Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30; Matthew 13:36-43; Psalm 130:5-8; Luke 10:38-42 Series: Welcome
Preaching on the Parable of the Wheat and Tares, Wilson reframes patience not as passive resignation but as an active act of faith. Just as the householder forbids his slaves from pulling the weeds lest they uproot the wheat, Christians are called to withhold judgment of who is weed and who is wheat, trusting that sorting belongs to God at the harvest. Patience is faith in a God of unfailing love (Psalm 130), justice, and abundance rather than the world’s scarcity and comparison. Drawing on Mary and Martha, he holds together action and contemplation as both good, and locates true waiting in attending to Jesus through prayer, fasting, worship, communion, and Christian conversation. The world’s judgments of inadequacy are the weeds sown by the evil one; the call is to be the wheat we were made to be and let God handle the rest.
Illustrations: marshmallow-test, be-patient-advice, impatient-babies, not-carrot-weeding, cyprus-oregano-weed, central-texas-nutgrass, waiting-for-friends, mary-and-martha, jesus-never-shames-peter, attendre-attention-etymology
July 23, 2023
Waiting
He put before them another parable: “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. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen! - Matthew 13:24-30
“Just be patienti,” is easy advice to give. It is hard advice to take. When you have a friend who can’t find the right job. You can tell them to be patient. Or a friend who just got out of a relationship and can’t seem to find the right person. You can tell them to be patient. How well your advice is received depends on a lot of factors, but let’s switch it up a little bit.
What if you just lost a job and you are looking for a new one and it is difficult to find something comparable. Then someone tells you to be patient. Or you just received a diagnosis that calls for a specialist but you can’t get an appointment for four months and then someone tells you to be patient. It is a trickier bit of advice to receive than it is to give.
Babies are rarely born patient. They are hungry or tired or eating or sleeping or some combination of all of those. Babies rarely practice delayed gratification.
As kids grow older, some can grow patience, although a child’s patience is not necessarily a predictor of future success.
The famous Marshmallow test where kids were told to not eat a marshmallow for 15 minutes in order to get another one was recently disproven. A child’s self-control does not predict success.
Patience isn’t just an innate quality. It is a habit that has to be practiced and inculcated. Patience is very important to God in ways that get deep into the heart of faith.
One of the ways Jesus talks about patience is with weeds.
Yes, we have more weeds this week. We know Jesus understood agriculture because he talked a lot about weeds. And anybody who has ever gardened or farmed anything has had to deal with weeds.
Scripture
The passage for today has a different twist than the parable of the sower we read last week. The sower planted seeds in different places. Today, the seeds are planted in one place. As well, the seed doesn’t land in the weeds. The weeds came later. The evil one comes to bring the weeds in the night. Even with the presence of the evil one, this is a parable about judgment and patience. You don’t have to be a super experienced farmer to tell the difference between weeds and the plants that you have planted. It’s evident.
I look to check: Is that a carrot? No, it is not a carrot. I’m just going to pull the not-carrot out so that my carrots will get plenty of water and nutrients and grow nice and plump. This is the natural human reaction to seeing a weed.
In the parable, the people are told to go against their instincts and not weed. They are told to hold back judgment. “No, don’t pull the weeds yet. This is not your job.” In the parable, pulling the weeds is akin to judging the goodness or badness of those around you. Judging something as a weed is a contextual thing. I remember watching this documentary that I think was set in Cyprus, and it was about a woman who was a cook. What struck me was not her food, but the fact that when she went in her backyard to pick up some oregano, it was growing in between the bricks in her driveway. The oregano was a weed. It wasn’t a volunteer. It naturally grew in the countryside. It naturally sprung up all over the place, even where it wasn’t planted. It was a weed. It was unintentional, and yet it was, it was oregano. It was delicious. Now, central Texas doesn’t have such tasty weeds. You can’t take nut grass and, and sprinkle a little bit on your pasta and bring out the flavor. But it’s important to remember that that what at first may seem a weed, may not be a weed because we are the not the ones who plant. This is really important. I’m gonna say it again, that we are not the ones who plant the word of God. We are not the planters. You are not the planter. You do not set out the plot of God’s word in this world. We have been plopped down out into a world where there are seeds planted by others. Our job is not to pick and choose the weeds from the wheat. No, we are given another task by God. If we pulled up the weeds, we would pull up the wheat, as well. So, instead, we’re called to wait. So instead we’re called to have patience.
Patience is a challenging virtue. Patience is an act of faith. Waiting is an act of faith. If you are going to meet some friends out and they haven’t arrived yet, you stay and wait for them only because you believe that they’re coming. You trust them. If you don’t think that they will come, you just head home.
We see the trust of patience in Psalm 130.
I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.
My whole being waits for the Lord for with the Lord is unfailing love and full redemption. We wait for a reason. We don’t wait arbitrarily. We wait for a reason because with God is unfailing love, so God is worth the wait. We wait for judgment because with God is unfailing love.
In the Parable of the Sower, which we spoke about last week, Jesus exhorts us to care for the soil of our souls and the soil around us. With this parable, we are exhorted to wait and be patient in what God is already doing.
We have action and contemplation. Both are necessary. There are season of our life when we need to act for God and for the faith. And there are seasons of our life when we need to wait patiently for God, when we need to attend to God.
We need to be comfortable asking ourselves that question: am I in a season of action or a season of contemplation? It isn’t a simple either/or but a question of emphasis.
Luke illustrates this very well with the story of Mary and Martha.
Jesus is visiting his friends Mary and Martha. Martha is busy preparing the house for the guests while Mary sits at the foot of Jesus. Martha is flumoxed by her sister’s behavior, yet Jesus backs Mary and says that she has the greater share.
Over the last hundred years, this passage has been read with Mary being good and Martha being bad. Don’t be a Martha, etc..
This is not how the church has historically read it. Instead, it is read in a way that both options are good. Martha offers the life of action and service. This is good and necessary. Jesus doesn’t rebuke Martha, he simply commends her sister.
In our society of scarcity, a lack of a complement is often taken as an insult. If we are all applying for the same job, only one of us can get it. If you get the job, I don’t. This is the scarcity of this world, but this is not the kingdom of heaven. If God blesses my neighbor, that does not mean I will be cursed. If God blesses my sister, that does not mean I am in the wrong. Martha is necessary and important, but Mary has the greater share.
The early church understood Mary as the act of contemplating Jesus. The act of praying to Jesus and waiting on Jesus. As much as anything, this is what is going on with this parable of the wheat and tares.
Don’t judge others as weeds or wheat. Wait on God. Be faithful to God. Be the wheat you were created to be and God will sort out the rest. Focus on God and not on the righteousness of others.
When we think about this parable as individuals, it is important to remember how easy it is to spend our energy comparing ourselves to others. Comparing their success, their failure, their anything.
As a church, it is so easy to compare ourselves to others. Their success. Their size. Their signs. Etc.. It is also easy to compare ourselves to our past. To think about the good old days or the golden days and to feel like we don’t currently add up.
Jesus never tells anyone to think about how awesome they used to be and then to feel bad about themselves. Jesus is never like, “Peter, have you gained a few inches around your waist?” Or “Peter, I wish you could be more like John.”
No. This is never how Jesus treats people. Even with Mary and Martha. He doesn’t says, “Martha, I wish you could be more like your sister.” There is no comparison to each other.
Instead, Jesus offers us a way of life that looks beyond idle comparisons that the scarcity of the world demand. Patience is an act of faith in a God of abundance.
Patience is an act of faith in a God of justice. We don’t need to take justice into our own hands by judging the weeds. That is God’s job.
Patience is an act of contemplation. It is not passive but actively attending to the feet of Jesus, to the words of Jesus. The French word for wait is attendre, the root of the English word attention. To give something attention is to wait for it. Holy patience is actively attending more closely to Jesus than to the ways of the world. Attending more closely to the words of Jesus than the desires of comparison and scarcity.
The ways of waiting at the foot of Jesus are prayer, fasting, worship, communion, Christian conversation. In these we are not passive but we remember who God is and who we are. We let go of the judgment the world compels us to have at all times. I am not good enough. I am not pretty enough or handsome enough. If only I were like this other person… These world judgments are the weeds sown by the evil one.
Let us wait for the Lord, for with God is unfailing love. Let us wait together as a church. let us not put ourselves in the positions of judgment but seek God in prayer, in service, in sacrifice, in love.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, you give us the air we breathe and the water we drink. You give us the word of God and hope for the future. Help us to have patience in a world that demands action. Help us to have patience because we believe more in your judgment than in our own. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.