Faith Perspectives

Good Seed: Bad Seed AS Patience: Hurrying. By Ed Murphy, Shared Episcopal Ministry East.

     Years ago I put in a new lawn for someone. I got the best soil, and had the right tools for the job. I thought I ordered the right grass seed. Here in the northeast I use a mixture of  Fescue, Ky. Bluegrass and Perennial Rye grass. I like to mix in a  little bit of Annual Ryegrass as a cover crop to protect the young seed. Anyway the seed mix that I got (without knowing) was mostly annual ryegrass. The next spring the annual rye did not come back and the lawn was very, very sparse. Come to find out the mixture was made up in a hurry and I had a disaster on my hands.

     In today’s Gospel (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43) Jesus tells the parable of the bad seed. The farmer plants good seed and an enemy plants weeds in the night in the same field. This simple, short story has really deep roots. The man is Jesus. The farm hands are the disciples. You guessed it, the enemy is the Devil. While researching this message I learned that the weeds in the story were probably Darnel. I never heard of the weed before. Darnel is a wheat cousin, but it is poisonous. You can’t tell the difference between the two plants until the seed head appears. During Roman times the Darnel was planted as an act of revenge. Roman law had stiff penalties for this act.

     And now comes the patience part of the story. The farmer tells the farmhands to let the weed grow because it would also destroy the wheat to weed it out now. He implies for them to be patient. They will be able to separate the weed and burn it before the wheat is harvested. It seems that Jesus is trying to teach us patience. Remember patience is a virtue. A virtue that seems in short supply in our fast pace world today. Think about standing in a bank line, or being stuck in traffic.

     Jesus also lets us know that God will deal with the Weeds, or the Wicked of the world. He said that , “the field is in the world.” The weeds are mixed in with the wheat and the children of the wicked one are mixed in with the children of the kingdom. As hard as it is we have to leave retribution to God. The world has a “rooting out” way of looking at things. We know that from the Holocaust, the Inquisition, theSalem witch trials, trouble in former Yugoslavia and the Irish problem, as well as the Muslims and Jews in the Middle East. Some think if we get rid of the “bad guys”, we’d be better off.

     On a more positive note Jesus loves to change weeds into beautiful flowers. Yes, people and nations can change. We change only by God’s grace, not by our own free will. Think of the Berlin Wall falling, St. Francis and even Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul after encountering the Lord. Think of all of us who have had our hard hearts broken by Christ’s love.

     Let’s spend our time changing ourselves, learning to be patient, and cultivating the wheat instead of the weeds. Don’t worry about trying to change the bad guys. Matthew 13:43 says, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun: in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. “ AMEN!