Last week, we spent time discussing seeds and soil and how both need to be the best they can be to produce the best harvest.  Today we turn our attention to the harvesting of those seeds in yet another agricultural parable by Jesus.

Parables were, and are, wonderful tools for illustrating the idea being put forward by Jesus and others.  Jesus was a master at using parables in his teachings with his disciples and others.  He used examples from everyday life including this one today about weeds being sown in with the healthy plants, but there is always a purpose to the illustrations, and it is our job to discover what those are.

Jesus presents us with a picture of a field of wheat and tells us that this is an idyllic picture of heaven.  While everyone was asleep, some folks came in and sowed some bad seeds to spoil the crop.  Now the question becomes what do we do about this?

These were not ordinary weeds that might grow up between our plants that we spent some much time preparing, no these are the really bad ones, and there are many, many of them.  Since we determined last week that you all have planted things in the ground before you have some knowledge of weeds in your garden.  Weeds are bad and remove much-needed nutrients from the main plants, and if they are not removed, they will eventually take over the entire garden.  But, we use caution when we are removing those plants, so the central plant is not uprooted as well.  Jesus is urging caution here.

You see, as I mentioned already, these are not your average weeds, these weeds look and act just like the wheat that was planted, and it is challenging to distinguish between them, and the farmer is fearful that his crop will be destroyed if an attempt is made to remove the weeds.  He tells them to let it grow together and at harvest time the work will be accomplished.

But this story is not just about our garden, Jesus tells us it is a comparison of the Kingdom of God or, in other words, the church and our own lives.

There is a clear distinction being made here between good and evil and what we are to do about it.  Sometimes our own lives resemble the farmer’s infested field, with weeds and wheat intertwined in our souls, our hearts, and our minds.  Our personal experience may be more subtle as countless distractions derail us. Sometimes our jobs can seem weed infested and under assault. Like the servants in the story today, many people face the challenge of separating the weeds from the wheat in our workplaces.

Jesus faced this same dilemma in his own life. Just before this parable, the Pharisees, the religious leaders of his faith, try to trick him and they begin their plot to destroy him. They look like real leaders, but they are false and deadly as any weed can be.

Jesus and the author of the Gospel today know full well that weeds can infest the community itself. There are many warnings of false messiahs and false prophets and those who lead people astray; these have been described as antagonists in the church.

Church antagonists are the ones who believe in their heart of hearts that they are doing the right thing.  They always complain about how things are being done but never offer any solutions or when asked to serve in leadership decline the offer to assist in making the situation better.  They are the ones who threaten to withdraw their financial support until the community does what they want, the way they want it done, and when the leadership bends to their demands simply continue to demand more.  They are the church bullies that want to decide who is in and who is out of the communion of God and with God as if their lives are so special that God has ordained them for the task. They believe that the church is theirs and that they know better than God how things should be run. We are all aware of these antagonists because at one time or another it has been us.

But the parable also cautions us not to act too quickly or rush to judgment.  We may not always be able to spot the right plant from the wrong plant.  Just as the farmer cautions his servants not to remove the weeds until harvest time to not uproot the good plants along with them. The farmer tells them to be patient and wait for the harvest, and we must do the same in the church.

There is a story of a gardener who was moving plants from one part of the yard to another.  This gardener was in a hurry to get the job done and realized, the next day, which they had, in fact, moved weeds rather than the good plants and had to start all over again.

This parable points out to us the difficulty we have in distinguishing the good from the bad, wheat from weeds, loyal opposition from heresy, healthy conflict from destructive antagonism. The patience that we are being cautioned is not an excuse for inaction or conflict avoidance.  Later, in this same Gospel, Jesus outlines how to deal with poisons behavior within the community (18:15-17). If the behavior continues and does not change, they are to be separated from the community as the Reapers separate weeds from wheat at the harvest.

This may sound harsh and perhaps even unchristian, but Jesus knows what happens when this type of behavior, the weeds in the garden, are not dealt with they will spread and infest other fields. But the parable ends with the knowledge that there is one who is stronger and smarter than the ones who sow the weeds.  We are cautioned to rely on God in our work; the church belongs to God we are just the caretakers of it.

How do we determine the good from the bad, we ask God to direct us and show us and also for guidance how to deal with it.  We should be in constant prayer for the Church and for those whom God has put in leadership both spiritual and temporal of the Church.  Each decision that is made should be made after asking the question if this what God wants us to do?  If we rush to judgment or react too quickly, we might just pull up the good with bad.

God is still speaking to and through His church; we just need to listen.

Show of hands, how many of you have ever grown anything in the ground?  Okay, so many of you are like me and have, from time to time, planted something in the ground to see if it would grow.  Sometimes it would grow big and tall, and other times it would just wither and die.

In my previous church, I had a rather large garden that I planted all sorts of plants in.  Of course, I had to have tomatoes but also planted a variety of squash and cucumbers.  I was always going to try corn but it never actually happened.

When I first began the garden I just dug out a patch of the earth and planted some stuff, and that worked out okay but not great.  Then I read an article about the benefits of raised beds and enhancing the soil.  So, I went to the Home Depot, and I purchased some lumber, and I built several raised beds.  I was keeping chickens at the same time, so I would compost their output and turn it into the richest soil I had even seen.  Now, too much of a good thing can be bad so trying to find the right balance is necessary.

The garden flourished, but it needed constant tending.  Each day I would spend some time out in my garden weeding and tending to all sorts of things, the more I managed, the better it grew and the better the output was.  If I let it slack, even for one day, the weeds would take over, and all would be lost.

Our gardens are like our spiritual life and today’s Gospel passage points us in that direction.

At first glance, we want to focus, as we are directed, on the seeds that the sower is throwing around.  My first thought is that he is not very careful with his seed if it is not falling on the best ground and he is wasting a lot of money.  I would also guess that he is growing some cover crop like clover or winter wheat and he is not too concerned with where it lands.  Cover crops can be useful as they hide imperfections from the world, but they can also enrich the soil.

But nothing is said about the seed itself of the soil that the sower is sowing the seed in.

A bad seed can ruin everything, in the garden and our spirituality.

When I was gardening, I would select the best plants I could find.  I was never very good at growing things from seed so I would seek out the best plant material.  Plants that were native grown and local are always the best as they are used to what we have around here for soil.  Wrong plant equal bad output it’s just that simple.  Large scale farming is the same.  The farmer selects the seeds by first going through the pile and picking out the bad ones, no sense in wasting time on the wrong things.

But what about the soil?

If the soil is not balanced correctly, nothing will grow.  Soil balance is interesting and if a high yield is what you are seeking then spending time on the soil is the way to go.

At the start of every season, soon after the frost would pass, I would be out in the garden turning the soil and warming it up in the sun.  In the fall I would have turned in the rich compost that had been heating up all summer and now that compost needed to be turned through the whole of the bed.  Turning the soil also introduces air into the equation, and that is important as well.  But the main reason is a hard soil makes it difficult for the new plants to grow.  The tiny, delicate roots have a difficult time if the soil is too hard and water will not penetrate as deep as it should.  Sure, the plant will grow, but if a high yield is what we are striving for, then the soil needs to be at peak performance.

All of this is the same in our spiritual life, and the most important part is that it requires daily care and maintenance.

For some, our spiritual life is like the rock ground.  Sure there is some soil in-between those rocks, and maybe something will grow there if it happens to land.  Some of our spiritual lives are like the pavement.  We are so locked into what we believe that nothing will penetrate that hard outer shell.  Underneath the soil is fertile but the word never actually gets there through that hard surface.

For some, we are like the thicket full of weeds and thorns that when we hear something that just might be different from how we think of things, we choke it off and do not want to hear it.

We are all there and have all been there at one time or another.  This parable is not about the seeds it is not even about the sower; it’s about the soil and how we prepare it.

Just like the soil in my garden the soil of my spiritual life needs constant attention.  I need to introduce new material to it each day and turn it over.  If we grow the same thing, in the same patch of ground, year after year eventually that plant will no longer grow in that spot.  Our spiritual life needs to continually be refreshed and turned so that the output will be at its highest.

So how do we do this?

A simple routine of Scripture reading will go a long way.  If we read Scripture each day, and the amount is not important, the important thing is that we read every day, we will start to notice an improvement.  There are all sorts of helps for us.  There is the Our Daily Bread that we make available.  There are numerous websites that will send you a small portion of Scripture each day, and of course, you can just open the book.  Don’t have one?  Just ask, we have plenty hanging around here and would be happy to give you one.

Listening to sermons in another way to feed the soil, not just mine and not just from people that you like or agree with, listen to a preacher that comes from a different philosophical position that you do.  As much as these guys grind my gears now and again, I do learn something from them, and they do cause me to think and to think outside the box.  Again, putting the same old stuff in will not make the yield any different.

The important thing to remember is that our spiritual life, like our gardens, needs daily maintenance.