Wheat and Weeds
The devils sow, when the men sleep.
My heart is a field of wheat and tares
Which feels, at times, beyond repair.
But the Son of Man is the all-merciful one,
Who will patiently endure, till the weeding is done.
In the parable of the wheat and weeds, Jesus says that the field is the world, that He is the sower, the devil is the enemy, and that the wheat are the righteous sons of the kingdom while the weeds are the wicked, the sons of the evil one, and the harvest in the eschaton. Jesus doesn’t always interpret His parables, and so when He does, we ought to let Him direct us, and have ears to hear what He is trying to communicate to us about the Kingdom and our lives.
The reality is that the world you and I inhabit is at war. (Not to be unnecessarily extreme.)
There are kingdoms in opposition.
The field where we live, what Jesus calls the world, has a mixture of wheat and weeds. The tension is obvious enough, but not always easily discernible, as the wheat and weeds demonstrate.
However, one of the lessons of this parable that I want to encourage you with is that even when it appears as if the enemy is winning, that his weeds are overtaking, that darkness is overcoming, Jesus makes it vitally clear that the field is yet HIS, and the enemy is an infiltrator who won’t win. When the day comes, that day of harvest, all will be made clear, and only the Kingdom of Heaven will remain.
Sometimes we can forget that we Christians are not cosmological dualists. We don’t think that at the foundation of reality is a fundamental duality - light and dark, good and evil - held in tension, which exist as equal and opposite forces.
That’s not us.
We know that the Triune God is the ground of all that is. He is the sole King, and competes with no other.
The devil is His creature in rebellion. He has no creative power. He only counterfeits, mimics, and corrupts.
The Son sows, then the devil does also. It wasn’t his idea. His imitation is not one of flattery but perversion. The enemy wouldn’t even know what to do without seeing the act of God first, and distorting it.
First is God’s good creation, then comes the corruption. The good always comes first. Corruption itself demonstrates the reality of the good.
Thus the parable reveals to us this truth: that even when it appears that the enemy is God’s match, when on the surface it seems like the weeds are taking over, when the world is mixed up, the devil is nothing but a losing enemy. The field is not his. It is the Lord’s, and He will redeem it.
And so we must learn patient endurance and defiant hope in the face of sin and evil in our world. The Lord said to leave the weeds for now, so as not to destroy the wheat. In what might be called the Day of Discernment, or the Day of the Lord, all will be righted, all will be known, justice will come. But until that day, we endure with patience and not condemnation. (This, of course, is not some command towards passivity; the parable is about discernment and patience with those outside the Church.)
Now, the parables of Christ are rich in meaning because they are mysteries. They are revelations. They are patterns that speak to the Kingdom and life within it. There is another layer to this parable; this is what we may call an application, or implication of the pattern.
If you are honest, is not your heart the very same as this field?
So oddly composed of good and healthy wheat and yet riddled with weeds?
Virtues that are beautiful and vice that is deadly?
Truths that are life and Spirit and lies that bring death?
Your words spring forth like fresh springs in one moment and the next spew flaming poison as from the throat of a dragon?
Our fields need to be worked. Although I hope and pray for your perfection, completion, and full maturity, on this side of heaven, your heart will have weeds and God in His mercy will do that weeding work, but as this parable speaks to, with great patience, lest the wheat be destroyed. If He were to come and in a single moment root up everything all at once, we would be ruined.
What would be left?
We sin in word, thought, and deed. All of it is tainted by sin and selfishness; we can hardly escape it. But because the Lord's desire is your salvation and healing, and not your destruction, he deals with us in patience and calls us to come again and again to the altar. To come back to the table of His Holy Supper and surgery.
But Jesus also says in this parable (if I can paraphrase):
The Devils sows, when the men sleep.
This alone is rich with implication - we can see it work itself out in leadership, the church, the home, marriage, all of it. But for right now, Jesus is telling us to stay awake, to remain vigilant, wakeful, watching, guarding the heart.
There is a reality to our life in Christ that requires of us a prayerful wakefulness, an awareness of what is being sown into us through the eyes, the ears, the heart, the mind, all avenues of infiltration that the enemy uses. He is wily and cunning, and so we mustn’t think for a second that we are gonna be batting 1000 on this. However, we must remember that sins begin to grow in us when we turn from faithfulness into slothfulness.
We must be diligent in soul. Which is actually quite simple, though not always easy:
prayer, repentance, honesty, godly friends and counsel, Spiritual direction, confession, worship, doing the commandments as best as you know how.
Of course, we know that all these things in themselves are not our salvation; Christ alone is. Yet in His wisdom and kindness, He has given us these many means of receiving His healing work. These ways of being awakened.
God is merciful; I know He will get His harvest from your field. Don't sleep on it.
Fr Mike +