Weeds

One of the botany courses I used to teach was plant identification. When we got to the section on lawn weeds, I brought the class to my home. R still talks about it. I would excitedly walk around our property identifying all the weeds and the students would dutifully take notes. I can only imagine what must have been going through their heads!

Occasionally a “complimentary” lawn analysis would be left on our door by a local lawn care company. If they made the mistake of following up with a call, I good-naturedly berated them for listing so few plants, and then proceeded to tell them all of the species they missed. Soon they would be laughing and I had made my point: I was not a potential customer.

What is a weed, anyway? Basically, it’s a plant that’s out of place. Many, like dandelions, hitchhiked from Eurasia. Most people would consider dandelion a weed, but if they aren’t useful, why are they made into wine or used in salad? It’s curious how the whole concept of what does and does not belong in a lawn changed with the invention of herbicides and the desire to make money from them.

Agricultural weeds are a different story. In abundance, they can reduce crop yield. They gum up machinery. And some are just plain noxious, poisonous to people and cattle, or so invasive that they outcompete everything else. There’s even a USDA website for them.

One of the chief candidates for the “weeds” (KJV “tares”) in this week’s Gospel is such a plant, the black darnel or ryegrass (Lolium temulentum to a botanist). It isn’t true rye (that’s Secale cereale) but a lookalike to both wheat and rye, at least when it’s young. It can also be home to a fungus that, when present, makes darnel toxic. Not something you’d want in your wheat field.

So when the biblical farmer’s servants noticed darnel coming up with the wheat, he knew something was amiss. He must have had a nasty neighbor, whom he immediately suspected of skulking about at night with some bad seed. Rather than risk disturbing the wheat, the farmer opted to wait until the harvest and then separate the desirable crop from the weeds.

Matthew provides an interpretation of this parable. The interpretation sounds like Matthew, but the story does not, so there’s a possibility that the parable existed before its explanation. There are some characteristic images picked up by the interpretation: God as the sower, God’s people as the good seed, Satan as the enemy. Yet the story clearly states that evil’s immediate removal is not desirable. Rather, the outcome is what matters. The desire is to harvest good fruit, just as we saw in last week’s parable of the sower.

That’s an important message in a time when so many are anxious to define who is good and uproot those considered evil. The existence of evil cannot be denied or ignored. Yet that is not the primary focus of the parable. Growth and fruitfulness are. True, growth can be hindered by evil, but the Spirit cannot be stopped. Faithful growth will bear fruit.

We don’t have many weeds in our lawn any more, as our new house has fewer trees shading a healthier lawn. I no longer need the lawn as a teaching tool, either. Yet I still have a fondness for plants whose names I know, about whom I can tell stories of their journey to this continent. I’m still willing to let some weeds grow where they are not wanted. And now I have a parable from Jesus to back me up for doing so. I can leave them alone until harvest time.

[Pentecost 5: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.]