Weeds and Wheat

My understanding of this reading has evolved over the years. For most of my life, I thought that Jesus told us in this parable that some of us are weeds and some are wheat. Some of us are good, and some of us are bad. 

We grow and live together throughout this life. At the end of time, those who are wheat will go to heaven. Those who are weeds will go to hell.  

As I have gotten older, I think I have been too simplistic in my understanding. I missed the deeper and more significant meaning of this parable. My new understanding comes from a wall plaque that hung in the living room of my grandparent’s farmhouse.  

It was simple and not overly impressive. But now, nearly 60 years later, I think I understand the words I read and memorized as a child.

The plague said, “There is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us. It hardly behooves any of us to judge the rest of us.”

This Gospel reminds me of that plaque and a more profound truth I have often missed. Very often, we classify one another as good or bad. Everyone has a label. Our classifications are based on arbitrary criteria that have become part of our worldview. Some examples might sound like this:

• Criminal bad — Law abiding good.
• Selfish bad — Generous good
• Mean bad — Kind good

Obvious right. Regretfully we often allow ourselves to expand that list according to our leanings, and we may not always be one with the mind of God. 

• One political party is bad — the other good
• Homeless bad — Established good
• Poor bad — Rich good
• Undocumented bad —Citizen good
• Homosexual bad — Heterosexual good
• Muslim bad — Christian good.

You get the idea. Weeds bad — wheat good. In our mind, people are wheat or weeds.

In today’s parable, the Farmer tells the workers not to pull out the weeds from the wheat. They might inadvertently pull out some of the wheat as well. Their judgments can be flawed, and the workers might pull out the wheat with the weeds.

Perhaps this parable is telling us that there is wheat and weeds in all of us. There are both good and evil. There is what is savable and what is not. Judgments can be flawed, and the workers might pull out the wheat with the weeds.

People are not all one or the other. They are not 100% good or 100% evil. Aren’t we all some percentage of wheat and some percentage of weeds in one flawed and graced human being? There is good and bad in each of us, and it grows together.  

The Farmer (God) does not want to root out the weeds too soon because he does not want to destroy what is good. As we grow and mature, some of what is “bad” in us will be rooted out by the natural act of growing up. Our goodness and God’s grace will overcome some of what is undesirable. We need to allow God to work in us, purifying what is weeds and preserving what is wheat.

The parable says that at the time of the harvest, the workers will gather the wheat and weeds and separate it. What is wheat (good) will be saved, and what are weeds (bad) will be thrown out and burned.

Maybe what Jesus is trying to convey is that at the time of our harvest (our death), God will glorify what is the best in us and discard what is not. God does not cast out the good He purifies it, dismissing what is bad. 

We are all both wheat and weeds. God’s unconditional love cannot cast out the good for the sake of the bad. But instead, He, in all His compassion and mercy, will tenderly sort out that which is good in us and hold it dear as gold purified in the furnace of life. When we are one with God, the weeds of our life will be purged, and all that will be left will be the purity of God’s best that is us.

In God’s Unending Love,

Gwen