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Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 19, 2026
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
As many of you know, my wife and I just got back from a big trip to Hawaii. One of the many things we enjoyed about the Big Island is the amazing plant life. We enjoyed fresh fruit from the farmer’s market just about every morning. We went to a tropical botanical garden, which was spectacular. We also did three farm tours, including a place which grows both coffee beans and cacao. We toured a vanilla farm, which was fascinating.
The third place, however, was a little bit disappointing. Amy and I are big tea drinkers, so we were really excited to visit a tea farm. Maybe our expectations were too high after all the other cool things we’d seen, but the tea fields just looked a little….messy. The tour guide took us through chest-high rows of tea growing, for the most part, in neat rows, but there were ugly branches sticking out all over the place which were obviously not tea. He kind of sheepishly admitted that they were weeds.
Today we hear our Lord Jesus tell another parable which is rooted in the soil. It is another parable using the imagery of agriculture, of growing things. And in this parable, Jesus describes a field which has been beset by weeds. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven can be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, but while he slept, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat. When the farm hands wake up the next morning, they see the weeds. They confront the farmer, asking him if he knows what he’s doing. Did he plant this stuff? Did you not plant good seed? The farmer explains to them that an enemy has done it. An enemy has come along and planted weeds in his field. The farmhands then ask if they should go and start yanking those weeds out. But the farmer says, no, you’ll just end up pulling the wheat along with the weeds. Leave it be, he says. We’ll deal with it at the harvest.
This was the approach at the tea farm we went to as well. This is going to sound a little too perfect, a little too on the nose, but it is absolutely true: The tea farmer told us he had to leave the weeds there because their roots are all entangled with the roots of the tea plants, and so to pull one out would cause great damage to the other.
This is the exact problem in the parable! Even though it is messy, the farmhands need to let the weeds be. Even though it is messy, the farmhands need to be patient. They need to wait for the harvest, when the farmer will take care of everything.
Jesus tells this parable to describe the world we live in as he goes about his ministry, sowing the seed of his Word, raising up children of the kingdom. This parable describes the age we live in, the age between Christ’s first coming and his final coming. This field that is the world is a messy place! This age we live in is a messy time! We live in the midst of both wheat and weeds!
On the one hand, the world is a beautiful place, filled with wonder and delight. There is beauty and there is goodness and there is love. On the other hand, the world is full of weeds. There is also much cruelty and corruption and violence.
This messy field is a good description of the church too. Luther liked to say that wherever Christ builds a church, the devil builds a chapel. At its best, the church can be bravely and boldly faithful, while at other times it can be a platform for some really stupid and unbiblical ideas – as any number of clips on the internet can attest. The same sacred institution which has safeguarded the precious words of the gospel has also been the source of great disappointment for many people. There is precious wheat and some ugly weeds and they are all tangled up down to the roots, and so it gets messy!
We find that the weeds and the wheat even grow alongside each other inside our own hearts. One of the great insights of the Lutheran Reformation is that human beings are simul iustis et peccator, we are simultaneously saint and sinner. The Old Adam or Eve still dwells in us even as we have been declared righteous on account of Christ. And so our lives are often messy. Our hearts have not yet been made fully clean and pure. There are weeds that grow in us, poking out awkwardly. Our growth isn’t always in neat rows. Our sanctification is never quite complete in this life, on this side of heaven.
When we encounter these weeds, our instinct, like those farm hands, is to want to pull them out. And in some cases, this is exactly what we should do! Scripture teaches us that God works through earthly authorities to restrain evil, to create a measure of order in this messy world, to limit the damage the weeds might do. Scripture teaches the church to be on guard against false teachings. Matthew 18 gives us instructions on how to deal with problematic weeds that might crop up among believers, and it involves rooting them out. There are some ways we sin against each other that just can’t be ignored. Scripture tells us as individuals to strive against sin, to watch our behavior and to be careful about the company we keep. So we are not to be entirely passive in dealing with the weeds. Sometimes weeding is warranted! Sometimes it is necessary! The same Bible that gives us this parable also teaches us that there are times and places when weeds need to be pulled!
What this parable is doing is telling us why the world, and the church, and we ourselves, are the way we are. An enemy has been sowing weeds. They do not come from God. They have been planted by the Enemy. Our Enemy the devil is to blame for much of the messiness we see.
This parable is also teaching us to be careful about our weeding. There is a time and a place for it, to be sure. The problem comes when we want a pure field – whether that is the world, or the church, or us as individuals. The problem comes when we try to pull out every weed ourselves. This is difficult and dangerous, because life is complicated. The roots of the wheat and the weeds are often entangled just below the surface. When we make it our mission to clear the field of every weed, we end up hurting a lot of good wheat in the process.
Jesus isn’t calling us to complacency about the weeds, but he is calling us to have a measure of patience, a measure of grace. He is calling us to be patient with our troubled world, patient with a frustratingly messy church. He is calling us to be patient with others, and patient with ourselves. He is telling us that the time between his first coming and his final coming is going to be messy at times, but that he will ultimately be the one to clean things up – not us.
While things were messier than I expected at that tea farm, as we got further into the fields there were two women who were harvesting some of the tea. They showed us how they did it, plucking two leaves and a bud from every branch, carefully gathering them into large fabric-lined baskets. Even with the weeds, things were growing. Even with the weeds, there was a harvest. Even with the messiness, there was beauty in watching their practiced rolling of the hand in a fluid motion, plucking those perfect green sprigs, held safely in their cupped palms.
Life in this world, life in this in between time, is often messy. It is often disappointing. Our lives don’t always line up in neat rows the way we expect, the way we would like. But even now our Lord Jesus is sowing seeds. Even now he is growing children of the kingdom. Even now there is beautiful, good wheat. You are the good wheat he is after. Even now he is working around the weeds growing awkwardly in your heart, in your life. Even now he is gathering you to himself in his grace and mercy and forgiveness.
One day all those weeds whose roots are so tangled up in our world, in the church, and in our lives, will be uprooted once and for all. This is the promise of the parable. On that day, Jesus says at the conclusion of the parable, “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their father.” That day is not yet here, but it is coming.
In the meantime, we are invited to live in hope, knowing that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son. We are invited to live in confidence that this same Son will do the weeding and bring in the final harvest, destroying every last weed once and for all.
We are invited to live in the confidence that the church, even though it is infested with many weeds, will endure to the end – for our Lord Jesus has promised that even the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
We are invited to have faith that in spite of the weeds in our hearts, through Jesus Christ we ourselves have been declared to be good, harvestable wheat. We are invited to entrust our weeds to his abundant forgiveness and watch as he grows something beautiful in us.
We are invited to live in the joy and peace of knowing that by his grace he will one day gather us into his barn forever.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Rev. Jeffrey R. Spencer
Oak Harbor Lutheran Church