In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a story about a farmer who planted a field of wheat. In the middle of the night, his enemy came and scattered weed seeds among the freshly planted wheat.
When the farm help found out about the weeds, they came to the farmer and asked him if they should start weeding the field. The farmer told them to leave it alone until after the plants are fully grown – at that time they can separate the weeds and wheat.
Why did the farmer tell the help to wait? Because weeds look just like wheat at the beginning – if the helpers started weeding the field, they might hank out some good wheat along with the weeds.
We hear this story and nod our heads in agreement. Yet, how many of us are trying to weed the garden?
For us, the garden is the church and the weeds are all those folks who don’t look quite right. We glance at them and say, “Those are weeds. I better get them to change leaves or I’m going to have to pull them.”
Or maybe we look past the outward clothes and focus on their actions:
“True Christians don’t act like that!”
“Jesus never drank alcohol and neither should we. Besides, first century wine was really just non-alcoholic grape juice!”
“If that person was close to Jesus, they wouldn’t say fuck, shit, or bitch.”
Experienced Christians really know how to weed – we use the ultra, top-notch, fail-proof, one-and-only-Biblical guide to weed pulling: What’s their fruit?
“If their producing Granny Smith Apples, they can stay. But if they have Red Delicious….then I’m going sharpen my axe!!”
“White grapes are ok, but around here, we don’t like red grapes”
Have we ever stopped and thought that maybe, just maybe, Jesus isn’t paying us to pull weeds?
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