Some thoughts for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time - who gets to say what is wheat and what is weed anyway?

This week’s gospel reading from Matthew (13:24-30, 46-43) is part of what can be called "The Sermon on the Lake", one of 5 major blocks of teaching in the gospel.

Here Matthew has Jesus talk about the nature of the reign of God or the reign of Heaven as he calls it. How different this is to the reign of Rome. Amy-Jill Levine reading these parables from a Jewish perspective reminds us that there is always more than one way to read them, and that Jesus uses them to shock and unsettle his listeners.  

Matthew's community, like the churches in Rome, were being persecuted and in conflict. Fear of imposters and maybe some feeling holier than others is dividing his church. To this Matthew ask the same question I ask – who decides what are weeds? In “Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants”, Robin Wall Kimmerer tells of Europeans seeing the Indigenous crops of corn, beans and squash planted together as weeds and cleared them for their wheat crops, quickly depleting the soil of nitrogen and needing to clear further “weeds”. 

In Matthew Jesus concern was always for the fragile and the vulnerable members of the community, some of whom we might be tempted to see as weeds. I think of LGBTI+ members who are still villainised as they week to live out their faith, and trans people today our government seeks to define out of existence. Jesus’s parable invites us to recognise the entwined roots that bind us together whether we like it or not. It speaks of trusting God to sort it out, and rather than proving who is best or right, learning to recognise that what gives life to me also gives life to those I struggle with, and what harms them harms me. It invites me to recognise that maybe I am as much weed as wheat. Both Matthew and Paul invite humility.