Let anyone with ears listen. When we hear the parables of Jesus and think what the story is saying to us, we do sometimes tend to see ourselves as we would like to be. We are the good soil, the good steward. Or in today's story, we're definitely not weeds, we are, of course, wheat. And we polish up our halos.
We see what we want to see. And we point fingers so easily. Good wheat, we think, is in me, or my group, or my church or denomination, while the weeds are 'out there' somewhere, others.
But if we look more closely, and honestly, at ourselves we recognise that while we are indeed wheat, we are also weed. We are both. The 'weeds' of this parable are something that is a part of us, part of our make-up.
People are a mixture of good and evil. We see this illustrated so often in the stories of the Bible. There are numerous examples where God chooses people that we would regard as wicked and not really suitable to work with God – Jacob, a cheat; Moses, a murderer; David an adulterer; Peter, a liar. It's as if God is telling us that he will not allow us to turn our religion into a simple code of ethics - religion is far, far more than that. For a start it's about our relationship with God, and one another.
God does not love people because of who they are, but because of who God is. That is grace.
As St Paul says: ' God shows his love for us, in that while we were still sinner, Christ died for us'. He doesn't say: God showed his love for us in that Christ died for us - when we repent, or when we try harder to be good, or when we love God. God loves us first and always, and at the very place where we are in our lives.
So let's look at that parable again. It's clear that the field does not choose the seed. Nor does the seed choose whether it is wheat or weeds. In fact, it is hard to tell the weeds from wheat and that's part of the problem. My Bible Dictionary explains that the type of weed in the story is one that is often confused with wheat because it looks so much like wheat as it grows. The difference only becomes clear at harvest time.
Perhaps we are sometimes over-confident, believing that we can identify the 'unrighteousness' in others, and in ourselves. And maybe one point of the story is to show that we are not the best judge of what is 'good' or 'evil,' either in ourselves or in others.
This is well illustrated by my weeding skills. Weeding is not my favourite job in the garden. And quite often I can't even recognize the weeds. The rule seems to be, if you can pull it out easily, it was a flower; if it's sturdy and robust, it's a weed. Which is not much use if you want to have a beautiful garden. On the subject of weeds, I cannot trust my judgement to get it right.
In today's parable, the farmhands suggest that they should go and get rid of the weeds that have been maliciously sown in their master's field by an unfriendly neighbour. But the farmer told them - no, if you do that, you risk pulling out the wheat at the same time. Let them both grow together until the harvest. Let both grow together.
Let them both grow together. We are not to rush in and try to do something that is none of our business. God will decide when the weeds and the wheat are separated, and God will do it. It is for God to decide the when and how and the who and what. It is not our job to judge.
It is not our job to separate people into categories, just and unjust; agreeable and unpleasant; the villains, the heroes, the good, the bad, the ugly. Nor by whatever category happens to be fashionable.
Our job is to respond to God's love for us and to seek, with the help of God's Holy Spirit, to live Christ-like lives. Jesus has told us how to do that - we are to love the Lord our God with heart and soul and mind and strength; and love our neighbour as ourselves - always bearing in mind, of course, another parable told by Jesus to explain who our neighbour is - those out there, those others.
We cannot judge who is 'wheat' and who is 'weed'. For one thing, it is God alone who knows the heart, not us. And for another thing, knowing our own shortcomings, we are in no position to set ourselves up to judge others.
All we can do is allow God's gracious love to take root in our lives and, by the gift of his Spirit, make us fruitful.
So as we come to celebrate communion together - let's listen to the words that Jesus speaks to humankind, to the sinful, the broken, the hurting, the unlovely, the unloved:
'This is my body which is given for you. This is my blood which is shed for you'. Amen.
Ven Adèle Kelham