Weeds & Waiting

He told another story.  “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn.  When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up too.”

The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it?  Where did these thistles come from?’

“He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’

The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the thistles?’

“He said, ‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat too.  Let them grow together until harvest time.  

Matthew 13:24-30 (The Message)

When I think back over my years of pastoring, the most frequent question that people, ask is, “Why doesn’t God do something

• Tragedies happen.
• Horrific accidents devastate lives and families on a DAILY basis.
• Tyrants and bullies force their own plans on people and crush opposition, and they seem to get away with it.  (This happens in church systems as well.)

And again, sensitive souls ask, WHY is God apparently silent?  Why doesn’t he step in and stop it?

Let me be clear, there is probably no direct answer that can be given in this life that will satisfy most people, even believers.  But parables like the one above do show that God’s sovereign rule over the world isn’t quite as straightforward as people sometimes imagine.  

Consider:

• Would we really like it if God were to rule the world directly and immediately, so that our every thought and action were weighed, instantly judged and, if necessary, punished in the scales of his absolute holiness? 
• If the price of God stepping in and stopping a campaign of genocide were that he would also have to rebuke and restrain every other evil impulse, would we be prepared to pay that price?
• If we ask God to act on special occasions, do we really suppose that he could do that simply when we want him to, and then back off again for the rest of the time?

The farmer waits for the harvest time, watching in frustration as the weeds grow alongside the wheat.  Not only the farmer, but also the birds wait for the tiny mustard seed to grow into a large shrub.  And that’s what God’s Kingdom is like.

Jesus’ followers, like us today, didn’t want to wait.  If the kingdom was really present where Jesus was, then they wanted the whole thing at once.  They weren’t interested in God’s timetable.  They had one of their own and expected God to confirm to it.  (Does this sound familiar?)

Notice in particular what the servants say about the weeds.  They want to go out immediately into the field and root out the weeds.  The farmer restrains them, because life is NEVER that simple. In their enthusiasm to eradicate the field of weeds, they are very likely to pull up some wheat as well.

Do you think Jesus had an eye on the revolutionary groups of his day, all too ready to step into God’s field and pull up what they considered to be “weeds”?  There were many groups, including some of the Pharisees, who were far too eager to fight against “pagans” on the one hand and against compromised Jews on the other. The servants may have intended to do God’s will.  They were longing for God to act and were prepared to help him by acting themselves.  But part of Jesus’ whole campaign was to say that the TRUE Kingdom of God does NOT come like that, because God is not like that!

For me, the heart of the story of the weeds and the wheat is PATIENCE—not just the patience of the ‘servants’ who have to wait and watch, but also the patience of God himself.

I do not believe God enjoys the sight of a wheat field with weeds all over the place.  But nor does He relish the thought of declaring “harvest-time” too soon, and eliminating wheat along with weeds.  This is an incredible insight into the heart of the Father. COMPASSION is at the heart of God’s delaying.  We must never forget that.  Delaying his judgment so more people could be saved at the end. 

Somehow I get the feeling that Jesus wanted His followers (and us) to live with the tension of believing that the Kingdom was, indeed, arriving in and through His own work, and that this Kingdom would come, would fully arrive, not all in a bang but through a “process” like the slow growth of a plant.

Saying that God is delaying His final judgment can look, outwardly, like saying that God is inactive or uncaring.  But when we look at Jesus’ own public career, it is impossible to say that God didn’t care.  We who live post- Calvary and Resurrection know that God did indeed act suddenly and dramatically for the whole universe at that moment!  

When today we long for God to act, to put the world to rights, we must remind ourselves that He has already done so, and that what we are now awaiting is the full outworking of those events.  We wait with patience, not like people in a dark room wondering if anyone will ever come and turn the light on, but like people in the early morning who know that the sun has risen and are now waiting for the full brightness of midday. 

Bill Crofton