Let Them Grow

This Sunday, we turn to one of Jesus' most striking parables, the Wheat and the
Weeds (Matthew 13:24 30, 36 43). A farmer plants good seeds, but in the night an
enemy scatters weeds into the same field. When the workers want to rip the weeds out
immediately, the farmer stops them: wait for the harvest, or you'll destroy the wheat
along with it.

One of the things I find most helpful in reading this parable is remembering what it's
describing. Jesus isn't just telling a tidy morality tale. He's describing the whole world,
right now, as a field where good and evil grow tangled together, sometimes so tangled
we can't cleanly tell which is which. This is what it means to live between the arrival of
God's kingdom and its final completion. The kingdom is truly here, but it hasn't fully
arrived yet, and that tension shows up everywhere, in our neighborhoods, our news
feeds, even our own hearts.

That's part of why the farmer's patience matters so much. It's not passivity or
indifference. It's trust that God alone sees clearly enough to judge rightly, and that our
job in the meantime is to keep growing good fruit rather than pulling up everything that
looks suspicious.

I'm looking forward to sitting with this parable together this week, and to talking honestly
about what it looks like to live faithfully in a world where the wheat and the weeds are
still growing side by side.

See you Sunday,
Pastor Mark