“From Weeds to Wheat”
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Allen Huff
Jonesborough Presbyterian Church
7/13/14
When my family and I lived in Statesboro, GA, we
occasionally made trips to Alabama and Mississippi to visit extended
family. Our route took us on long
stretches of two-lane roads through middle Georgia. Middle Georgia is the peach belt of the Peach
State, but peaches are not the sole cash crop in that region. Driving by a wide open field you may think
you’re passing an expanse of pastureland.
Then you begin to notice some conspicuous absences: no barbed wire
fences, no galvanized metal gates, no small, dark heaps around which the grass
grows noticeably greener and higher. It
may take a minute, but you soon realize, that’s not a pasture. It’s a sod farm. Many flat land farmers have found it more
profitable to supply impatient property owners with instant yards than grocery
stores with food.
Sod production is a cut throat business, too. We learned of one farmer who looked out over
a carefully managed field of Bermuda grass one day and noticed something that
made his heart sink and his blood boil.
In GA we call it bahaia grass.
It’s a variety of tough, weedy grass that grows very quickly and puts
out long heads thick with little black seeds that cling to shoes and socks,
pants legs and animal fur – virtually anything that touches it. Bahaia grass breeds quicker than rabbits on a
carrot farm, and it can become a neurotic obsession to lawn purists. Trying to purge bahaia grass from a field of
Bermuda, you see, is only slightly easier than me trying to get rid of these
freckles.
An investigation revealed that a local competitor had hired
a pilot to fly over that field one night and dump just enough bahaia grass to
destroy the crop of valuable Bermuda.
When the disciples hear Jesus tell the parable of the wheat
and the weeds, they ask him what it means.
And Jesus says, in effect, “Life is like that wheat field. It’s mostly good wheat, but someone has sown
weeds in it. They’ve dumped bahaia in
the Bermuda, kudzu in the cornfield.
It’s a headache, but for now there’s nothing to do but deal with
it. Let it all grow together – wheat and
weeds alike.”
Now, it is tempting to read this parable and immediately
turn outward, to look at others and begin the very subjective and destructive
process of making judgments and labeling those around us as “wheat” or
“weed.” And we all know what it’s like
to deal with weeds – those choking, suffocating circumstances and people that
can ruin a good day. It’s a fact of life
in our work places and neighborhoods, our homes and churches.For many of us,
addictions, neuroses, and other demons often make being in our own presence a
burden.
In his parable, Jesus acknowledges the presence of weeds
and weediness, but he also makes it clear that you and I are not the
farmer. God is the farmer, and God
decides what the weeds are and how to deal with them. Besides,
Jesus’ interpretation makes it clear that this parable is an analogy. And all analogies break down when carried too
far. The breakdown in this case comes
when we realize that we cannot pigeonhole anyone as wheat or weed. Because we are human beings, regression from
wheat to weed is always a possibility for us.
By the same token, when we are weedy in spirit and action, we can all
experience the grace that transforms us from weed back to wheat. A person’s deep-sown weaknesses, fears, and
other potentially destructive inclinations never tell his or her whole
truth. Indeed, very often, maybe even
most of the time, some of our weediest tendencies reveal some new variety of
wheat we have never acknowledged in ourselves.
The great psychiatrist, Karl Jung, defined our weediness in
such a way as to reveal its power for good.
He called it the shadow. Simply put, the shadow is the
“refused…unacceptable…[and] despised quarter of our being.”1 Repressed and unacknowledged, shadow energy
can have free-reign within a person, and when it does it is capable of profound
evil. Acknowledged, however, our shadow
can be harnessed and transformed into some new and liberating strength or
virtue.
“Given the chance,” says David Ricoh in his book, Shadow Dance, the weedy, shadow energy
of “an ugly aggressiveness might [be] trimmed to assertiveness, unwelcome
controlling ways might [be] spruced up into efficient leadership, [and] fear
might…even become love.”2
This is not strictly psychology, either. St. Augustine said that “everything is meant
for good...even what is bad.”3
Paul says it succinctly when writes that “all things work together for
good for those who love God.” (Romans
8:28)
Now, this is not the same thing as saying that everything happens for a reason. We are simply affirming that even the most
destructive evil never has the last word.
Even those shadowy parts of ourselves that we are so used to calling
corrupt can, when embraced, understood, and transformed, reveal acres of good
wheat.
Jesus’ parable makes it clear, too, that the process of
transformation – which we also call resurrection
– is no easy, painless process. The
weedy manifestations themselves, some of which we may really enjoy, must be
culled, bound into bundles, and burned.
Yet even that process is an act of grace. Through that process of repentance, we may
weep and gnash our teeth, but on the other side of God’s weed-harvest lies new
potential for growth and becoming.
Back in Mebane, NC I developed a very close friendship with
a man I will call Lewis. Even though he
was some twenty years my senior, we discovered a deep bond, a true spiritual
brotherhood. Lewis' personal story is a
fascinating but often heart-wrenching tale that runs helter-skelter through
deep pits of loneliness and sorrow, and then up to peaks of joyous
deliverance. Into Lewis' field of good
wheat, you see, evil dumped an almost overwhelming measure of the destructive
weed called alcoholism.
After squeaking through high school, Lewis left home and
drifted the delapidating seas of his addiction.
Those years included a short stint in the navy, various subsistence
jobs, at one point even living hand-to-mouth as a street artist in New
Orleans. He eventually married and had a
daughter, who became the light of his life.
And all the while, weeds and wheat kept growing together.
One Sunday morning, about five years before I met him,
Lewis put his last drink down. The beer
can was half empty, but his life was suddenly and gloriously half-full. In spite of the grace of that moment, the
weeping and gnashing of teeth began, because as we said, transformation is
never easy. As Lewis’ weed-fire
gradually burned out, he began to discover possibilities and wholeness he had
never experienced, and neither he nor his family knew how to live with his
new-born sobriety. On more than one
occasion his wife even offered to go buy a case of beer for him, just so things
would return to normal.
Through the help of a local Presbyterian church and its
pastor, Lewis discovered that in spite of himself, he had already grown fields
and fields of healthy wheat. He became a
commissioned lay pastor and served a couple of small congregations. He also found deep joy by participating in
mission work in Latin America.
All of Lewis’ involvement in ministry was good stuff, but
in a phone conversation one day he revealed the true substance of his
transformation, the resurrection of his once-destructive shadow energy. I have no recollection of the specific issue,
but Lewis had called to ask me about something new he wanted to get involved
with. I simply didn’t have the time at
the moment, but I told him that if he could wait until later, I might be able
to help.
“No,” said Lewis quickly, “you know me and my addictive
personality. I’m too compulsive to wait
that long. I have to go ahead and get
started.”
The real wheat was not Lewis’ involvement in ministry. That was just the wheat bread he had baked –
and it was great bread. The real wheat was his inner capacity to live
into a passionate desire, his ability to embrace a consuming hope that seemed
to lie beyond the moment. Lewis
occasionally needed someone to rein him in a little, but that which had surfaced
as the desperate abandon of alcoholism had, by holy grace and human effort,
become an enthusiastic commitment to expressions of Faith, Hope, and Love.
Toward the end of his book Inner Gold, Robert
Johnson has a compelling discussion about the Second Coming. He speaks of it in terms of a relentless
cultural yearning for growth and becoming.
And he identifies several poorly-directed efforts to engage Second
Coming hope, addiction being one of those weedy misdirections.
“When someone comes to me with [an addiction] problem,”
writes Johnson, “I can often touch him by saying, 'What you are doing is
right. Your expectations and demands are
valid. But you're doing it the wrong
way.'”4 Then he begins to
help his client discover the potential for wheat that lies behind the weed of
the particular addiction. I am convinced
that Lewis would say a loud Amen to
that.
All of us are fields of mostly good wheat. To move beyond those unhealthy ways of being
Christian, those unhealthy ways of being human, some weediness must be culled
from within us. The refiner's fire of
God's grace is always at work transforming weeds into wheat, lead into gold. As Christians, we use the symbol of baptism
as the beginning this life-long process.
In baptism God claims and waters the wheat which God has already
planted, and God promises to give it growth.
Our promise is to love and nourish the wheat, and to turn – consciously – from the weediness that
threatens our relationships with God and with one another.
Remember this, too: God loves us no less for our weediness,
and no more for whatever faithfulness we can muster. But through transformation, we love God more. Through resurrection, we love one another and ourselves more. All of us, then, live more grateful, more
hopeful, and more Christlike lives.
1Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow:
Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche. Harper One, 1991, pp 4-5.
2David Ricoh, Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power and
Creativity of Your Dark Side. Shambhala, 1999, p. 3.
3Ibid, p. 2.
4Robert A. Johnson, Inner Gold: Understanding
Psychological Projection. Koa Books, 2008, p. 74.
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