trying the patience of a saint lost judgment

Jesus obliges, but you can almost detect a little weariness in the rather dry way that Jesus connects the dots for them: ““OK. They come to Jesus later and ask him to please explain it to them. Jesus’ stories aren’t lifted from some journal of farming they’re told to illustrate truths that are essential to understanding what the kingdom of God is all about. They would be shocked by the farmer’s decision to do nothing about the weeds threatening his wheat!īut that’s a clue that this story isn’t really about agriculture it’s about theology. If Jesus’ listeners knew anything about farming, and presumably they did, this would make no sense. The last thing they’d want is for the darnel to go to seed because that would mean that next year’s crop would be ruined as well.Ĭontrary to agrarian good sense, the farmer tells the hired hands to leave it be. The servants ask the farmer if he wants them to go and start plucking out these dastardly weeds. This was no accident! These weeds didn’t result from a few stray spores drifting onto the field on a breezy day this was the work of an enemy! It was an act of agricultural terrorism! When the wheat starts to grow, the farmer’s hired hands notice the darnel is coming up with it, and what’s more, they see it growing almost as uniformly as the wheat itself. If the darnel isn’t carefully separated from the wheat before grinding, the resulting flour will be inedible. Worse, the weeds he plants are “darnel,” which looks almost identical to wheat and thus constitutes a dangerous threat. He does it all right and goes to bed content, believing he has done everything that is needed to ensure a good crop.īut while he rests, an enemy comes in and, with equal care, plants weed seeds in the same furrows. His furrows are straight, his wheat seed is of the highest quality. To illustrate this, Jesus tells this Parable of the Weeds Among the Wheat: A farmer carefully plants an entire field of wheat. What’s more, the growth and spread of this kingdom, which is going to extend throughout the world, may never exist is a pure state. Apparently changing hearts and minds is a quiet and gracious business more than a noisy or forceful affair. Apparently God prefers to work behind the scenes. The kingdom Jesus describes isn’t quite what we expected. The kingdom may be the single most powerful and important reality in the world, but it does not have the flash, the glitz, the razzle-dazzle we normally associate with mighty movements of history. The Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Parable of the Yeast show us that the kingdom is smaller and more subtle than we might guess. It can be snatched away by birds, burned up by the sun, or choked by thorns. The Parable of the Sower, for example, made it clear that although the “seed” of God’s Word is powerful enough to produce a plentiful harvest, it is at the same time oddly vulnerable.

Over and over again, his point seems to be that this kingdom of God is never quite what we expect. His images regularly startle and surprise his listeners, and us. Jesus speaks about agriculture, about planting and harvesting, about sowing seeds – images easily understood by the people. Here in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus employs a number of images or metaphors to introduce the concept of God’s kingdom to his hearers, most of whom were peasants, subsistence farmers, living in an agrarian society. It is not about being first or greatest it’s about identifying with the lowly and the poor.

It is not about dominance and power it’s about humility God’s reign is not about exerting authority it’s about offering service The opening of Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus “came into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near repent, and believe in the good news.’” (Mk 1:14-15) Of course, this kingdom that Jesus proclaims is quite unlike the kingdoms of the world that we human beings know from experience: The focal point of much of Jesus’ preaching and teaching in the gospels is “the kingdom of God.”

Trying the patience of a saint lost judgment