In the Same Field

Scripture and Comment

Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds saying: “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ His slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn’.” 

Matthew 13:24-40

[This is the Gospel reading from last Sunday, the parable of the wheat and the weeds or ‘tares’ as they are sometimes called. It is usual to think of the wheat as the 'good people' and the weeds as the 'bad ones'. However, what if we think of it this way: instead of the good or the bad, see our self as the ‘field’. In us can be found the seeds of wheat (love of God and positive thought and action) along with the bad, the seeds resulting in 'weeds' (selfishness, sins, bad intentions and actions). Few of us are ever entirely good or entirely bad, though there are such people. Rather we are a each a crop of, hopefully, mostly ‘wheat’ mixed with some weeds. The ideas hidden in this parable can relieve us of the frantic effort to be all good, or one of the purely ‘good people'; helping us to accept ourselves as we are, as God accepts us. In this understanding we can come to feel God’s power and mercy.]