John in Zondervan Commentary Pulled by Zondervan

[Daniel Francis]

Well I do not mind a good quote or story... A guest preacher during summer delivered at the end of her sermon a wonderful story that I quite enjoyed... My memory is not what it once was... and can not even tell you the author other than remembering she was female (back of my mind is saying Barbara Brown Taylor, but I am not 100% sure). It was about leaving the weeds to grew among the wheat and the author went on to describe how each "weed contributed" to the feast (basically how all could be used even if it was only fuel for baking the bread). That has to have been a good 2 pages of the book, but I enjoyed it. I can see a time and place for everything...

 

-dan

[Daniel Francis]

This was the passages shared at the end of her sermon, and while longer I enjoyed it as a conclusion to her homily. I was a bit surprised I was able to find the passage I was seeking online in google books and was able to excise it to share.

 

Sometimes it is mighty hard to tell the difference between a good plant and a bad one, especially when it can act both ways.

I suppose we have all had the experience of uprooting the raspberries by mistake or protecting something interesting that turns out to be a thistle. I don't know what makes us think we are any smarter about ourselves or about the other people in our lives. We are so quick to judge, as if we were sure we knew the difference between wheat and weeds, good seed and bad, but that is seldom the case. Turn us loose with our machetes and there is no telling what we will chop clown and what we will spare. Meaning to be good servants, we go out to do battle with the weeds and end up standing in a pile of wheat.

Or else we do not, because we have the good sense to listen to the sower, whose orders sound foolhardy if not downright dangerous. Leave the weeds and the wheat alone; let them both grow together, he says, letting us know that he does not share our appetite for a pure crop, a neat field, an efficient operation; letting us know that growth interests him more than perfection and that he is willing to risk fat weeds for fat wheat. When we try to help him out a little, to improve on his plan, he lets us know that our timing is off, not to mention our judgment, and that he does, after all, own the field.

Hear another parable of the wheat and the weeds. One afternoon in the middle of the growing season, a bunch of farmhands decided to surprise their boss and weed his favorite wheat field. No sooner had they begun to work, however, than they began to argue--first about which of the wheat-looking things were weeds and then about the rest of the weeds. Did the Queen Anne's lace pose a real threat to the wheat, or could it stay for decoration? And the blackberries? They would be ripe in just a week or two, but they were, after all, weeds--or were they? And the honeysuckle--it seemed a shame to pull up anything that smelled so sweet.

About the time they had gotten around to debating the purple asters, the boss showed up and ordered them out of his field.

Dejected, they did as they were told. Back at the barn he took their machetes away from them, poured them some lemonade, and made them sit down where they could watch the way the light moved across the field. At first, all they could see were the weeds and what a messy field it was, what a discredit to them and their profession, but as the summer wore on they marveled at the profusion of growth--tall wheat surrounded by tall goldenrod, ragweed, and brown-eyed Susans. The tares and the poison ivy flourished alongside the Cherokee roses and the milkweed, and it was a mess, but a glorious mess, and when it had all bloomed and ripened and gone to seed the reapers came.

Carefully, gently, expertly, they gathered the wheat and made the rest into bricks for the oven where the bread was baked. And the fire that the weeds made was excellent, and the flour that the wheat made was excellent, and when the harvest was over the owner called them all together--the farmhands, the reapers, and all the neighbors--and broke bread with them, bread that was the final distillation of that whole messy, gorgeous, mixed-up field, and they all agreed that it was like no bread any of them had ever tasted before and that it was very, very good. Let those who have ears to hear, hear.

 

— Barbara Brown Taylor, “Learning to Live with Weeds: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43”, The Seeds of Heaven: Preaching the Gospel of Matthew, p. 35-37