God of the Seeds

            This week we continue with parables from Jesus of the garden, of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. Last week we heard the parable of the sower and were reminded of God’s extravagant love for the world. Our love has limits and boundaries; God’s has none. God in Christ is the one who sows; we are not. This is what we heard last week.

            Now, with this week’s parable, we run into a problem: weeds. When you have a farmer as careless as the sower from last week’s parable, a farmer who doesn’t plow but just throws his seeds to the wind, you’re bound to get weeds. And, sure enough, weeds do show up in the garden this week. Lots of weeds. Big weeds. Big problem.

            Everybody’s upset about the weeds. “What?” say the workers to the farmer. “You planted good seeds; how’d these weeds get in here? Let’s pull them up now, right away, before they have a chance to grow.” These workers, they’re hopping mad, ready to go out to the fields and undo the damage of the weeds.

            I imagine the wheat plants weren’t too thrilled about the weeds, either. Just think about it: they go to bed one night in a field of perfectly good seeds and the next morning—weeds. There goes the neighborhood. Can somebody please do something about these weeds?!

            Yes, everybody’s upset about the weeds, and so they should be. Weeds hurt the good crops, block sunlight, steal nutrients. They’re more than a nuisance; they’re a threat, a real danger to the harvest. Everybody’s upset about the weeds.

            Everybody, that is, except the farmer. “Weeds?” he says. “Eh—somebody must have snuck in one night and sown fields with weeds.” Well, shouldn’t we pull them up? “Pull them up? What would you want to do that for? There’s no hurry; we’ll take care of them at the harvest.”

            Now, I know some of you here this morning are farmers and gardeners. I’m not much of a gardener, and I’m certainly no farmer, but I do know enough to say this: I hope and pray that none of you farms like this. This guy is clueless. Weeds choke out good plants. The longer you wait, the more problems they cause. Things are spinning out of control. What is wrong with this farmer?

            And then Jesus tells us that the farmer is the Son of God.

            What can it possibly mean that the Son of God is—this farmer? I’m sure there are lots of conclusions we might draw from the association, but this morning I want to highlight four implications.

            First, the farmer is in control. This field is his. It does not belong to his servants, and his enemy has no control over it. The farmer refuses to panic when his enemy does plant bad seeds in his fields. Things happen according to his schedule and not in a half-thought rapid response to an unforeseen emergency. So it is with Jesus, the Son of God. So often we talk about human sin, especially the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden, as if God was just reacting to situations out of his control, as if God looked at Adam and Eve after they had taken the fruit and said to them, “Well, shoot, I never saw that coming.” As if ever since then God has been in crisis management mode, putting out fires and hopping from one emergency to the next. No. God is the creator, the maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. God is not rattled by human sin nor by the conniving work of the devil. All things are in God’s hands. God’s work, his salvation and his judgment, happens on God’s schedule and not according to the creature’s clock. Even the angels cannot force God’s hand. Even Satan cannot shake God.

            Second, the farmer only plants good seeds. As unlikely as it might seem for a farmer who, by human standards, farms so poorly, the farmer’s seed bag is unmixed. It is all good. And the seed that the farmer plants will bear the fruit, the grain, that the farmer intends. God does not make evil. Evil is not part of God’s creation. God never retracts or regrets calling creation good in Genesis 1. The farmer tells the workers to wait until harvest before pulling up the weeds. Why? Because in the farmer’s mind, a weed is not known by its appearance but by its fruit. If it looks like a weed in July, as far as the farmer is concerned, it might still give grain in September. God knows the goodness of his creation by its bounty. Trees that are good produce good fruit. On the third day of creation, God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” On the fifth day God commanded the birds of the air and the creatures of the sea, “Be fruitful and multiply.” On the sixth day, God repeated the command to humankind: “Be fruitful and multiply.” God knows the goodness of his creation by its bounty.

            Third, the farmer is patient, not indifferent, about the plight of his fields. The farmer bides his time, waiting for the moment that he knows is the best time. When that time comes, however, the farmer acts decisively. The weeds that do spring up are harvested—to be destroyed. God will not tolerate injustice and sin forever. The mechanisms that this world has developed to oppress people, to grind them under the heel of power, money, and social standing, will be dealt with, on God’s time, in God’s own way. Christ’s warning in this parable is to the powerful, the elite, the smug: I will know you by your fruit. The powers and principalities of this world will be brought to justice. Those who denigrate the poor by calling them lazy or ungrateful for their meager lot in life will be brought to justice. Those who perpetuate racism through unquestioned assumptions and harmful stereotypes will be held to account. Those who incite hatred of “those people”—whoever they may be—God will deal with.

            Fourth, Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, should be compared to the farmer. Literally, Jesus says that “the kingdom of heaven is made like a man planting good seed in his field.” In this parable, for the sake of the point Jesus is making here, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is not the field—it is the farmer himself. The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is about God—what God is doing in Jesus Christ. The kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is about God who has the control, goodness, and patience to deal with evil in the world, the God who should not be made to follow our demands or our schedules for dealing with the problems around us.

            So often I hear Christians talk—and I don’t even know if they hear themselves when they do it—I hear us Christians talk as if our reason for being Christians was to get into heaven or to get out of hell. Now, I have no desire to spend even a moment, let alone an eternity, in hell—although I’ve been some places here on earth that are pretty close—but when we make Christianity about heaven and hell, we leave out the most important part: God.

            Jesus tells us, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” In the parable of weeds among the wheat, we discover that to seek the kingdom of God is to seek the farmer, the Son of God, to seek Jesus himself. And the good news to us this morning is that when we seek Jesus, we find God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the God who only plants good seeds. Amen.