Consider the Plants, Week 6: Weeds Among the Wheat

Post Author: Rev. Liesl Spitz

Prayer of the Day

O God of all beings, open our hearts to the beauty of your creation. Where we are called to grow, nourish us. Where we are tempted to judge, chasten our impulses. Give us courage, strength, and wisdom to support the flourishing of all beings whom you have created and called good. Amen.

Commentary on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

The weekend I met my now-spouse, I brought him around to my apartment in South Minneapolis and showed him my most proud achievement: the two by five foot plot I was tending behind the building, of which the landlord was kind enough to give me temporary stewardship. In the brief tour of what I had planted, I noticed an unknown sprout and began to pull it. Kenan, who I would learn was knowledgeable in plant identification and herbalism, stopped me. He leaned in, looked closely, and told me what this small leaf would become—sorrel—as well as its delicious taste and healing properties. We left it there to grow among the tomatoes.

While I will never know baby leaves this way, I have since come to appreciate many of the plants typically pulled from Midwestern lawns. Early in the Spring, Kenan and I will harvest and eat the Bellflower and Amaranth greens that grow abundantly in our yard, often right in the middle of the vegetables. Ground ivy, or “creeping Charlie,” makes a lovely tea. Young milkweed pods and dandelion flowers are a snack. We do pull many plants from the ground to make way for others, but we do not call them weeds.

Volunteering recently with Wakan Tipi Awanyankapi, a Native-led conservation organization stewarding sacred Dakota land in St. Paul, I learned this lesson another way. Part of restoring the land of Wakan Tipi to its native ecosystem means pulling what most people consider “invasive species.” But, our guide shared, staff found this orientation was a harmful frame of mind, even as these plants needed to be removed. Instead at Wakan Tipi, invasive plants are called “displaced relatives.”

In this parable casting a field of grain as a metaphor for human souls, Jesus troubles our assumptions of how we should tend the harvest. Jesus doesn’t deny the presence of bad actors—some plants should not be there, and are sown by the “enemy.” But crucially, he doesn’t give listeners the authority to decipher weeds for themselves. God, the sower, is also the harvester. God will decide what is good fruit and what is cast away.

Chaff, also translated “tares,” in Greek is zizanion, which is “a kind of darnel [ryegrass] resembling wheat.” This is important. Not only are the chaff growing amidst the wheat, and thus pulling them could hurt the roots of other plants. It is also very difficult to distinguish. Jesus tells the disciples not to pull what they think is chaff, because in doing so they could damage and lose their true crop.

While this pericope from the RCL does not include verses 31-35, it is notable that right in the middle of this parable are two others: of the Mustard Seed and Yeast, a plant and an organism that are very weed-like in their voracity and ability to take over your garden or pantry. Mustard and yeast are both productive and nourishing to humans, but you don’t want either growing out of control! These everyday “weeds” are held up as metaphors for the Kingdom of God.

It’s one thing to stay humble in our view of plants, but how much more do we judge our fellow humans, wishing to cut each other out? Jesus doesn’t deny the role of the “enemy” to sow bad fruit among us, but we are neither judge nor thresher. Whatever your theological views of salvation and election, here we may proclaim that God is the one who chooses and gathers the fruit of the harvest— and who is to say that what we have called good fruit or weeds is indeed how God views us? For those who have been rejected by the Church or the world, this is especially good news for today.

Hymn Suggestion 

For the Beauty of the Earth (ELW 879)
Text by Folliott S. Pierpoint
Music by Conrad Kocher