Looking into the lectionary
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11)
16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 and Genesis 28:10-19a
July 19, 2026
Sometimes, I delude myself into thinking I know the difference between the wheat and the weeds.
This can happen in my own backyard. Some weeds are obvious, like the ever-present tumbleweeds and those horrible goatheads. When I see them pop up, I pull them out faster than you can say “An enemy has done this!”
Other times, I’m not so sure. Are the volunteer bushes that spring up next to my door every year decorative bits of green offering relief from the desert brown, or are they opportunist pests leeching precious water that might otherwise nourish my few brave trees? Or how about the musk thistle? Those pink blossoms are beautiful and great for pollinators, but a sign at the local land trust identifies them as a highly invasive noxious weed.
Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares asks a similar question: Who and what in the church are good, intentionally cultivated plants, and who and what are weeds? Perhaps more importantly, the parable also asks who gets to decide the difference.
First things first: If you are teaching or preaching this passage, I encourage you to take some time to distinguish between the parable itself (vv. 24-30) and the allegorical explanation (vv. 36-43). Many scholars argue that this second part was likely concocted by Matthew as he tried to apply Jesus’ parable to the troublingly mixed state of the church in his day. While it may offer a satisfying apocalyptic ending (with a furnace of fire and gnashing of teeth!), it can also obscure the sense of what Jesus is trying to convey in the original parable.
Because the problem is this: Everyone thinks they can tell the difference between the wheat and the weeds.
When the servants see weeds sprouting among the wheat, they ask the master, “Do you want us to go and gather the weeds, to root them up and toss them out?”
The master says, “No. For in gathering the weeds, you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest time.”
Everyone thinks they can spot a weed. Everyone thinks they know who the weeds are — what the problem is. We are quick to grab our spades, eager to root the problem out, but Jesus tells us no. We don’t get to make that call. “Judge not, lest you be judged.” It turns out we actually have no idea who or what God is presently cultivating into a fruitful crop of wheat.
Something similar is going on in this morning’s Old Testament lesson. Jacob sees the door between heaven and earth opened – the veil pulled back between the temporal and the eternal – and he realizes that this place where he stopped to spend the night on the run is overflowing with the presence of the holy. “Surely the Lord is in this place — and I did not know it!” he marvels.
We who worship the God of Jacob and the God of Jesus should expect to find that God in surprising places and unlikely people. We who are not the ones to separate the wheat from the weeds, for we cannot predict who will become a messenger of God’s goodness or where our uncontrollable God will decide to show up.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be wise and discerning. We are still called to seek what is good and resist what is evil. What it means is that we don’t make the final call. We can never condemn another human being, saying, “You are a weed; and therefore, I will root you out.”
This, Jesus says, is what the Kingdom of God is like. It is a place where we trust God’s goodness, even amid suffering and evil. It is a place where we acknowledge our own sin and allow God to cull and tend us, so that we might grow differently. It is a place where we refuse to judge and condemn one another, because our God can make wheat out of weeds.
Questions for reflection on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 and Genesis 28:10-19a
- In gardening, a weed is defined by the eye of the beholder, who decides if a plant is desirable or undesirable. How does this principle apply or not apply in the context of the church?
- How might the definition of weed change when “beholder” is God?
View the corresponding Order of Worship for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
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