July 19, 2026 Pentecost 8. Isaiah 44:6-8, Psalm 86:11-17, Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. “CAN WE LEARN TO LIVE WITH WEEDS?”
Our gospel today is a whole chapter of parables. We’ll read from the same chapter next week too. Parables are stories Jesus told to give us a picture of what God is like. And what the kingdom of God is like!
When you think of “kingdom,” you might think of King Arthur & the knights of the round table – if people still think of such things! Kingdom is the realm of God; the rule of God. The way God runs the world, you might say. The KOG is, “the way the world would be if God were completely & totally in charge.”
But wait, isn’t God completely & totally in charge now? Look around & see if you still think so! The answer is: NOPE! If God were totally in charge of things, you think there would be a 4 – year plus more, war going on in Ukraine, with the Russian dictator Putin trying to take over a sovereign country, & he doesn’t think twice about bombing children? Apparently he’s not doing very well these days! Ukraine has gotten very good at making and using drones – as a smaller country, they know by now how to fight back against a bigger bully country!
And if God were totally in control, do you think Palestinian families, & children would still be getting killed in attacks by Israeli forces? And do you think children would be starving in Gaza? And don’t forget the 2 Latino men shot down by Immigration enforcement agents in the U. S. in the last 10 days alone!
So maybe God holds back total control over his creation. Maybe God desires people to choose, & act on his way of love, freely, without forcing us all to do his will, like robots.
Theologian Tom Wright tells us, “There is no barbed wire in the kingdom of God!” And of course, Wright is right! Jesus gives us pictures, in his parables, of the way God is operating in the world. We know God is up to something – even in these days & events! God is active & doing things – & yet there is conflict. We see it in today’s parable. God is at work, yet there is real opposition to God’s work!
Jesus depicted another parable for them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven (God) is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. While people were asleep, his enemy came, sowed weeds among the wheat, & went away.”
We know there are forces at work, against what God wants to happen. The story tells us so: “The servants of the landowner came & said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How did the weeds get into it?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he told them.’
Yes, God has enemies, Jesus says. And they can be powerful! God’s enemies are those who refuse to do the will of God! Whatever people say, & however some, pretend to be righteous, the saying is true, “its not what they SAY, its what people DO,” that matters. He called the powerful religious leaders ‘hypocrites,’ for pretending to be believers, & for thinking no one saw what they were doing. And Jesus has a peculiar way of defining who’s on his side; & who really is his family!
When someone tells him once, “Your mother & brothers are outside wanting to talk to you.” Jesus looks around at the people listening to him & says; “Who are my mother & my brothers?” “Everybody who does the will of God is my brother, & sister, & mother.”
In today’s story, Jesus says God is the good farmer, growing good seed in his field. But the enemy, is trying to wreck the field. The devil, the very word satan means “The adversary.” Those trying to destroy the good work of God, & sabotage goodness, are the enemies of the kingdom!
As the parable continues, the Master’s servants ask him, “Do you want us to go and pull out the weeds from your field?” ‘No,’ he tells them, ‘because while you are pulling out the weeds you may uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until harvest.”
We don’t have much patience for dealing with weeds. But Jesus does, because God the Father does. If we could put up with weeds, you wouldn’t have all those weed-B-gone poisons lining the shelves at Home Depot, & Menards, & wherever else you go for your gardening needs.
Jesus reminds us, in the parable this morning, that its not always easy to tell the difference between weeds & regular plants, the good seed! Maybe we think we can tell the good seed, from the bad, better than Jesus!
Preacher Barbara Taylor writes: “Matthew may have been clear that there are only 2 kinds of people in the world—the wheat & the weeds—
but it is a clarity that escapes most of us, we who have encountered BOTH KINDS IN OURSELVES, & in our neighbors, and in the world.”
Not easy to admit, we are part weed; we have weediness in ourselves! A woman was visiting a friend, & the friend spent a good deal of time in the conversation, criticizing her next-door neighbor. She doesn’t know how to take care of her kids or her house. She’s a sloppy mess! Why just look at the streaks on her clothing, drying on the line outside in her yard! Can you believe it? She doesn’t do anything right!
The friend looked more closely out the window, & finally got the courage to say, “Sorry dear, but those streaks you see, are not on your neighbor’s wash, they’re on your window!”
When you point one finger at others, you still have 3 fingers pointing back at you! Jesus called that hypocrisy —seeing the spec in your neighbor’s eye but not noticing the log in your own eye! Too often, that’s us! Jesus can live with weeds in the field, where he planted the good seed! He is content to “let both grow together until the harvest,” when God will do the sorting out! Since in the end, God is the ultimate judge!
And, as Jesus concludes his explanation for the disciples, at the end of the story, “the righteous, who will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” are people who act like smugly superior super Christians. But those who “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.”
Can we live with weeds? Can we learn to? The real question is, can we live with ourselves, knowing we too, are weeds, sinners in need of forgiveness! It’s not always easy to tell the difference, is it? Can we live with weeds? God can. And God leaves all the sorting needed for the kingdom, up to Christ in the end! Let’s leave it to him! Amen!