Jesus tells one of His most fascinating parables in Matthew 13:24-30 about wheat and weeds:
He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And
the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you
not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come
from?’ 28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let
both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I
will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles
to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
The point of the parable is to instruct the disciples on why it is not their job to carry out God’s judgment and eliminate evil from the world (or even from their own nation of Israel). Jesus claims that the disciples cannot eliminate evil or evil people without significant collateral damage because it is completely enmeshed with the good around it. Instead, the disciples are just to do their job (preaching the gospel, making disciples, healing, etc.) and entrust judgment and the “cleansing” of the field to God.
This is a great example of a place where Jesus sharply disagreed with the Pharisees. Both Jesus and the Pharisees wanted Israel, and the whole world, to be cleansed and renewed by God. However, the Pharisees believe they have the authority and the tools (by judging who keeps the Law) to do this. In fact, the Pharisees believed that until this sort of "weeding" (like what we say in 1 Maccabees in the post about the Pharisees) was done Israel would not be renewed by God.
It’s easy to sit back from our relaxed perspective today and say that it’s outrageous for the Pharisees to claim this power. However, it’s worth asking: how do we react when we then go on to read the story of Herod and John the Baptist? Many of us, just reading that story, would like to see Herod and his entourage “weeded” out of the field! And we didn’t even have to live under Herod! If we’re honest, we are often far more sympathetic to the Pharisees’ perspective (the world would be a better place if we could get rid of the weeds!) than we’d like to believe.
A few questions:
How have we seen these dynamics at play in our contemporary world? Do we see success in the modern efforts to “weed” out the evil in the world?
Who do we struggle to trust God’s judgment with? Who are we tempted to “weed out” ourselves (or have others do the weeding)?
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