Jesus is having a field day sowing his wild oats and getting lots of weed in return

I was walking downtown with my family. It was a beautiful early spring day, the sky was blue, but the crisp feeling of the end of winter still lingered in the air. Days like this are few and far between, so I basked in the beauty of it all and the laughter of my children. My wife was wearing a beautiful sundress but regretted it because there was a bit of a nip in the air. Which did not go unnoticed by a man across the street who was wearing a sandwich board sign and holding a Bible.

“All harlots will be thrown into the lake of fire!” He yelled while ogling her.

“The f+ck did you just say?” I screamed back at the man.

Next thing you know, this man and I are nose to nose in a screaming match. I imagine, for any of the bystanders who were observing, the right or the wrongness of either of our actions was dependent on which one of us you ideologically agreed with. We both said words, used vague threats, and eventually each of us declared that the other was going to Hell.

I met that man years later, sitting at a bar enjoying a beer. He had left the church he was going to, and, though he still believed in God, it turns out he wasn’t as hardline as he sounded that day. We both apologized for how we acted with him saying, “I guess we weren’t our best selves that day. Good thing we get another chance,” with that, we tapped our glasses together enjoyed a cold one. 

Unholy Sh+t: An Irreverent Bible Study

Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Today’s Reading: Matthew 13:24-43

With Jesus choosing to use parables as his main mode of preaching, it would be an easy assumption that his goal was to confuse people. There are even a few times in the scriptures when he seems to apply that is his goal. However, upon a deeper dive, you can quickly see that is not what Jesus actually said, “I preach in parables so that the ones who can hear it will and the ones who can’t won’t. I am looking for those who are actually willing to listen.” 

On the contrary, Jesus is doing something pretty radical with his parables; he is making a religious message accessible to common folks. He uses analogies with fields, farming, and fishing throughout his teaching. He is using colloquial language and anecdotes that peasants could quickly understand. There are even a few times when Jesus uses some old school swear words like calling people “den of thieves,” or “brood of vipers,” and my personal favorite, “whitewashed tombs.” You probably wouldn’t have heard language like that from the pulpit at your local synoguge. This put him at odds with the establishment but caused him to become a bit of a pop culture icon.

Basically, farming analogies confused rich people.

If Jesus were alive today he would probably trade in boats for TikTok and mountain sides for Substack. The local authorities would probably try to get him canceled.

Sticking with the farming theme, Jesus tells them another parable about a field and planting. This time, it came with a prank: a farmer used high-quality seeds in his field, which would have been very expensive. However, one of his enemies decides to f+ck his day up by running over to the field with a little surprise.

“Hey y’all, I’m Johnny Nazareth, and today, we are going to go plant a bunch of weeds in my neighbors field so that when the harvest comes, he has a bunch of weeds in his field.”

After the grain has sprouted and is already high stocks with heads on them, some of the workers in the field notice that there are weeds all throughout everything. They run back to the farmer and are like, “Yo, there are a bunch of weeds in your field. Didn’t you buy that good grass?” The farmer instantly knows what’s going on. He’s been punked. He tells his staff that one of his enemies must have done this. The farm hands offer to go pluck up all the weeds, but the farmer tells them not to saying, “You can’t do that now; when you try to pull up the weeds you might harm the wheat. Just let them grow together, and when it comes time to harvest everything, we will sort it all out then. We will put the wheat in the barn and the weeds you can burn.”

After giving this sermon, Jesus returns to the house to take a nap but his disciples follow him inside. Eventually, one of them says, “Jesus, that was a really awesome story. I totally got what you meant, but could you explain it for the others?”

Shaking his head, Jesus explains that this is a story about the end of time when everyone will be rewarded according to what they did and didn’t do. Those who tried to hurt other people and caused them to miss the mark, those people are the weeds. They just come into the world, suck off the nutrients and starve out of the wheat. The wheat is everyone who followed the commandment to love their neighbor.

But there is another message here and a very important one. 

The farmer tells the workers not to pull the weeds up because it could harm the crop. It would disrupt the topsoil and maybe even their root systems have become intertwined, causing you to kill both the weed and the wheat. He tells them that it’s not their job to go pulling weeds; that will get sorted out later by him.

Jesus is teaching a way more difficult lesson and it's one I really struggle with; it's not our job to decide good from evil or ultimate outcomes, that is his responsibility. Sometimes we might see something that we think is a weed and try to pull it up, but really it was a helpful herb. Other times people try to make a weeds illegal even though it has medicinal (and recreational) value. When we are interacting with others or even just observing them, we aren’t always seeing the full picture. It’s easy to judge something from the outside looking in, but its a wholly different thing to be looking at it from the vantage point of not being limited by space or time. 

I’m sure there are times in all our lives that we have looked like a weed, and someone might want me to see us plucked up. Maybe we’ve had a meltdown, lost our temper, or weren’t being our best self. If we judge a person by their worst day, we might be missing the wheat that exists within them. 

The totality of a person’s life tells us the real story. Not some random moment caught on a smartphone when they were at their worst. It’s all the little pieces in the middle that make up who a person really is. Our perspective isn’t always right, and sometimes we make snap judgments that turn out to be really wrong. Just like the police officer who claims that the person had a gun when they really had cigarette lighter or a wallet. We just don’t always get the whole picture. In every situation, each of us brings our own pain, triggers, and prejudices into the situation.

Jesus is not saying that there are no earthly consequences for the wrong that we do. Of course, there has to be. Sometimes when someone harms society, there has to be a reparation made for that action. He is not telling us that we shouldn’t seek justice in this life, we absolutely should.

But there is a balance.

We are being told that the ultimate goodness of a person, at the end of time, will be justified by God and God alone. The divine will look at the totality of our lives and not just our worst day. This isn’t the job of the sower or the tiller, but only the farmer can truly tell what is worth keeping and what needs to be tossed into the burn pile.

I’ll be honest; sometimes it is hard for me to relinquish that responsibility over to God. I would rather hold my grudges and create my own personal Dantes Inferno, where I systematically roast everyone who has caused me harm. The problem is, I think that fire might not be for torture. What if we’ve gotten the entire idea of what tossing the weeds into the fire means? Could it be possible that this fire isn’t some eternal Hell where everyone goes to suffer for all time because they didn’t get being alive 100% right? What if we are looking at the idea of this flame through the temporal eyes of being shortsighted humans and not through the divine lens of someone who said, “I have not come to condemn the world.”

What if the fire isn’t punitive but for purification?

I suppose I should leave that discernment up to the farmer, who is an expert on the subject, and get back to work while staying firmly in my lane.