v 27 The farmer’s workers went to him and said, ‘Sir, the field where you planted that good seed is full of weeds! Where did they come from?’
Good question! Why do the weeds come up quicker and grow stronger than the carrots? How come the bindweed so quickly strangles the delicate flowers? Am I the only one who has ever carefully nurtured a young plant only to discover it is a noxious and spreading weed? No good telling me a weed is only a beautiful flower in the wrong place! Dig it out anyway.
The trouble is the parable is about people, not plants. A schoolteacher will tell you that almost every class will have a ‘weed’ in it – someone who disrupts the smooth flow of lessons, spoils the outings, answers back with an infuriating smirk, and never does the work required. That’s humanity for you.
Jesus simply explains things in the little phrase in verse 28 ‘An enemy has done this! ‘ and again in v 39 ‘The enemy who planted the weeds among the wheat is the devil. ‘
Humankind was made in the image of God, and then was tempted by the ‘enemy’, the devil, into self-assertion and sinful disobedience to God. But the good and the bad exist side by side in the world; God does not sort them out in the here and now. One day, what Jesus calls ‘The harvest .. the end of the world, ‘ there will be a sorting out – an occasion to separate the good from the bad. Meanwhile we learn to live with this mixed situation, and take action too, as we shall read tomorrow.
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