NOTES for Mat 13:24-30

To some extent, the evangelist presents the parable of the wheat and the weeds that we read today as a complement to the parable of the sower recorded earlier. There, the Lord spoke of the Kingdom of heaven being sown everywhere by the Word of God, and of how the fruit this seed bears depends on us. In today's parable, using the same agricultural imagery, the Lord speaks of the origin of evil and, more importantly, of the Kingdom of heaven's attitude towards it. While Christ's words about the origin of evil are brief and clear—‘An enemy... has done this’—we must listen closely to what he says about the attitude towards the ‘weeds’, because these are precisely the words we are to follow.

All human experience, practical and agricultural as well as spiritual, suggests that weeds should be pulled up as soon as possible, because they hinder the wheat's growth and contaminate the harvested grain. So, as soon as we discover anything bad, especially in the people around us, we try to pull it out—most often along with the person. Yet this is precisely what Christ's parable does not approve. Two explanations can be offered.

First, human spiritual freedom is so important a value for the Kingdom of heaven that even the weeds are left until the last day. For the Almighty is long-suffering. This means that he bears with us for a long time, giving us real freedom: both the possibility of being a weed and the possibility of returning to his truth, his light and life.

Second, it is important to pay attention to Christ's words: ‘Lest, in gathering the weeds, you uproot the wheat along with them.’ Both the parable of the sower and that of the wheat and the weeds share an unspoken awareness that the battlefield between good and evil is the human heart. Perhaps our stereotyped notion that we are Christ's wheat and they are the weeds is mistaken. True ‘bad guys’ exist only in action films. Real people always have both good and bad in them. The movements of the human heart are varied, and even if your heart is becoming overgrown with weeds, you yourself can cleanse it through repentance. The parable then tells us that the Kingdom of heaven—or, more precisely, the heavenly King—does not pull you out with your sins like a weed, because cleansing the heart is our right and our possibility, reserved for us until the last day of life.

Anyone who has had even a small plot of land knows that Jesus is saying something utterly impossible. How can one refrain from weeding the ground? If the weeds are left to grow until the harvest, as the owner of the field did, only weeds will grow, choking the useful plants. The Lord offers an explanation: “lest, while gathering the weeds, you uproot the wheat with them.” But He has just said that the crop appeared and έφάνη, ephanē, the weeds became visible. They have already shown themselves, so how can they be mistaken for wheat? And why leave them if they are destined to be burned anyway?

Let us listen to the original. The Lord says: “let both άμφότερα, amphotera, grow together.” In modern language, “amphoterism” denotes the capacity to display opposite properties. Such is the mystery of the Almighty's mercy: we are given freedom to grow. And this freedom implies the possibility of choosing between good and evil. The weeds are given an opportunity to become wheat.

The Almighty is long-suffering. He bears with us for a long time, giving us not only freedom but also the opportunity to return to His truth, His light, and His life. First, this parable answers the question once asked by Job: “Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” (Job 21:7 ff.). Why do scoundrels prosper? So that the wheat should not be uprooted along with them.

If you dislike this parable and the property of the Kingdom of Heaven it describes, if it seems unjust, this most likely means that you consider yourself wheat. Then the question arises: “Why does the master of the house tolerate all sorts of weeds beside someone as wonderful as me?” In that case it is useful to ask yourself another question: should I really be identified with the wheat? Do I bear much fruit for God? Since all of us are, in essence, weeds that bring nothing to the Creator, His long-suffering is not someone else's hope but precisely our only hope, our only chance to become wheat before the hour of your harvest comes.

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.