I always wanted to have large, beautiful gardens… and now that I have them, I remember just how much time and energy goes into weeding all that landscaping. When we just had the few little planters on the deck, it wasn’t nearly as time-consuming of an issue, especially when I forgot the plants existed! Any of you who have ever spent time in a garden or with a lawn know just how much of a never-ending struggle it is to keep the weeds under control. It feels a bit like a Hydra at times , you know, the mythical creature who supposedly grew more heads every time one was cut off! For every weed I pull, it seems that the next day there are three more in its place. Apparently, there was even a phrase in ancient Greek Ὕδραν τέμνειν (hydran temnein), meaning ‘cutting off a hydra,’” that was used to describe tasks that felt extremely futile. Maybe we should bring that phrase back!
Dramatics aside, I do think it is helpful for us to take a look at the way we interact with weeds around us as we begin to make sense of today’s Gospel story in particular. This is a wild story from Matthew, in which Jesus tells this parable about the wheat and the weeds; throw in some fire and the eternal weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13: 24-30, 36-43) and I’m starting to feel like I’m not even the dramatic one here! And, as always when we hear these parables in which people are separated into good, “the wheat,” and the bad, “the weeds,” more often than not it seems like we like to put ourselves as humans in the wheat category. We are good, those people over there are bad. But, I don’t think the parable is as simple as that, and I certainly feel like we need a good reminder that it’s Jesus and his angels who make the decisions and not the landowner or his workers (Matthew 13: 31-32). After all, it’s a slippery slope when we start using Gospel readings like this one to separate people into “good” and “bad” categories. We form divisions quickly and begin to lose sight of other peoples’ humanity.
Rather, like last week, I think we are actually encouraged to think about this at a more expansive level. Maybe it’s the Lutheran nature in me, our recognition that we are simultaneously sinner and saint, but I want to look at what this parable means for the broader expanse of our lives. Because, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think God is up there with a giant scoreboard adding points here and taking away points there. Rather, if we believe that we have been justified by faith alone, we can see how sometimes we grow wheat and other times we grow weeds; in the garden of our lives, these two grow simultaneously. And, sometimes we grow weeds even when we are intending to grow wheat. Like how actual weeds are in our gardens, the weeds in our own life just keep seeming to pop up too, no matter how much we try to keep them at bay.
When I talk about weeds in this sense, I see how it really is grounded in our theological beliefs. If we see sin as that which turns us in on ourselves and separates us from God and our neighbors, we can also see the spiritual weeds as something which takes us away from the joy and the life which God intends for us. After all, when we think about weeding our own gardens, depending on the size of them, it can often be long and tiring work. Even when we enjoy gardening, it’s often not the part that people really look forward to. At least, I know my body isn’t super thrilled with the idea of spending hours on the ground pulling up weeds every few inches…
Weeds in gardens aren’t just an annoyance to us who have to pluck them, but they also encroach on the space of the other things we are trying to grow, often competing with the things we planted for sunlight, water, nutrients, and space. They quite literally make it harder for our plants to thrive. Weeds in this theological sense function in the same way, when they sap the life and energy of the good that is trying to grow around us too. We can think of weeds as the things that create barriers to our relationship with God and the rest of creation.
The weeds come from so many different places, especially the pull of the world and societal values that try to separate us from God and one another, like desire for wealth and power, intense individualism, the teaching that empathy is something that is problematic, etc. Their presence makes it harder to focus on those relationships of value to us. Even our Psalm today shows this human tendency to desire superiority, when the Psalmist asks God to give them a sign to show off to their enemies how much God loves them (Psalm 86:17). It’s not bad that we desire signs of God’s presence with and love for us, but the weeds are encouraged to spread when we come to value the sign itself more than the actual relationship with God. We want to show off our righteousness, but the actual faith piece begins to lose its importance. Our relationship with God matters less than other people believing that God is supporting us and justifying all that we say and do. We know how this looks in our world, and can see just how easy it can be for the weeds to grow before we even notice.
Luckily for us, our Psalmist also proclaims one of our foundational beliefs: that God is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love (Psalm 86:11). God is patient and enduring, plucking the weeds up as they grow. We are always asking to taught God’s ways, that God would continue to guide us. As we do that, it’s like adding a fertilizer to the wheat. We recognize the ways in which our faith does not grow on its own, nor is it a one-way relationship. After all, just like those planting the wheat seeds in our Gospel story, God desires for us to have abundant life; God wants to do all that God can to support our flourishing. But, just like in gardening, we have a role to play in the nurturing and tending too.
There are so many different weeds that will sprout up in our lives that try to separate us from God. It can be everything from greed to that challenging medical diagnosis that makes us want to scream out in rage, feeling like God has abandoned us. Weeds will come in varying sizes and sometimes will be more successful than other times at stunting our relationship to God. Luckily for us, the weeds don’t scare or overwhelm God. Unlike me who looks at my garden and gets exhausted just thinking about how much work it is going to take to pull all the weeds, God doesn’t delay in doing the work. But, we are called to help tend our garden of faith too, to see what is getting in the way of our relationship to God and one another, and to spend time cultivating our relationship with God. This isn’t work that we get to leave to God alone, but it is an invitation to see how together we can live into the vision of abundant life and the flourishing of all creation, beginning in our own gardens and spreading out to the world around us.
Previous
Sunday July 12th, 2026 Worship