Our Job Is to Grow
Gospel Reflection Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
My first years of gardening, I made some mistakes. The truth is that my kiddo was the start of all of the gardening goodness. They cut their farming teeth at Plainsong Farm and where they learned what it took to grow a small garden like ours, good soil from the compost, healthy plants, and building the precious topsoil. It was even better if we added a cover crop in the winter because the earth wants to grow things (that’s just its way) and a double plus if we added beneficial microbes. I could go on and on; the 2nd born has taught me a whole lot. But back to the point, my mistakes in gardening. I had a huge and early anti-weed agenda. I just pulled and pulled. Everything. I pulled up everything, both weeds and tomatoes, zinnias, and everything else, thinking I was helping, making things “better” and cleaner. Pulling those plants did way more harm than good — I caused soil erosion, lack of moisture retention, mono-culturing of our garden, and stopped those beautiful plants from helping one another out.
“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away.”
Four thousand years ago, when wheat began to be cultivated in the Fertile Crescent, right there near ancient Israel near where the Tigris and Euphrates came together, it made it possible for hunter gatherers (those who followed the migration of animals, foraging plants along the way) to grow those ancient civilizations. Before then, it was impossible to live together in one place, but little by little, our ancient ancestors hybridized the pre wheat plants einkorn and emmer growing wild like weeds to create wheat. And this transformed their lives. With this wheat they could store food — saving it from one season to the next, but also so there was wheat to grind for bread for everyday living. This meant that people could establish places of long term living, communities.
It’s almost impossible for us — who buy our bread sliced and our milk in plastic cartons — to understand the reality of wheat and the weeds. But for those before us, before the green revolution, without wheat, there was no bread. And without bread there was hunger. And hunger brought also starvation and death.
Thus the dismay of everyone when they discovered the weeds growing right along with the wheat. It’s a disaster! What is to be done? Is it our fault??? This is going to lead to our destruction, and the only answer is that we slaves must pull every single weed from that field of wheat, one at a time! What horror!
Just like with my garden, I needed some help with this parable. We talked about it at the lectionary group, but that wasn’t enough. I brought this weedy parable to the 2nd born, the farmer. They’ve been growing things for years now, and they know and love the plants, even the weeds. Not surprisingly, they had some things to say.
Even before the slaves sowed the seed, it wasn’t inert. Soil isn’t dead, full of toxins that make life impossible. It’s alive, full of microbes, seeds from past crops, both weeds and wheat. Sometimes what seems like the work of an enemy is only the soil. And those weeds? Some people call them native plants.
Monoculture – the growing of only one crop in one place isn’t so good for plants. If there are other plants, even weeds, it shields the wheat, making the wheat a more resilient and adaptable ecosystem. Of course in our time and place, we grow plants with liquid nitrogen that makes the plants grow even in the middle of a desert, and we rid ourselves of all the weeds so there’s only corn, wheat, barley, or sorghum. But if you’re doing sustainable agriculture like it was done back in the day, they often planted two plants together.
And also. That first look at the field, the one where everyone was seeing the weeds growing right with the wheat, was overwhelming and terrifying. We’re not farmers, so don’t know exactly what this feels like anymore, but maybe you could imagine your a backyard with weeds overtaking it, or a patch by the house where there are more weeds than flowers, or cracks in the sidewalk overwhelmed with weeds. It’s that kind of sinking feeling.
I have this memory of my mom talking to someone at a party. I was a teenager, just listening, sitting by my mom, and this woman told my mom about how she loved to garden. “Me too!” my mom said, “but I get tired of weeding.” The woman told my mom she just sprayed round up everywhere. It got rid of all the weeds, and so all that grew were her flowers and vegetables. My mom didn’t even pretend not to look horrified. “Don’t you know that stuff is poison??” she said.
Round up gets rid of the weeds, but at what cost? Do we want oil that only grows wheat? Or do we want soil that grows everything?
Give us today our daily bread
Plant time is slower. Plants show us things that we’ll never even notice, and their lives remind us that there is more to life rushing, than finishing first; it’s the ecosystems themselves that matter, the relationships between the bugs and seeds, the birds and the bugs, between the seeds and us.
In our parable today, instead of everyone falling apart when they discover the weeds, instead of everyone ruining other people’s lives, instead of everyone blaming everyone else who could be blamed, they work together. Everyone is in the same mess. We have a field full of weeds, what shall we do? It wasn’t only the slaves who wouldn’t eat if there wasn’t food, it was also the householder and their families. This was a problem of the whole community. They were in it together. None of them were alone. I like this part of the story, everyone working together, everyone discussing the problem, everyone pushing forward together. Waiting until harvest to address the issue made sense.
Patience. You never know what might happen. The wheat might out perform the weeds. The weather might change. The weeds might be edible, and my favorite, suggested by St. Augustine of Hippo — isn’t it possible, through the mercy of God, for the weeds to become wheat? Maybe with our scientific know-how, but listen to what he’s saying. He’s trying to remind us that there is mercy, there is forgiveness, and people do indeed change their minds and their lives, and so, we need to give as much time, to wait as patiently as possible, to allow for the change in the other, to offer that mercy, to resist the temptation to pull every weed with a tweezers, and to remind ourselves that we’re not the judge, jury, and executioner. We’re only the farmers and that’s that.
Sure it’s tempting to liberally spray Round up.
Sure, it’s tempting to pull up every weed.
Sure, it’s in our nature to panic, looking at the harvest because there are just so many annoying weeds.
Sure, it’s easy to pay more attention to what’s collapsing than what’s growing, to see the weeds first and to lament them.
But remember. You’re not alone, nor am I. Our job is to grow, not to sort out the wheat and the weeds.
So in this week, when it seems a little like Michigan is at the center of the apocalypse with the cyclospora, the heat, and all the smoke from Canada, we can be reminded to stay in our lanes. We might not see the effect of our work in this lifetime, but that doesn’t mean we should give up the work! We can hold fast to the truth that God is God and we are not and that our job is to grow.