Weeds and Seeds

Weeds and Seeds

A Sermon preached on Facebook Live Broadcast

Pentecost VII - Proper 11 A

Sunday, July 19, 2020 

Have I mentioned before that my least favorite gospeller is Matthew? 

I have, haven’t I? By about the third or fourth consecutive lectionary selection where Matthew’s gospel is featured, I am predictably out of patience with what I perceive to be his tediousness.

Tenacity is fine. It’s his tediousness that undoes me. Every. Time.

Matthew just can’t seem to let a good parable rest. He’s got to explain every detail. 

I have come to believe that this Matthew was, in fact, the ‘tax collector’. Every ‘i’ is dotted, every ‘t’ is crossed and every column of numbers adds up correctly. There’s a place for everything and Good Ole Matt makes certain that everything is in its place. 

Matthew’s gospel is black and white and this passage about the good seeds and the bad weeds is no different. In Matthew’s view, there are Children of the Kingdom and Children of the Evil One. Those are the only two possibilities.  Good and Evil. 

Look, I’m not saying that Jesus didn’t tell this parable. I’m sure he did. What I’m not so certain of is that Jesus did this sort of meticulous explaining afterward. 

Matthew’s world was black and white. Jesus, on the other hand, understood shades of gray. In fact, he embraced them. One only has to look at the 12 Apostles to see the “seeds” he chose and the “weeds” that grew together right alongside each other. 

While it's comforting to think that these two distinct communities never touch each other, in fact, darkness and light coexist everywhere. We hear the Psalmist proclaim,  

“. . .  but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. For darkness and light are the same to you.” (P 139:12)

I have a childhood memory of walking home from church with my grandmother one beautiful spring morning. We took what she called “a shortcut through the field” but, in fact, she wanted to walk among the new grass and wildflowers that were beginning their riotous announcement of the full arrival of a new season. 

I remember finding one plant that caught my eye. It was lacey and delicate and lovely and looked like a piece of one of my grandmother’s tattering. My grandmother treated all of creation as relatives – every creature and every plant under heaven had a name, and she knew them and called them all by name, as if they were old friends.

“VaVoa,” I called, “Look at this! It looks like your tattering.” 

“Ah,” she said, “that’s Queen Anne’s Lace. That’s God’s handiwork. Isn’t she beautiful? Pick three or four of them and I’ll pick some of these Daisies and a few of these Bachelor Buttons and Chickory. They’ll be pretty in the vase on the kitchen table.”

A few days later, I was helping my uncles in the yard. One uncle was mowing and I was weeding, being very careful to pull only the weeds my grandmother had taught me. Another of my uncles came over to join me and I gasped as I noticed that he was pulling up all the Queen Anne’s Lace! 

“What are you doing?” I said, a little more loudly than was respectful for a girl my age to speak to my uncle. 

“What?” he said. “This? Oh, these are just ugly weeds.” And, to my horror, he continued his murderous task.

What was beautiful to my eyes were ugly weeds to his. What I saw as having a place in the garden for its own beauty as well as to enhance the beauty of others, he saw as something evil that needed to be weeded out so that it didn’t overtake the flowers to which he ascribed value and worth. 

The weeds and the good seeds are all around us. 

They are, in fact, within us. 

Some of us have been carefully taught what makes something inherently good and what has the potential for evil. 

Sometimes, that’s absolutely right. But, sometimes, we allow what someone else has labeled ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ to blind us from the potential for good.

Author, activist and Baptist minister, Will Campbell, who died about five years ago just before his 88th birthday, referred to himself as a ‘bootleg preacher’. 

A lawyer once asked him where he went to church. Campbell said, “That depends on your definition of church.”

The lawyer replied that church is a community of baptized believers. 

Campbell said, “Well, the night before last I was in a tavern with a neighbor whose wife had just died. You know, I sat and watched that neighbor get drunk. In fact, I helped him a bit.”

Campbell took a deep breath and said, “I know the people in that tavern. They are all baptized and they are all believers. And, last night, we were a community sitting with a grieving neighbor.”

Campbell was making the point that church is not necessarily in a sturdy brick building with pews and a pulpit, cross and altar. Sometimes, church is where you find it. Sometimes, church is where you make it. Sometimes, church is how you define it.

That has never been more true than these days of COVID-19 Quarantine. One headline I read proclaimed, “The church has left the building.” And, so it has. Some have discovered that is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Indeed, some are choosing not to re-gather in their church building, preferring instead a newly-discovered and different kind of intimacy and deeper, more personal spirituality by participating in their own way in a service of worship that is online. 

Some even confess that they “attend” several churches on Sunday morning. And, they love it and love that they can. One person said to me, “You get more Jesus this way.” 

Turns out, there are shades of gray, even in the church. 

Indeed, as we learned in the first lesson from Hebrew Scripture, Jacob, the scoundrel who stole his brother’s birthright, has a transformative spiritual experience in the midst of a field outside Haran in the middle of the deepest darkness of night, with only a rock for a pillow.

While it’s comforting to think of the world as clearly separated into Good and Evil and that these two distinct communities never touch each other, the truth that Jesus knew is that darkness and light coexist everywhere. 

Exploring the shaded and shadowed areas can be a real act of faith with rich rewards. 

In fact, the church has done some of its best work in the shadows with some pretty shady customers – and some of those shady characters have been deacons, priests, and, yes, bishops!

A great deal has to do with how much we buy into stereotypes and how much we are willing to look for the light in the midst of what has been defined as darkness. 

We learn from Jesus that even bad can be used for some ultimate good. 

At that last supper in the Upper Room with his disciples, Jesus knew what was to happen. He knew that this would be the last time he and his friends would be together. He knew that this night would set into motion the events that would lead to his death, yes, but that his death would be for the redemption of the world. 

And, he knew that Judas was a pivotal person in setting the events of that redemption into action. His last words to Judas were, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” (John 13:27)


And, Judas left and went to the Sanhedrin so they might find Jesus and arrest him.

Judas – passionate but fearful, deeply committed but narrowly focused Judas – put his faith in the institution vs. the movement. Judas betrayed Jesus, yes, but he also betrayed the best of himself. 

Even so, that betrayal set into motion the culmination of the work of Jesus on earth in the redemption of the world which was necessary, we are told, because of the betrayal of Adam and Eve in the Garden. 

Many of us share the perspective of St. Matthew. Oh, I sometimes wish life were black and white. Sometimes I long for answers that are definitely this or definitely that. 

What I have discovered, however, is that good seeds and bad seeds grow together everywhere. You find them in classrooms, offices, families, churches, neighborhoods, and, yes, fields.

We search in vain for the pure meadow of unadulterated wheat. The grass always seems greener in the other fellow’s yard. Even in a monastery or convent, we will discover that the holiest monk or nun wrestles with the darkest demons. 

If we're honest, we can see all of that in our own lives.

What I hear Jesus teaching us is not to judge – not others, not even ourselves. It’s God’s job to do the sorting out.  Ours is not to figure everything out or to know every answer to every question.

In my experience, life is best experienced and lived with a few “i’s” not dotted or “t’s’ not crossed and columns of numbers that don’t quite add up.

Our task is to plant seeds and gather the crops – the wheat and tares, the flowers and the weeds.

All of it – all of it: the seeds and the weeds – has a purpose and use in the Realm of God.   

Because all of it – all of it – was created by God.

Amen.