How Not to View the World

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Season 1, Episode 22: Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43. Lectionary A, Proper 11

Each week, we’ll be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

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How Not To View The World

Herb Montgomery | July 21, 2023

To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.

“We don’t need to label some as weeds with the sick assurance that one day they will be destroyed. How awful! Nor should we look at the injustices as our world as things we can do nothing about except endure until some point in the future when outside forces will set things right. We can do something about injustice, here, now, today.”

Our reading this week is from the gospel of Matthew:

Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. 

The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’

‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.

The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’

 ‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’

Then he left the crowd and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.” He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.

“As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

I’m thankful we discussed the principle of all or nothing a couple weeks ago. I didn’t realize it would also prepare us to discuss this passage, and I’m thankful for that foundation. If you have not read The Destructiveness of All or Nothing I encourage you to go back and do so. 

Our reading this week is an isolated parable found only in Matthew among the four canonical versions of the Jesus story. Outside of our canon, there is a version of the parable in the gospel of Thomas:

Jesus said, ‘My Fathers’ kingdom can be compared to someone who had seed. Their enemy came by night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The person didn’t let anyone pull out the weeds, “so that you don’t pull out the wheat along with the weeds,” they said to them. ‘On the day of the harvest, the weeds will be obvious. Then they’ll be pulled out and burned.’” (Gospel of Thomas, 57)

This parable probably circulated among the Matthean community orally before the gospel of Matthew was written. It wasn’t a saying of Jesus’ within the Markan community, the Johannine community, or the larger cosmopolitan Lukean community. 

When a problematic passage only appears in one gospel, it gives me pause. We don’t need to throw it out, but should practice the utmost care with it. It’s difficult to attribute a reading like this to the historical Jewish Jesus who is characterized in most of the gospels as an inclusive, prophet of the poor from Galilee. It is much easier to attribute the passage to the Galilean, Jesus-following community: it reflects the concerns of that young community in protecting its own purity. Concern for protecting community purity, calling people “weeds,” and looking forward to their destruction doesn’t sound like the Jesus we encounter in the rest of Matthew. It sounds more like the apocalyptic John the Baptist than Jesus. 

What this passage does do is reflect the worldview of the original audience of Matthew’s gospel. Apocalypticism divided our world between the seen and the unseen. The unseen world was composed of both good cosmic powers and evil comic powers, and that world was connected to our visible world. Good people were also connected to the good cosmic powers, while “evil” people were connected or even controlled by evil cosmic powers. We see this worldview expressed in passages such as this one from the book of Ephesians,

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)

For the early, Jewish Jesus communities who subscribed to this worldview (not all did), Rome would have been the earthly, visible conduit of the destructive unseen cosmic powers of evil. 

This way of looking at the world was somewhat pessimistic, as well. The world was what it was, controlled by whom or whatever. Nothing would change until the “end of the age” when there would be a great reversal and evil powers (and thus evil people) would be no more. Some of the early Jesus communities explained the world around them in these apocalyptic ways, where there wasn’t much one could do but patiently endure the present injustices of our world, holding on till the day of “harvest” when the “wheat” would be gathered up while the “weeds” would be destroyed. 

Again, it is much easier to accept that this passage has its source in the Matthean community and was attributed to Jesus than that it came directly from Jesus but only the Mattheans community remembered it. Above all else, this way of looking at the world is deeply problematic and destructive. Let’s explore why.

First, we know from human history that when we forget that we are all connected and all part of one another, and we begin to define some among us as “evil,” or as “weeds” to use our parable’s language, it’s not long before those we deem to be weeds we then exclude, marginalize, scapegoat, and harm. Even if this parable says to leave “the weeds” alone, when we label someone as a weed and estimate them to be evil, we never make it our practice to let them be. We always set out at once to weed them out. 

Second, it is intrinsically harmful to others’ humanity and to our own to look at fellow human beings as evil creatures who will one day be eradicated. We can’t help but seek to eradicate them in some form now, today. Add to this social dynamic of labeling some as evil or “of the devil,” the language of rounding them up and burning them. This is a holocaust. That is how millions of Jewish people were murdered last century. This is how people were tortured and killed during the Inquisition. This is how women were hanged or drowned as witches. There are so many more horrific examples in human history.

As I said in the article The Destructiveness of All or Nothing, “wisdom is proved right by her deeds.” And we need to judge this way of looking at our world and the people in our world by deeds it has produced throughout history. By those results, this way of looking at the world is the weed, not the people it maligns.

Today, it is not life-giving to look at the world through an apocalyptic lens. We don’t need to label some as weeds with the sick assurance that one day they will be destroyed. How awful! Nor should we look at the injustices as our world as things we can do nothing about except endure until some point in the future when outside forces will set things right. We can do something about injustice, here, now, today.

Is there anything that we can redeem from this passage?

There is one thing. And it is a corrective. This passage gives us the Biblical phrase, “gnashing of teeth.” Too often, Christians have assumed that “weeping and gnashing of teeth” refers to the physical agony those in the “fires” of this parable experience. But the gnashing of teeth is not a Biblical expression about being tormented. It’s a Biblical expression about being angry, so angry that they grit or gnash their teeth together. 

Consider a few examples:

“God assails me and tears me in his anger and gnashes his teeth at me.” (Job 16:9)

“The wicked plot against the righteous and gnash their teeth at them…” (Psalms 37:12)

“When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him.” (Acts 7:54) 

In the gospels, people gnash their teeth when they see those they excluded being welcomed to the center of God’s just future while those who were so assured they were so much better and deserving to be at the center are left outside because of their own exclusionary practices. As you sow, you reap. Or to put it simply, people gnash their teeth when angry at seeing who is being “let in” when they themselves aren’t. As the gospel of Luke explains, “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out” (Luke 13:28)

If any are excluded in the just world we are working towards and creating, it will be those who make it a practice of labelling others as weeds. It should give us pause to see the intrinsic destructiveness of looking at the world through the same lens as the authors of this week’s reading. Today, we can and must do better.

HeartGroup Application

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s eSight/Podcast episode with your HeartGroup.

2. How does labelling some people as weeds harmfully impacted the way you relate to others? What better way of relating to others who are different from you have you found? Share that with your group.

3. What can you do this week, big or small, to continue setting in motion the work of shaping our world into a safe, compassionate, just home for everyone?

Thanks for checking in with us, today.

I want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. And if you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. 

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Also I want to share that we are partnering in a new weekly YouTube show called “Just Talking.” Each week, Todd Leonard and I will be talking about the gospel lectionary reading for the upcoming weekend. We’ll be talking about each reading in the context of love, inclusion, and societal justice. Our hope is that our talking will be just talking (as in justice) and that during our brief conversations each week you’ll be inspired to also do more than just talking.

If you teach from the lectionary each week, or if you’re just looking for some thoughts on the Jesus story from a more progressive perspective within the context of social justice, check it out, you might like it. You can find JustTalking each week on YouTube at youtube.com/@herbandtoddjusttalking. Please Like, Subscribe, hit the Notification button, and leave us a comment.

And if you’d like to reach us here at Renewed Heart Ministries through email, you can reach us at info@renewedheartministries.com.

My new book, Finding Jesus: A story of a fundamentalist preacher who unexpectedly discovered the social, political, and economic teachings of the Gospels is now also available at renewedheartministries.com

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