Sunday, July 19, 2026
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell
Matthew 13:24-30
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.’”
Here are some wise sayings that didn’t make it into the Bible, even though lots of folks think they did. Are you ready? Number one: “Waste not, want not!” Nope, as wise and as New England as that might be, it is not in the Bible. Number two: “The Lord helps those who help themselves.” Once again, no! Not in the Bible. And finally, number three and my personal favorite: “A place for everything and everything in its place.” Again, not in the Bible, but this one really should be! Because, it seems to me, that is the only way to live. Or, at least, that is the way I like to live. I want to go to a drawer knowing exactly what I will find inside. I like to go to the shed knowing where I left my pruning shears. I like things to be done, in the words of St. Paul, “decently and in order.” And if I had my way, that’s the way the whole world would work.
But I don’t have my way and that is not the way the world works. There is not a place for everything (and everyone) and everything is certainly not in its place. That is the nature of our life on this planet. But then, unfortunately, there are those who seek to make it worse. There are people who delight in being what I call “chaos agents.” And many of them are quite good at it. They sow seeds of confusion in order to manipulate others. They say that up is down and down is up just to get their way when no one is looking. Their work is purposeful, insidious, and very effective. And it’s a game as old as time.
Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is like a farmer who went into his field and planted some wheat. And the day was hot and the work was long and backs were sore. And when it was all over and night fell, the farmer likewise fell into a very deep sleep. And so did all the exhausted household servants who had been in the fields with him. In fact, they all slept so deeply that they didn’t hear the creak of the garden gate as the chaos agents invaded their fields.
Those trespassers were there for one reason and one reason only: to sow chaos. And they worked all night at planting something called ‘bearded darnel” or in the King James Version of the Bible, “tares” – thus, the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares.
Bearded darnel is insidious and invasive. Its roots surround the roots of the good plants and suck up the precious nutrients and the scarce water needed for the crops. And because the roots of the tares entangle themselves with the roots of the good plants, it is impossible to remove the tares without also damaging the wheat.
And even if you could untangle the roots, it would be hard to know where to even begin, because bearded darnel looks identical to wheat, until, harvest time. That’s when its true colors show. You see, the seeds of the tares look different. And the seeds of the tares are poisonous. They can cause everything from hallucinations to death. And that makes them the worst kind of imposters - pretending to be something good so that they can wreak havoc.
So, this was an act of eco-terrorism. It was an agricultural disaster. It was meant to bring on economic ruin and suffering. And so, the good-hearted and eager servants – people just like us - wanted to go into the fields immediately and uproot the bad plants. They wanted to put everything back the way it should be. They wanted balance and order. That’s what I want. A place for everything and everything in its place.
But separating the good from the bad is never quite as easy as we imagine. And the wise farmer understood that. He knew that sometimes you just have to let things play before you can know what your next steps ought to be.
And so, the farmer said: Let the wheat and the tares grow together until harvest time; until it is clear what we are dealing with. And then my farm hands can actually see what seed has been produced and can judge rightly about what should be burned and what should be saved.
In the end, this is a story about evil. And I don’t really like preaching about evil. In fact, I don’t even like to think about it. But apparently, Jesus does not share my squeamishness. Jesus said that evil is real and insidious, organized and dangerous. And if I’m honest, I know that to be true. I’ve lived long enough to see that some people do truly awful things to others. And some people seem to delight in causing that harm. And while I endeavor to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and while I know that people are very complicated, I am no longer sure that every act of cruelty, vengeance, avarice, and violence can always be chalked up to poor socialization or mental illness.
Maybe that is why Jesus taught us to pray: “Deliver us from evil.”
So, then, what are we to do when evil rears its ugly head? How are we supposed to respond when it springs up in the fields of the world?
Well, my own instinct is to run into that field and chop it down, pull it out, roots and all. That’s exactly what the servants in the parable wanted to do. That is often what society wants to do. But the Farmer knew the potential for overreach. The Farmer knew the great damage that can be done by overzealous reformers. The Farmer knew that in the desire to purge evil, sometimes more evil can be born. As the great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor once said of this parable: “Turn us loose with a machete and there is no telling what we will chop down and what we will spare.”
And don’t we know it. The history of our race is full of machete-wielding zealots, who often start out with good intentions, only to become chaos agents themselves as they destroy goodness in the process.
But according to this parable, there is but one wise and good Farmer. And this Farmer, otherwise known as God, knows how to deal with the tares. And while we are indeed called to go into the fields of the world and plant goodness and to bring in the sheaves, we do that only at the Farmer’s direction and in the Farmer’s good time. Otherwise, relying on our own instincts alone, we risk becoming what we hate. We risk uprooting the good trying to do away with the bad.
So, that’s one way to read this parable. But here is another: Maybe this isn’t a story about the whole world. Maybe it’s about us. Maybe our hearts are the fields of the Lord. And maybe we are the ones who have toiled and tried our best to only plant the good seeds of compassion and mercy and peace. But despite our best efforts, sometimes wild, invasive things appear, like bitterness and envy, anger and hatred, selfishness and greed. We don’t even know how those seeds got there! And, once they sprout, all we want is to get them out by any means necessary; to chop them all down. But as Barbara Brown Taylor said: “Turn us loose with a machete and there is no telling what we will chop down and what we will spare.”
That is exactly why we the wisdom of the Farmer. We need the patience of the Farmer. We need the kind and skilled hands of the One who knows how bring the good out of us; out of our enemies; out of the whole world - and to finally burn away all that which destroys and poisons the beautiful fields of the Lord.
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