The servants ask, “How do we get rid of the weeds?” The master asks, “How do we preserve the wheat?”
I can easily relate to the servants, especially this year, because I saw how quickly the weeds can grow and take over the front yard. I could not believe it.
Believe it or not, I was thinking about this parable all spring.
After we finally got rid of the overgrown ivy in the front yard, the yard looked bare. As I was thinking about what shrubs to plant, I noticed little green shoots beginning to fill the empty space. I wondered, Should I pull them out now before they get out of control? Then I remembered today’s Gospel.
So I left them alone.
Some of those little plants were growing right next to our hydrangeas. Their leaves looked almost identical. In fact, I got excited. “Wow! Maybe our hydrangeas are spreading!” Every time I mowed the lawn, I stopped to admire them, curious to see what they would become.
But as the weather warmed, I began to have my doubts.
They looked like hydrangeas… but not quite. They kept getting taller. Before long, they were crowding our Japanese maple, creeping into the hollies, and taking over the flower bed. Every time I mowed the lawn, I stared at them, wondering, Are these really hydrangeas, or have I been nurturing weeds all this time?
Then one afternoon, while I was sitting in the church conference room, I looked out the window and saw a gentleman walking around the playground wearing a huge tank on his back, looking like a Ghostbuster, spraying weeds.
I thought, That’s it!
Forget the parable. I need one of those!
I was already imagining myself driving to Home Depot to buy that nifty weed sprayer and wipe them all out. “The hydrangeas, the hollies, and the Japanese maple will be fine,” I told myself. “They’re strong enough to handle a little chemical. I’ll just give them some Miracle-Gro afterward.”
That was exactly the kind of thinking that killed one of our crape myrtles after we pulled out the ivy.
The parable of the weeds is harder to practice than it first appears.
The servants ask, “How do we get rid of the weeds?”
The master asks, “How do we preserve the wheat?”
Those are two very different questions.
I think our instinct is to curate beauty. We trim, prune, organize, and remove anything that looks out of place. We curate our homes. We curate our social media. We curate our friendships. Sometimes we even try to curate God’s kingdom.
The problem is that we often mistake holiness for purity.
Purity asks, “How do we keep the field clean?”
Holiness asks, “How do we help the wheat grow?”
Those are not the same question.
The parable is not teaching careless neglect, nor is it encouraging us to let weeds run wild. It is teaching holy patience.
It teaches us to live faithfully in the in-between, when things are not yet black and white, when we cannot always tell the difference, and when our good intentions can easily become harmful actions.
Jesus knew that.
He knew how easily our desire to make things right could lead us to damage what God is quietly growing. Sometimes, in our determination to remove what we think is wrong, we end up wounding what God is trying to preserve.
The servants wanted a pure field.
The master wanted a harvest.
There is a fine difference.
The question for us, then, is not, “Can I identify the weeds?”
The better question is, “How can I help preserve the wheat?”
Every disagreement…
Every difficult conversation…
Every conflict…
gives us that choice.
We can spend our energy identifying weeds.
Or we can spend our energy preserving wheat.
Jesus invites us to practice holy patience—not because the weeds do not matter, but because the Lord of the harvest sees more than we do. Our calling is not to produce a perfectly tidy field. Our calling is to care faithfully for the wheat, trusting that, in God’s time, the harvest will come.
