Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-november-3-2025
Matthew 13:24-30
The Parable of the Weeds
24Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of God is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
28“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
29“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
For a lot of people, one of the greatest challenges to becoming a person of faith is that so many believers don’t seem to have a good answer to the question of why there is evil in the world. “If God is good, and if he is all powerful, then why doesn’t he just get rid of evil?” people ask. It’s a fair question, but one that people of faith often struggle to answer. Or we wind up sounding defensive, as though just asking the question is sign of moral and spiritual inadequacy.
Which is kind of lame, because there’s a whole branch of Christian theology called ‘theodicy’ that’s all about trying to answer that very question — the question of why God allows evil to exist. There are a lot of smart people thinking about that question, but the explanations they come up with tend to be so complicated that you need an advanced degree to follow them. And sometimes they’re no more helpful than the answers you might hear in a junior high Sunday School class.
Of course there is a more honest answer, and one that doesn’t require an advanced degree. That more honest answer is, “We don’t know.” The plain fact is that we will not know on this side of the great divide between this world and the kingdom of heaven.
But of course, the fact that we can’t explain the existence of evil doesn’t stop people of faith from wanting something done about it. We think we know evil when we see it, and we want evil people either locked up or killed. Lots of us, if we’re honest, would really prefer having them killed.
In this parable, however, Jesus challenges us to think twice about our responses to the presence of evil in the world.
In older versions of the Bible, this story was called “The Parable of the Tares.” That’s because the Greek word translated “weeds” in our NIV Bible actually refers to a specific type of plant that used to be called “tares.” Today, botanists call that plant “bearded darnel.” And the fact that we miss by having the word just translated “weeds” is that bearded darnel is actually a toxic plant. They say it looks like wheat when it first comes up, but that when it ripens it’ll make you sick if you eat it. So this isn’t a parable about some random weeds getting into a wheat field – it’s about someone intentionally planting poison plants among the wheat.
And it’s clear from the parable that whoever planted the poison plants doesn’t have anything in mind other than doing harm. So it seems that the first point of the parable is that there is real evil in the world. Not just misguided people making mistakes, but actual evil being perpetrated by people who know exactly what they’re doing.
If Jesus intended the landowner in the parable to represent God – which seems logical since he started the parable with “the Kingdom of God is like” – then it follows that God must instantly recognize evil in the world for what it is: the knowingly evil deeds of his enemies. And whether you understand this to be the result of one literal ‘Satan’ who gets people to do evil or the result of individuals doing evil things for their own selfish purposes doesn’t seem to make much difference in understanding the parable. Evil is evil.
In the story, the landowner’s servants offer to go into the field and pull up the weeds. But the landowner says ‘no.’ He points out to the servants that they can’t destroy the weeds without killing some of the good wheat, too. Without, as we would say today, “collateral damage.”
We live in a world where evil is a reality. Drug cartels intentionally cause people to become addicted for their own profit. Authoritarian politicians use gangs and paramilitaries to murder their critics. Journalists around the world are murdered for exposing corruption. African militias kidnap children, turn them into child soldiers and force them to commit grisly crimes. People promise jobs to young women in poor countries and then traffic them into sexual slavery. Some people traffic their own children. People intentionally do things they know are evil.
We see these things on the news, and we want to do exactly what the landowner’s servants suggest – we want to uproot the evil and destroy it.
Often our first instinct is to demand that the government use its might to destroy the world’s evil. But experience proves the point Jesus is making here – that striking at evil inevitably creates collateral damage. The world has seen a perfect example in the past couple of years. According to international aid groups, after Hamas terrorists killed 1,800 Israelis, the resulting bombardment has killed 68,000 civilians, over half of them women and children.
So it seems to me this parable calls those of us who follow Jesus to be voices for caution when it comes to responding to evil in the world. It’s not our first reaction, of course – revenge is really satisfying on a visceral level. But demanding revenge is almost certainly not the response Jesus would bless. Don’t forget, he commanded us to pray for our enemies and bless those who curse us.
I suppose the reason this parable doesn’t get taught much in kids’ Sunday School classes is that the ‘so what’ of it isn’t black-and-white. In fact, it takes a lot of prayerful reflection to figure out how to apply it in most situations. But it’s important that followers of Jesus do that prayerful reflection. After all, kids grow up in a world with evil in it, and they need to realize that there’s a reason God doesn’t turn us loose to destroy it. And those of us who consider ourselves grown-ups need to remind ourselves that God really cares about those who are victims of collateral damage.
Let’s pray. Lord, we pray for your protection from evil, but we also pray that you would guard our hearts against a craving for revenge against those who do evil. Help us to trust that in the fulness of your time, when your kingdom comes to fulfillment, you will destroy evil once and for all. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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