Smoke Weed at Your Own RiskWhether in others’ gardens or our own, we go a-weeding at the risk of uprooting the desirable wheat.
Scripture ReadingMatthew 13:24-30,36-43Jesus put before the crowd another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’”Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”Scripture ReflectionIn the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Jesus teaches that the enemy sows weeds of evil among the wheat of righteousness sown by God. The Righteous One instructs his gardeners not to uproot the weeds until the time of harvest. Only then, the weeds are to be separated from the wheat, and thrown into the fire. As far as I’m aware, this is the only time “smoking weed” is a thing in the Bible. This is a parable for the Church, and explains the incidence of evil and tomfoolery in Church history and culture — the proverbial weeds of religious evil, hypocrisy, and excess among the wheat of the Church’s many virtues and stunning works of mercy. But the Church is also the body of Christ, whom we are called to imitate individually, so we may also understand and apply this parable at the individual level. For we in whom the word of God has been sown and is growing might indeed be ripe for the harvest of God. There is light and darkness within each person, good and evil. What matters is that we harvest “righteousness”, if possible — but even if we harvest “evil”, it is the Lord who makes the judgment, not us. This is a call to non-judgment, and deference to Christ’s mercy. Christ himself, though he is the light of the world, did many things which were utterly condemned as “darkness” by those around him — hence the Righteous One was “numbered with the transgressors” (Mk. 15:28) and put to death as an “Evil One”. Jesus is ultimately vindicated by God, not by the people who hate him — or even those who love him. We should regard ourselves in the same way as we struggle in the Christian life. When it comes to our own lives, we do not always know what is good and what is evil — our thinking we can is the legacy of the Serpent’s trick in Eden — but according to Jesus, “only God is good” (Lk. 18:19), and only good at that. So we should seek his good will in prayer. Jesus shed many tears as he sought God’s good will; we can only speculate about whether or not, in his anguished prayers, he ever questioned what was right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, as Nikos Kazantzakis imagined he did in his The Last Temptation of Christ — we only know that Jesus asked our Father if the cup of suffering might pass from him, and God said no. In the end, God empowered Jesus to live through his trials without sin. Yet the paradigm of righteousness vs. sin through which Jesus struggled as a Jew is not quite the paradigm we’ve inherited from him. Remarkably, Jesus eliminated the category of sin insofar as, thanks to him, we are not subject to the same Law he was, for he took the Law and all its charges against us and nailed it to the cross (Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:15). Adopted by his Father and brought into his glorious Kingdom restored to Israel, the Church (Gal. 6:16), we are not under sin-counting Law as servants in his household, but under infinite and merciful grace as beloved children and heirs. The Israel into which Jesus was born was fallen, but Jesus raised it up in himself, cutting its new covenant in his blood, by which people trusting in him may truly be called citizens of the Kingdom of God. Jesus as the messenger of the new covenant (Mal. 3:1) radically defined God’s will for us: mercy, not sacrifice. Love, charity; neighborly, and even familial love if possible, for all people. Grace is a far cry from the legalism which put Jesus to death in the heart of the land of Israel before he restored God’s rule to her faithful people and radically expanded her “territory” to include all people in all places who put their faith in her King — that is, Jesus. The weeds of legalism were deeply rooted in Israel, and even so continue to be in the Church just as they are in our hearts. The human tendency to judge others and ourselves, the seed in the fruit of Eden’s knowledge-tree sown in mankind, is at the root of all discord; Jesus only allows us to “weed” our own gardens, and he illustrates in his parable that the weeds can only be destroyed in that fire of the Holy Spirit which he came to cast on earth (Lk. 12:49). This fire might very well miraculously transfigure our weeds into wheat, for we often do the greatest good where our own sin-wounds intersect with others’ needs. This is one Biblical case where “smoking weed” is a good thing. But without the Spirit, we weed and “smoke weed” at our own risk. As for the weeds in others’ gardens, we may take comfort that, though we are prohibited from “weeding” them (“judge not, lest ye be judged”) — and the temptation is great, such is the state of the world, and our hearts cry out for reform—, all will be well; for had not legalism put Jesus to death, grace would never have been revealed. “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Ro. 5:20). Whether in others’ gardens or our own, we go a-weeding at the risk of uprooting the desirable wheat before the proper time of harvest. We should simply rely wholeheartedly on our Father and obey the promptings of his Spirit within us, who alone has the power to “smoke the weed”. We should be on our guard that the spirit of legalism doesn’t do the smoking for us. Nonetheless, we should always take heart — Jesus’ fate reveals that, in God’s providence, life may be harvested from death, if we leave the harvest to Him. Amen.
Song Meditation: “Case Closed”
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