Weeds Archives - Renewed Heart Ministries

Parables that Harm

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Herb Montgomery

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Parables that Harm

Herb Montgomery | July 17, 2026

If you’d like to listen to this week’s article in podcast version click on the image below:

Cover art for 'The Social Jesus Podcast,' featuring an artistic depiction of a man with long hair, set against a colorful background. The title and host's name are prominently displayed.

Our reading this week is from the Gospel of Matthew:

(Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43)

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)

Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds in our reading this week has often been interpreted as a story about separating the righteous from the wicked. Yet one of the most important ethical lessons of the parable is frequently overlooked: human beings are explicitly forbidden from deciding who the “bad seeds” are and attempting to eliminate them. The servants immediately want to pull up the weeds, but the landowner refuses. The servants’ certainty about who belongs and who does not is precisely what Jesus challenges.

Throughout history, societies have repeatedly identified groups of people as “weeds” that threaten the health of the whole community. Ethnic minorities, immigrants, religious dissenters, political opponents, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, and countless others have all been portrayed as dangerous contaminants that must be removed for society to flourish. But once people are classified as inherently bad, every form of exclusion becomes easier to justify. Discrimination, segregation, incarceration, deportation, economic exploitation, and violence can all be defended as necessary acts of preserving the “good crop.”

The danger of this is not limited to physical destruction. Even when people postpone judgment until a future divine reckoning, they may still treat others as though they have already been condemned. The belief that certain people are destined for destruction can produce social practices that isolate, dehumanize, or neglect them in the present. One need not literally burn the weeds today to start treating them as less worthy of compassion, justice, or dignity than those deemed “good.”

Jesus’ response resists this entire framework. The servants in the story assume they can distinguish between wheat and weeds perfectly, but the landowner recognizes the limitations of human judgment. Pulling up the weeds prematurely also risks destroying the wheat. This warning extends beyond agriculture into every community where people’s certainty about others’ moral worth becomes the justification for exclusion. History repeatedly demonstrates that campaigns to eliminate perceived threats almost always harm innocent people alongside those being targeted.

So the parable attempts to call communities away from systems that sort humanity into fixed categories of “worthy” and “unworthy.” Instead, it encourages patience, humility, and a recognition that every person bears immeasurable value. Justice is not achieved by identifying expendable people but by cultivating conditions in which everyone has the opportunity to flourish.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds is less a guide for identifying the wicked than a warning against assuming that role ourselves. In this parable, Mathew’s Jesus places judgment in God’s hands while calling his followers to practice patience, adopt a posture of waiting while practicing mercy, protecting the vulnerable, and resisting every ideology that divides humanity into those deserving of life and those destined for destruction. In a world still tempted to solve its problems by sacrificing those deemed undesirable, the parable invites us to choose patience over quick action and certainty about others.

Yet there is a deeper layer to this parable that is deeply troubling and immensely problematic.

The interpretation of this parable presents one of the most difficult ethical tensions in Matthew’s Gospel. In Matthew’s explanation, the “good seed” becomes “the children of the kingdom,” while the weeds become “the children of the evil one,” destined ultimately to be gathered and destroyed. Read through the lens of justice and human dignity, this interpretation risks reinforcing a dangerous way of seeing other human beings not merely as people who do harmful things, but also as people whose very identity is evil.

The problem is not recognizing that injustice exists: in the gospel stories, Jesus consistently confronted oppression, exploitation, and violence. The problem emerges when evil is relocated from systems and actions into the essence of particular people. Once someone is identified as “bad seed,” our imagination begins to shift. It’s not enough for us to say, “Yes, they are bad seeds, but Jesus tells us to leave them alone.” No! Whomever we label as “bad seeds” destined for eventual destruction instantly becomes disposable rather than neighbors to be loved, enemies to be prayed for, or people capable of repentance. Throughout the centuries, various religious communities have labeled heretics, enslaved peoples, other ethnic groups, political opponents, LGBTQ persons, immigrants, women, and adherents of other faiths as threats to God’s purposes. Regarding a group as fundamentally corrupt stands in tension with the broader ministry of Jesus. Jesus repeatedly refused to reduce people to fixed moral identities. He ate with tax collectors, forgave those who crucified him, welcomed those his society labelled as sinners, restored those his society deemed unclean, and called his followers to love their enemies. His ministry assumed that every person bears the image of the Divine. In that context, then, no one ever should be considered a “tare” that will eventually be gathered up and burned in fire. Even those who opposed Jesus in the stories remained objects of God’s love rather than candidates for human contempt.

A more life-giving reading of the parable understands the weeds not as categories of people but as destructive patterns that grow within individuals and societies. Greed, domination, prejudice, violence, and hatred threaten God’s harvest. These realities must indeed be overcome, but their destruction is not the destruction of persons. But then the part the part of the parable of waiting till some mysterious point in the future to uproot these simply doesn’t work in the story. The sacred work of the Divine is not to leave injustice alone until some time in the future, but to engage right now by uprooting injustice while preserving the humanity of everyone involved, today.

The ethical danger of labeling human beings as “bad seed” is that it authorizes exclusion rather than inclusion or restoration. We must begin from the conviction that every person possesses irreducible worth, even people who perpetuate harm. Accountability is essential, and injustice must be confronted with courage. Yet confronting evil is fundamentally different from declaring that certain people are themselves beyond redemption.

If Jesus’ kingdom is characterized by restored humanity, justice, compassion, reconciliation, healing, and restorative justice, then no person should ever be viewed as a bad seed. Ever! People are never weeds in the field of our world. The weeds are the systems, ideologies, fears, and choices that distort our shared humanity. And, those are not to be left along till some time in the future. Those are what must be gathered up and done away with, today, so that every person may have the opportunity to flourish.

A community that labels people as irredeemable closes itself to change. The Jesus of Matthew’s Gospel consistently sought out those whom respectable society had already written off such tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, Gentiles, and others deemed morally or religiously suspect by the wealthy and powerful elite. His ministry repeatedly transgressed societal norms in favor of the worth and dignity of every person. That means that the parable we encounter in this week’s reading is inconsistent with the Jesus we find in the rest of Matthew’s gospel. Regardless of one’s view of sacred texts, inspiration, or any other lens that would cause us to choose infallibility over the well-being of vulnerable people, my conclusion this week is simple: No person ever should be labelled as a bad seed. Period.

Discussion Group Questions

1. Share something that spoke to you from this week’s podcast episode with your discussion group.

2. How does our reading this week inform your own justice work, today? Share and discuss 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.

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My latest book Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political and Economic Teachings of the Gospels is available now on Amazon in paperback, Kindle and also on Audible in audio book format.

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Right where you are, keep living in love, choosing compassion, taking action, and working toward justice.

I love each of you dearly,

I’ll see you next week.

A promotional image for 'The Social Jesus Podcast' featuring an artistic depiction of a man resembling Jesus alongside a microphone.

New Episode of The Social Jesus Podcast

A podcast where we talk about the intersection of faith and social justice and what a first century, prophet of the poor from Galilee might have to offer us today in our work of love, compassion and justice.

This week:

Season 3 Episode 30: Parables that Harm

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Available on all major podcast carriers and at:

https://the-social-jesus-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/parables-that-harm

Finding Jesus: A Fundamentalist Preacher Discovers the Socio-Political & Economic Teachings of the Gospels.

by Herb Montgomery

Available now on Amazon!

In Finding Jesus, author Herb Montgomery delves into the profound and often overlooked political dimensions of the gospels. Through meticulous analysis of biblical texts, historical context, and social discourse, this thought-provoking book unveils the gospels’ socio-political, economic teachings as rooted in a profound concern for justice, compassion, and the well-being of the marginalized. The book navigates the intersections between faith and societal justice, presenting a compelling argument for a more socially engaged and transformative Christianity.

Finding Jesus is not just a scholarly exploration; it is a call to action. It challenges readers to reevaluate their understanding of Christianity’s role in public life and to consider how the radical teachings of the gospels can inspire a renewed commitment to justice, equality, and compassion. This book is a must-read for those seeking a deeper understanding of the social implications of Christian faith and a blueprint for building a more just and inclusive society.

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Category: Esights, Liberation Theology Tags: Ecological Justice, Economic Justice, Feminism, Harm, Immigration Justice, Lectionary Reading, LGBTQ Justice, Liberation Theology, Parables, Racial Justice, Social Justice, Weeds

Misclassifying As Weeds

Posted on June 11, 2021 by Herb Montgomery

Herb Montgomery | June 11, 2021

This week’s reading calls us all to question our classification of trees as weeds. Similarly, the call to affirm, embrace, and include LGBTQ Christians in the church is not a call to affirm things that are intrinsically harmful but a call to help us recognize that the LGBTQ community should not be on the “harmful” list in the first place.

Our reading this week is from the Gospel of Mark:

He also said, “The reign of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” He also said, “With what can we compare the reign of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. (Mark 4:26-34)

The society for which the gospel of Mark was written considered mustard seeds an invasive, noxious weed. If a gardener did not uproot it from their garden, they’d soon not have a garden left to tend. Then, as now, weeds should be rooted out to stop them taking over, crowding out intentionally planted crops .

Other gospels describe mustard seed growing into large bushes with branches, or trees. But mustard seed doesn’t actually grow like that. We have negatively labelled as a weed something that ends up growing into a large bush with branches and that positively benefits those around it. We’ve classified as a weed something that is actually a fruit-bearing tree.

Let me say it again for clarity. Actual mustard plants don’t grow into trees. What we have in this story is something that grows into a tree. It’s not mustard weed. It’s something entirely different from mustard. We’ve made a mistake!

I think that was Jesus’ point.

This week’s reading compares Jesus’ new community of nonviolence, mutual aid, and resource and wealth redistribution to a beneficial tree seen as a weed-like-threat by the privileged, powerful, and propertied. The way 1^st Century farmers viewed the mustard plant was the way the privileged and elite viewed Jesus’ teachings and the community of Jesus-followers centered in those teachings. They were to be rooted out. They were as welcome in society as weeds are in a garden.

But then Jesus takes a hard right turn. What people think is a noxious mustard weed doesn’t produce the same results as they all expect mustard to. It doesn’t take over the garden like a weed and leave nothing for anyone. No, instead it becomes a tree, a source of shelter and food for all in its vicinity. It’s originally viewed as a weed, but it does not bear the same fruit as a weed.

The image Jesus uses to represent his community, the tree mistaken for a weed, is from a story in the Hebrew apocalyptic book of Daniel. In Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was likened to a fruit tree that provided food, a resting place, and shelter to all. Jesus adapts this imperial image to describe his non-imperial community that provides for those the present system exploits. Its imagery also communicates to those opposing Jesus’ work, “You’re working so hard to keep me out of your garden as if I’m a mustard weed, and are trying to uproot me completely, but you have misjudged me. My fruit is not harmful. It is life and peace and good for all.”

This week’s reading isn’t saying that all weeds should be welcomed in the garden or that we shouldn’t weed when gardening. It’s asking us to check our assumptions about what we have classified as weeds. What if we’ve made a mistake? What if we’ve judged something to be a harmful weed, but that judgment is quite incorrect?

The elite in Jesus’s society were beginning to view his teachings on nonviolent resistance and wealth redistribution as a weed that must be removed. And so he calls them to see their judgment as a mistake. What Jesus was teaching could lead to justice, liberation and ultimately societal peace, rooted in an expression of distributive justice for all. What they viewed as a weed to be rooted out was actually a tree of life.

Misclassification Today

As I consider the misclassification of the mustard seed in this week’s reading and the misclassification of Jesus’s reign of God in the gospels, I can’t help but think of the misclassification of my LGBTQ friends today.

This week’s reading calls us all to question our classification of trees as weeds. Similarly, the call to affirm, embrace, and include LGBTQ Christians in the church is not a call to affirm things that are intrinsically harmful but a call to help us recognize that the LGBTQ community should not be on the “harmful” list in the first place.

This month is Pride Month, and RHM’s recommended reading for June is Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation by Dale B. Martin. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you have not read it, get a copy and do so. You’ll thank me.

From time to time, I get letters from other Christians asking me to explain how I can claim to follow Jesus while affirming the LGBTQ community. These writers typically use misinformed language such as “lifestyle” when they are actually referring to same-sex intimacy. They are often also profoundly certain about how clear the Bible’s teachings are, and they compare my LGBTQ friends with those who are “sexually immoral,” and “child-molesters.” They want me to explain how I could affirm LGBTQ people’s allegedly “sinful behaviors.”

A sexual ethic rooted in the golden rule is a different conversation. I do want to say this loud and clear. Many of my LGBTQ friends are more devoted Christians than I am. I think specifically of a lesbian friend of mine in Ohio. She has been with her wife for over twenty years, and I admire their commitment to each other. It’s absurd to even compare her to those who are “sexually immoral” or “child-molesters”.

As a side note, I also want to add that many straight people practice things Christian, ascetic, purity-culture standards don’t approve, yet no one’s going about saying heterosexuals shouldn’t get married or become pastors. It’s not enough to keep a system in place of making some group an outsider, or less than, while saying LGBTQ people shouldn’t be hurt by it. If this kind of system is still in place, we’re all at risk. Do we have really to have to measure up to Christian purity culture (which many Christians also reject) to be treated with respect and kindness?

There are two lists in the New Testament that the writers of the letters I receive often mention:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the [arsenokoitai], nor [malakoi] nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (ESV), emphasis added)

“Understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the [arsenokoitai], enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.” (1 Timothy 1:9-11 (ESV), emphasis added)

The term “homosexuality” was invented in the late 1800s, but did not appear in any English language Bible before 1946. For most of history, Christians have read 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 very differently than their recent translations suggest they might. The two Greek keywords in these passages are malakoi and arsenokoitai. These words are extremely difficult to translate into English.

Arsenokoitai is found in both 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. Malakoi is found only in 1 Corinthians 6:9. Dale Martin’s book Sex and the Single Savior is extremely helpful here. Martin makes a compelling case that no one living today definitely knows what arsenokoitai meant and at best we are guessing at definitions. Surprisingly, Martin shows that whatever arsenokoitai was, most of the extra-biblical vice lists that include arsenokoitai categorize it with acts of economic exploitation and oppression, not with sexual violations where we would expect to find it if it refered primarily to sexual acts.

Malakoi is much easier to define, yet the definition reveals rank misogyny. Again, Martin makes a compelling case in quoting several extra-biblical sources where malakoi was used. Each time malakoi appears, there is no question the term refers to men directly or indirectly acting in any way that society would have defined as feminine. Some ancient authors go so far as to indicate it would be better to be dead than to be a woman as defined by their society. They list the litany of qualities that that ancient culture considered “woman-like”: drinking too much wine, having too much sex, loving gourmet food, hiring a professional cook, being weak in battle, and enjoying luxury all fall into the classification of being unmanly. Malakoi often refers to heterosexual men who wore things like nice clothing, jewelry, wore cologne, shaved, did their hair, and cared for their skin to aid them in appearing attractive in their heterosexual pursuits. It meant being “soft” or effeminate. In that patriarchal society, women were degraded as being inferior to men and therefore it was considered to be a vice, malakoi, for a man to act in any way like them. Martin’s conclusion is “willful ignorance or dishonesty” could allow us to define malakoi so narrowly as to refer to “passive homosexuals” now.

Martin’s textual scholarship resoundingly agrees with Brownson’s conclusion in The Bible, Gender and Sexuality:

“When we take the original social context of these vice lists seriously, we again recognize a gap between what these vice lists are rejecting and what is happening in committed same-sex relationships today.” (Brownson, The Bible, Gender and Sexuality, p. 275)

After 1946, however, an obvious homophobic bias enters New Testament English translations, and it is not warranted by the original languages. The original languages address men being “like women,” which is deeply misogynist and produces a whole set of interpretive problems. But translations after 1946 introduce generic homophobia instead.

I have a hunch that some translators may be trying to avoid the misogyny in the original text. Yet these translations produce demonstrable bodily harm to a group of human beings, and that fruit should warn us about their roots.

Jesus, like the Hebrew prophets before him, valued people and interpretations of the Torah that were life-giving rather than destructive. Jesus practiced a kind of Torah obedience that expressed itself in a preferential option for the vulnerable. As a community, LGBTQ people are vulnerable in our time.

Through generations of prejudice and mistranslation, we have misclassified as a weed something that isn’t a weed at all. In fact, our misclassifying the LGBTQ community is what’s producing noxious weed-like results including disproportionate homelessness and suicide rates among Christian LGBTQ youth rejected by their religious families and churches. The fruit of our recent translations and misclassification of LGBTQ people is not life, but death.

We must remember:

Saying “I’m sorry” is not enough.
An apology that calls straight Christians only to more loving and respectful forms of heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia is not an apology.
The language of reconciliation devoid of liberation is empty rhetoric.
Kindness and respect are not synonyms for reparation for harm done in the past.
Allowing even “respectful” disagreement over whether another person should exist is not “creating safe space.”

That last one is vital. The debate over LGBTQ people is not merely about theology. It’s really a disagreement over whether LGBTQ people should exist, live openly, and form families in our communities. The lists in Paul’s writings are lists of behaviors that can be changed. Sexual orientation is much more like a person’s skin color than their actions. It’s not something to be changed; it’s who people are. Reparative therapy, however, is one example of Christian attempts to “weed out” a certain type of person—an LGBTQ person—from existence. Ultimately, it’s a form of genocide.

Learning to listen to those who are not like us as they share the harm they’ve experienced through misclassification offers us the opportunity to choose between compassion and fear. Our differences can be scary, but they don’t have to be. Although we do have differences, there is much we have in common, too. Someone who is different from you is also someone’s child. They are someone’s sibling. They are someone’s best friend.

Remember to breathe. And choose compassion.

And to all my LGBTQ friends who may be reading or listening this week, I offer as encouragement the words of Dr. Katie Cannon of Union Presbyterian Seminary:

“Even when people call your truth a lie, tell it anyway. Tell it anyway.” (in Journey to Liberation: The Legacy of Womanist Theology)

HeartGroup Application

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

2. Share an experience of how you came to realize you had also misjudged something or someone? Discuss with your group.