NOTES for Mat 13:24-30

The parable of the weeds tells us about something so hard to follow in daily life. We see that the Lord counsels us to be careful and to refrain from hasty judgment. Yet again and again we feel "like gods, knowing good and evil," passing judgment on human destinies.

It is very easy to cry, "Get the bad grass out of the field," and begin uprooting everything that is bad or that looks bad to us; often it only looks that way and nothing more. And if the owner of the field is afraid that weeding might damage the good grain, such difficulties do not frighten us. More than that, we are ready to trample even half the harvest just to spite the weeds.

At the same time, we do not want to think that what looks like a weed today may turn out tomorrow to be a useful plant. In the world of living nature, of course, such transformations are exceptional; but we live among people, and with people like us changes greater than that can happen.

The weeds, however, are sown not only among those around us, but also in our own hearts. It makes no sense to uproot the weeds around us while leaving untouched the ones growing out of ourselves. In that way we will fail to notice how we become overgrown up to the crown of the head, or even become weeds ourselves.

And now, into the soil where both grain and weeds grow, a nearly invisible seed has been thrown. And strange as it is, the weeds do not manage to choke it, although at first they can cover it, it is so small.

Yet the very thing that looks insignificant often proves to be the most important. For what grows from this seed, when it has become taller than all the trees, will separate the wheat from the weeds.

Another absurd story from the field of agriculture. Every one of Jesus' listeners knows perfectly well that weeds must be pulled as early as possible, before they have drained the juices from the useful grain, especially since telling one from the other is no great difficulty for an experienced farmer. But, as you can tell, the absurdity of the content of this parable is precisely meant to show the listeners how unlike human judgment God's judgment is. Even the "reapers," the angels, are unable to tell the weeds from the wheat in this field of human lives. Many "good people" would no doubt like to be rid once and for all of the "bad people" who prevent them from living a full life. But weeding can lead to the death of the grain, which means there is no clear distinction between "good" and "bad" people: the first can become last, and the reverse.

God Himself refuses to carry out a "cleanup" in the world He created. This means that for Him people are not divided into "honest ordinary citizens" and "terrorists." Although some people strongly resemble bandits and violent offenders, the "weeds of society" (or of the Church, or of the family), the Lord is in no hurry to weed the field. And this is despite the fact that He, of all people, knows what each person is capable of in this life. He waits until each person can reveal himself, without abandoning hope for anyone's repentance.

What, then, can be said about us, for whom another person's soul is darkness? What right do we have to divide the world into good and bad people? And no one has appointed us as harvesters...

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; though it is smaller than all seeds, when it grows it becomes larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches." This wonderful image that the Lord offers us today may have been inspired for the evangelist by the words of the prophet Ezekiel: "On the high mountain of Israel I will plant it, and it will put out branches, bear fruit, and become a majestic cedar; every kind of bird will dwell under it, every winged creature will dwell in the shade of its branches" (Ezek 17:23).

But in order to understand correctly the subtle difference that distinguishes the prophet's image from the image Jesus gives us, we need to know that an inaccuracy was most likely introduced here in translation, and it erases this subtle distinction.

Let us turn to the work of Jean Carmignac, the well-known French priest and Hebrew scholar, "The Birth of the Synoptic Gospels": "Matt 13:32 and Luke 13:19 say that the mustard seed 'becomes a tree,' which is an obvious exaggeration, because this plant does not exceed one and a half or two meters. <...> Everything would be explained if Mark, who apparently was inspired by Ezek 17:23, wrote NP, pronounced anaph, 'branch,' as in Ezekiel, and if the copyist whose copy preceded Matthew and Luke read S, pronounced es, 'tree,' because in Qumran script the letters NP, if they touch, are similar to the letter S."

And if it is a branch, then the theological meaning immediately becomes clear, because the branch really does indicate that these two texts should be read in parallel. But here is the essential difference: a mighty cedar or a little mustard tree. Strength and weakness. The strength of the Old Testament becomes weakness in the New, in order to become some other, new Strength.