the balance of God’s good creation, in the
new life that God is bringing, in the Kingdom itself. Maybe the master says, “Let both of them grow
until the harvest,” because God knows their use. Maybe God sees what we can’t see. A diverse landscape is how it has been
naturally in creation. It was us humans
who had the gall to try to make all one plant grow in an area, to support our
own growing population. We forget that
is unnatural and even at times unhealthy for the earth to be forced to grow
things for our convenience. To the other
animals, maybe we are the weeds, an inconvenience, an evil to other species
trying to survive, let alone experience abundant life that God is bringing to
them in the peaceable Kingdom.
One weird thing happening in the
Parable is that the weeds are sewn. I
have to tell you that weed seeds don’t have to be sewn. They are occasionally when someone blows on
the head of a dandelion that’s gone to seed, but in the vast majority of cases,
they seed themselves. In any handful of
soil, if you look at it under a microscope, you’ll find hundreds of weed seeds
already waiting in the soil. Maybe this
parable points to our tendency to want to blame someone for the bad things that
we perceive are happening to us. One
thing to keep in mind is that isn’t always about us, it often isn’t personal,
when things that are inconvenient to us happen.
And it often isn’t evil. Often it
is someone else trying to get through life with the tools they have, we’re just
growing so close together, we forget we’re part of a field.
Weeds aren’t all bad! We know this because the Kingdom of Heaven
will be compared to one, the Mustard seed, in our Gospel reading for next
week. What is a weed that grows out of
control and takes over, is also a tree sheltering many birds. Maybe this parable can help us to see the
shades of gray instead of everything being either good or bad, black or
white. Take the perspective of the weed
for a moment! In fact, Christians have a
lot of weedy traits, since we try to follow Jesus. Christianity has spread like weeds and grows
in unlikely places, despite efforts to root it out. Weeds are described in the book “Weeds: In
Defense of Natures Most Unloved Plants” as “gregarious, adventurous, prolific and profane.” Doesn’t
that sound like Christianity at its best? The church is must be all those things, because Jesus was and is and
the church is the body of Christ!
I am glad that God says to wait and let the weeds
grow and when the time comes the angels will do the sorting. For one thing, I have been known to mix up a
weed and a good plant, both in my garden and in life. I think I have someone figured out and placed
in a category and they surprise me. This
way, I don’t have to decide, because I am just growing here in this field with
the rest of you and I can’t see very far from my vantage point. This way I can just concentrate on being the
best of whatever I am that I am. If I am
a wheat, stalk, may I bear much fruit and not take more than my share of nutrients
and water and sun. If I am a weed,
remember I didn’t decide to be, this is who I am and I have been created good
like the rest of you, and may I play my part providing homes for our friends
the insects, breaking up the soil, and keeping things from getting too boring
and homogenous around here.
This milkweed plant will soon be planted. What was rejected will be accepted and
invited. It will take root and grow and
spread. And it is my hope that through
this once denied and betrayed plant, new life will come, transformation will
come. Maybe next spring butterflies will
lay their eggs there, caterpillars will devour this plant, make cocoons, and be
transformed into to something beautiful, that reminds us of the resurrection,
and our own capacity for transformation.
The stone that the builders have rejected has become the
cornerstone. The plant that the
gardeners have rejected has become the prized plant in the garden. There is hope for weeds like us, that God can
and will bring new life, and that worms will somehow soar, that people will be
transformed, that we will grow together and let God do the sorting, that God
will be merciful and bring eternal abundant life to all of Creation and once
again declare us good.
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