PROPER 11, YEAR A

July 19, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 

At this time of year, weeds are a major problem in our gardens, lawns, and flowerbeds. I’m no gardener, so when I see a flowerbed beginning to choke on weeds, I resist the temptation to try to do the weeding myself. In my horticultural ignorance, I’d probably pull up what look like weeds only to discover later that they were among the most valuable plants in the garden. Better to rely on landscapers and gardeners, like my wife, who know what they’re doing.

 

In today’s Gospel, both Jesus and his listeners know all about weeds. A certain invasive and toxic weed, known as darnel or tares, closely resembles unripe wheat. Mistaken for wheat and baked into bread or brewed into beer, darnel is hallucinogenic in small doses and deadly in larger doses. Roman law explicitly prescribed punishments for the crime of sowing darnel in someone’s wheat field out of malice or revenge.

 

As the householder in the parable tells his servants, once darnel has invaded a wheat field, it’s futile to try to weed it out. It’s nearly impossible to tell the two plants apart in their early stages of growth. Moreover, their roots are intertwined, so you’ll likely pull up a lot of good wheat with the bad weeds. Better to wait until the harvest, when they can be distinguished, sorted, and separated, and the ripe wheat gathered into barns while the tares are bundled as fuel for the fire.

 

Of course, Jesus is not merely dispensing advice on good farming techniques. He’s teaching about the Kingdom of God. He’s helping his followers understand and deal with the evil they encounter in both the Church and the world around them.

 

In the traditional interpretation of this parable, the enemy who sows the weeds is the devil, and the weeds represent those Church members who seem somehow to obstruct and thwart our Christian life together. The Methodist preacher Will Willimon describes these weeds in our midst: “Weeds are the people who come up with great ideas for programs but never follow through, so we’re scurrying around at the last minute, trying to pull things together. Weeds are the rumormongers who pass along a damaging bit of gossip . . . Weeds are the demanding souls who drain all [a congregation’s] energy . . . and then leave in a huff, saying they want to find a more caring church.”

 

No doubt, we can each add our own pet complaints about people who keep our corporate life from being everything we believe God intends it to be. Sometimes, we might even be tempted to think we’d love to weed them out if we had the chance.

 

In the late fourth century, Saint Augustine of Hippo drew on this parable to oppose the heresy known as Donatism. The Donatists were a group in North Africa who sought to purge the Church of all notorious sinners. They believed that those who committed serious sins after baptism—particularly the sin of denying Christ to save one’s life during times of persecution—could not be forgiven and should be permanently excommunicated.

 

Against this rigorist vision of the Church as an exclusive society of saints, Augustine argued that the Church is really a hospital for sinners. The weeds and tares grow together, and it’s not always possible to tell which is which. Appearances can be deceiving. Moreover, unlike weeds and wheat, people change. At the last judgment, many of those we admired as good and holy may turn out to have been the worst sinners, and many of those we condemned as notorious sinners may turn out to have been the greatest saints. So we’re called to avoid rushing to premature judgment and to leave it to God to sort the wheat from the tares in the end.

 

In the meantime, we live in an imperfect Church, in an imperfect world, full of imperfect people: what Augustine called a mixed field of wheat and tares growing together. In this situation, God calls us to be faithful, to grow in grace, and to cultivate several basic dispositions we need to become the people he calls us to be.

 

The first of these necessary attitudes is patience and tolerance. Many people we encounter day to day bore, irritate, and annoy us—whether by stupidity, insensitivity, rudeness, or a simple lack of consideration. We don’t have a choice about that, but we do have a choice in how to respond. We can either get all worked up and angry or choose to overlook it and let it go. We’re called to cultivate the virtue of forbearance.

 

The second necessary disposition is the willingness to extend the benefit of the doubt. For example, we walk into a room where three or four of our friends are talking, and as soon as they see us, they stop. At that point, we can assume the worst: that they’ve been saying bad things about us behind our back. But maybe the truth is that they were planning a surprise birthday party for us. While it may be just as foolish to get our hopes up by always assuming the best, Christians are nonetheless called to give the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, and give puzzling situations the best possible interpretation until we’re proven wrong.

 

And the third necessary disposition is the most important of all: the willingness to forgive. Sometimes other people really do hurt us. Yet the definitive mark of Christian community is mutual forgiveness. 

 

When I first arrived in Rhode Island from the Mid-Atlantic states 26 years ago, a priest friend warned me to be careful. He said that New England culture can be judgmental and unforgiving. It’s all part of the region’s Puritan legacy. Writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Robert Frost have noted the Yankee tendency to stand aloof, maintain reserve, and hold grudges! 

 

Thankfully, I haven’t always found that to be true. But to the extent that it is true, we’re called to be countercultural. As fallen creatures, the more time we spend together, the more likely we are to hurt one another. But in a truly Christian community, we do our best not only to treat one another well, but also to forgive one another when we fail to do so. We often boast about what a caring community we have here at Sts. Matthew and Mark, and it’s true. But the real challenge is also to be a forgiving community. That’s something to think about when we say the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

 

To sum up, in this mixed field of wheat and tares, we’re called to practice patience and tolerance, to give the benefit of the doubt when possible, and to forgive when necessary. We thus wait in hope for the final harvest, when God will do what only God can do: separate the wheat from the tares. May we then be found among those who “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”