Jesus has been explaining to us what the kingdom of heaven is like, and apparently it’s like God acting like a really bad farmer, terribly inefficient. Last week, we heard of God recklessly scattering seeds all over the place — not just in the fields, but also on paths, on rocky ground, in briar patches. Crazy. Terribly inefficient.

This week, our questionable farmer has another problem. Jesus says, "The kingdom of heaven is like this: the farmer sews good seed in his field, but while he’s sleeping, an enemy comes and scatters weed seed. So the farmhands ask, "You want us to pull up the weeds?" Everybody knows that weeds sap some of the nutrients and moisture away from the wheat, so they think this is a no-brainer.

But the farmer says, "No. If you pull up the weeds, you’ll undoubtedly damage some of the wheat. It’s more important to me that the wheat not be damaged than that we get the weeds out. Wait until harvest time, then you can separate them."

Now, to understand this, it’s helpful if you are familiar with Lolium temulentum. Y’all know about Lolium temulentum, right? No? Really? Well, I didn’t either, but it turns out to be the weed that grows in wheat crops in Palestine, and it’s a mean sucker. Its common name is the bearded darnel, and its seeds are poisonous. And what makes it so sneaky is that it looks almost exactly like wheat until the point when a head appears on the plant. Most farmers pull it up before it gets that big, but even the most experienced farmers still end up pulling up a good bit of wheat by accident. And if you wait until the bearded darnel and the wheat develop heads so you can tell the difference, their roots will be so intertwined that to pull up the bearded darnel will invariably damage some of the wheat.

Now, Matthew’s interpretation of this parable says the wheat represents the children of the kingdom — the good people — and the weeds represent the children of the evil one — the bad people. Matthew’s community is dealing with the reality that people who claim to love the Lord are nevertheless doing bad things. Just fifty years or so after Jesus’ death, Matthew’s community finds this astounding, hard to believe. Two thousand years after Jesus’ death, we’re a little more used to the idea. But in Matthew’s shock, he seems to emphasize the point that when the harvest comes at Judgment Day, those bad people will get theirs. The angels will separate the wheat and the weeds, and the weeds will be burned. (They would be burned for fuel, by the way, but still, they’d be burned.)

Well, that may be so, but I think there’s a little more to it than that. I’d like to add two points. First, Jesus is dealing with the reality that when one lives in community, one invariably finds a mixed bag. In any community, the Church included, there are people who profess to do good and practice love while they are actually doing bad and causing harm. Parables always have a surprise, and the surprise in this parable, the unexpected twist, is that Jesus says that it is more important that none, none, of the wheat be damaged than it is that the weeds be eradicated.

What’s that got to do with us? Well, first let’s be clear that we’re not talking here about discipline within a community. Jesus knows that discipline is part of life together. Discipline is sometimes necessary to keep someone in the community. But what we are talking about are people and communities who know with a certainty who the evil ones are and are determined to pull them up by the roots. They scare me, and I think they scared Jesus. And one thing we’ve seen throughout history is that when people who know that they are the good people, determine who the bad people are, and set out to pull them up by the roots, the effect is that goodness is invariably damaged. How many holocausts, how many ethnic cleansings, must we see to believe that? How many stories must we hear from people wounded by their churches or families who threw them out because they were "weeds" — before we believe that?

One of my ancestors was determined to be a "weed," dangerous to the crop, full of poison, had to be pulled up by the root. Her name was Sarah Averill Wilde, of Topsfield, Massachusetts. She was my great-great-great-great-great-great aunt. This Tuesday will be the three hundred and thirteenth anniversary of her being hanged as a witch at Salem, Massachusetts on July 19, 1692.

Wasn’t that a wonderful day for the "good" "Christian" people? Jesus knows that when human beings say, "We know who the evil ones are and we’re going to weed them out," the roots of goodness are invariably damaged, and Jesus won’t have it. Leave it to God, he says. Leave it to God.

My second point is that when we leave it to God, we might just be surprised. Fr. Thomas Keating, a Roman Catholic priest, tells the story of a Christian woman whose only son, a young man with a brilliant future, was murdered on the street for no reason by a sociopath, a man who wanted to kill just to feel the power. Clearly, bad seed. Clearly, a child of the evil one.

The murderer was sent to prison, and the woman spent years wondering whether God loved her, why God had abandoned her, whether she was being punished for her sins, and why God had not intervened.

After much prayer, the woman wrote to the man and offered her forgiveness. Can you imagine? She got no reply for a whole year, and then she received a response that showed no sign of remorse. Bad seed.

She wrote again, asking to see him. Another year went by before he replied that she could come. She met with the murderer of her beloved son and listened to him describe, without emotion, his horrendous childhood full of horrible abuse. Then he said to her, "You cannot imagine the immense joy I felt when I stood over your son and realized that I had killed him." Bad, poisonous seed, horrible plant, no chance for redemption — pull it up. Leave no root. Burn it!

But the mother did not. Through her tears, through her anguish, she reiterated her forgiveness.

She stayed in contact and offered to return. He replied, "Please don’t come again. I’m afraid, if you keep coming, I’ll have to face the unbearable pain of my life." She went back and is still going back. As of when Father Keating told the story, at her last visit, the hardened murderer cried.

Her pain has not left her. But she is becoming his mother. He is becoming her son. Their roots are entangled. Isn’t she a better child of the kingdom because she refused to uproot him? And — is he still a weed? If all things are possible with God, isn’t it possible that even Lolium temulentum, when its roots become entangled with the roots of goodness, can become wheat?

God seems to be a crazy farmer, scattering seed all over the place, refusing to weed his fields. We good people know lots better; we could be so much more efficient. But you know, maybe we better just thank God — and stay out of it.