The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on July 19, 1981. The title is Weeds and Wheat, and the scripture reference is Matthew chapter 13, verses 24 through 30, and verses 36 through 43. 

Everywhere the farmer went planting his good seed, The enemy followed along behind and scattered bad seed, seeds that would produce weeds to choke and hinder the growth of the good crop. Jesus gives the primary explanation himself, but it seems to me that that's one of those parables that can be applied on so many different levels. You can hardly exhaust the ramifications of it.

Every time the Lord speaks a good and true word, one that would take root in our souls and nourish us and strengthen us and produce faith and joy in him, every time he speaks such a word, somebody else comes along and speaks another word. A word that produces doubt and confusion. And we're caught between the two.

Jesus says, he who has ears, let him hear. What are you listening to? Which word?

The one from God or the other one. I don't know if you've noticed, it seems to me that every time a Christian community comes together and organizes itself and tries to take very seriously the lifestyle of the New Testament and work that out in practice, things start off marvelously full of hope, full of joy, and then, just wait, sooner or later, something's going to get twisted. Somehow they're going to get off the rails.

Something's going to get perverse or heretical. It'll go bad. Maybe I'm too negative, but that's how it seems to me.

Everywhere I look, it seems that when God plants a community, the enemy comes along and plants something else in the midst of that community. Every time I look at my own life personally, and I see some area that finally, finally, perhaps after years of struggle, has come under the Lordship of Christ, and I sort of say, finally, that one. I turn around and there's another that is absolutely overrun with brambles.

Every time I look out on a Christian congregation, not this one of course, but... Look out and see all these marvelous plants that God has planted. Men and women seeking to live under the discipline of Christ, seeking to know Him and let Him express Himself through them.

And yet, in the midst of any such congregation, you find others who are simply going through the motions, who are downright resistant to what God is trying to do. And so on and so on. Everywhere that God is planting his good seed, the enemy comes along and scatters weeds.

It's so frustrating, isn't it? I mean, it would be so nice if God would just give a radical separation. This is mine, and that's the enemy's. Never the twain shall meet.

But that's not the way it is. He says, let the two grow together. Let them grow together.

It's very frustrating. Very frustrating. We need to take that very seriously.

Jesus says, don't try to uproot the weeds lest in the process you actually do damage to the wheat. Don't try to produce the kingdom of God here on earth if in so doing that means uprooting everything which appears to you to be of the evil one. Because if you try to uproot everything that belongs to him, you're going to find that some things are so intermingled together that you're going to damage what God is doing.

you can see this on a kind of a grand scale we would love to have God come in and absolutely crush evil on the great colossal scale just destroy the destroyers I mean wouldn't it be wonderful if he would do away forever more with terrorism with violence on the kind of national and international scale wouldn't it be lovely if we'd never again have to worry about an arms race because God just destroyed all that. We'd love to have him eliminate evil at that level. But if he's going to eliminate all evil, he's going to eliminate you and me, isn't he?

And so he says, let the two grow together. It raises a very frustrating question. As you look out at the field, what do you see?

Do you see the weeds or do you see the wheat? Do you have eyes to see what God is doing? In the midst of all that mess out there, the brambles and the weeds and the parsley and the chickweed, do you see what God has planted?

What God has an investment in? You know, parable after parable after parable presses home basically the same point. And it's really interesting.

I just want to make a parenthesis for a moment. It's interesting. You read through Matthew 13 sometime.

Every single paragraph begins with the words, and he told them a parable. Another parable he put before them. He said, hear this parable.

Parable after parable after parable. I'm interested in that. I'm interested in that because one of the things that was said of Messiah is that when he comes, he will open his mouth in parables.

He'll speak in parables. And if you stop and think about it, that's just one more of many, many evidences of who Jesus really is. There are other people who have given us parables, some of them very powerful.

Zoroaster told parables. Plato told parables. Buddha told parables.

But when was there ever a teacher like Jesus? Parable after parable after parable after parable. He opened his mouth in parables.

And he taught them. And if you look at all those parables, watch this theme running through it. Things which the world might overlook, might not value at all, might not pause to even notice, are of supreme value to God and to those who have eyes to see what he's up to.

It's as if Jesus says, what is this? And the world looks at it and says, that's just a mustard seed. Just the silliest little seed.

And Jesus says, yeah, you're right. But leave it alone. And it will grow into the grandest of shrubs.

Birds will come and nest in its branches. That little tiny seed will become the greatest of bushes. What is this?

says Jesus. And the world says, that's just a little pinch of leaven. just the tiniest bit of yeast that's right says Jesus leave it alone and a little leaven will leaven the whole lump a little leaven will leaven the whole lump what is this says Jesus and the world passes by and says just an old field it's not even worth fussing with it hasn't been developed hasn't even been cleared just an old field and Jesus says yes you're right but you know hidden in that field is a treasure so valuable that if you have eyes to see it you'll sell everything you have to buy that field.

What is this? Well, it's just a pearl. Just one pearl.

Yes, says Jesus, and that pearl is more valuable than all of your family jewels put together. If you knew the value of this pearl, again, you'd sell everything to buy it. What's this?

Just a catch of junk fish. Throw them back. Yes, says Jesus, throw them back.

But before you do, go through that catch because there's some mighty good bass in the middle of it. Save the good ones. Over and over and over, parable after parable, Jesus is saying, God is doing something that the world will not even notice.

They'll despise it. They won't value it. But God has invested his reputation, his integrity, in that which the world overlooks.

Do you have eyes to see it? Do you have eyes to see what God is doing? Can you rejoice in what He's rejoicing in?

Or do you get so discouraged at the weeds that you don't see the wheat? When I was 12, we moved into a new home in Connecticut and the backyard was absolutely overgrown. Could hardly even walk through it.

And my father and I began to clear the backyard. And as we cleared it, we found in the middle of the backyard, we hadn't even known it was there, tremendous boulder that they told us came down in the ice age, came down with one of the glaciers and deposited this thing in the middle of our backyard. And there was a little tiny crack in the boulder and growing up through the little tiny crack was a little tiny green chute. It was only about this big.

And I was about to lop it off and my father said, wait a minute, wait a minute. He said, that's an oak. And I looked and sure enough he was right. I'd have the slightest idea how it got started in that little tiny crack, but a little oak was beginning.

25 years later, that mighty oak, gnarled and twisted, tougher than any other tree on the block because of what it's had to go through, has split that boulder into probably a hundred pieces. God was investing himself in that little tiny green shoot. Did you have eyes to see it?

I would have lopped it off. God took 25 years to do that. Next week, many of you will probably be watching the royal wedding.

And if you do so, you'll probably see at some point the crown jewels. I visited the Tower of London some years ago and went down in the basement under incredibly heavy guard. You can view the crown jewels, and they have a whole display of how the jewels were found, what they looked like before they were cut, and it is really amazing.

Did you know that the four principal gems in the crown jewels were taken from a single diamond? And before they cut it, it weighed over a pound and a third. And the biggest of the four gems that have been cut from that one diamond is in the royal scepter, and even now, it's only one of four, even now that one has more than 530 carats in it.

Some of you ladies were thinking you had such a lovely engagement ring. That may put that in perspective for you. But what was really amazing to me, looking at these unbelievably spectacular gems, was the display, and they had a model of what the Kulinan diamond looked like before they began to cut it.

I would have passed it by. Dirty old quartz. Just a chunk of rock.

Do you have eyes to see? A friend of mine was a pastor in Pennsylvania of a Presbyterian church, and a lady in the church died and left her house in her will to the church. And they wondered what in the world they were going to do with it, because it was not a very spectacular house.

It was kind of fallen down and in disrepair, and they were going to have to do a whole lot of work on it just to get it good enough to sell it. And they went through and started to clean up the house and started to clean out all the accumulation of a lifetime, got up into the attic, boxes and barrels and all sorts of stuff, and they're just shoveling this junk out the windows into a pickup truck, and they found a Stradivarius. True story.

Canceled the church's mortgage in one day. People that you and I would overlook, utterly overlook, insignificant people, I guarantee, will shine like the stars of heaven in the kingdom. While some of the folks who have had the privilege of upfront ministry, like myself, may be rather further back somewhere.

Do you have eyes to see what God is doing? I want to apply this to our own personal lives. I don't know how this touches you, But I suspect that most people, if they're really honest about it, are often terribly discouraged with their own progress in discipleship.

And sometimes I begin to think that we're our hardest critics, that we're harder on ourselves than anybody else would ever be. Martin Luther said an interesting thing. He said, the first ten years of your Christian life are designed to teach you one lesson, and that's how to get up again.

How to get up again. But we berate ourselves. We berate ourselves when we see our failure.

And we need to take our failure seriously. I'm not minimizing that for a moment. But I want to suggest to you we need to be a little bit more patient with ourselves.

You know it says in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians. The most beloved chapter in the Bible. We quote it.

We work it into tapestries. It says love is patient. Love is gentle.

Love is kind. Love is long-suffering. It does not believe the worst.

It believes the best. Love hopes all things. It endures all things.

It believes all things. Do you love yourself? It says love your neighbor as yourself.

That means you've got to love yourself. How do you love yourself? Are you patient with you?

Can you see what God is doing in you and delight in it? We'd love instant sainthood, wouldn't we? Please be patient with me.

God isn't finished yet. God's doing a work. He's planted wheat in you.

And there are all those terrible weeds growing up in the midst of that planting. and God says there will come a day make no mistake about it there will come a day when all those weeds forevermore will be separated from you will be cast into the fire and burned and that will be the end of it there will come such a day and that's part of our Christian hope but right now be patient be patient have eyes to see what God is doing in you and in the person next to you and in the person who is standing up in this pulpit right now have eyes to see what God is doing. We'd love to be gems of diamond and sapphire and precious metals.

Scripture says God is making a thing of beauty out of dust. He remembers our frame. He knows that we are dust.

He doesn't despise it. He's working His purposes out. A man came to see me a couple of weeks ago and was really in despair over a particular problem that he'd had for years.

He struggled with it, struggled with it, struggled with it, couldn't get victory over it. We prayed. I think God ministered to him.

He came back last week and he said, I was reading this week in the book of Philippians and I discovered a verse. He said, what a marvelous answer to my prayer. And the verse said, He that hath begun a good work in you is faithful and will bring it to completion in the day of Jesus Christ.

Do you believe that? Jesus Christ has begun a good work in you. And He has invested His integrity, His authority and His reputation in that good work.

And He that is in you is mightier than He that is in the world. And He will bring it to completion. Be patient.

God has all eternity to work with. There will come a harvest. Praise God, there will come a harvest.

But in the meantime, dare to believe that he will not be frustrated by the seeds of weeds that the enemy sows. In fact, be encouraged. The enemy is taking you seriously enough that he's trying to mess up what God is doing in your life.

Doesn't that encourage you? I mean if you belong totally to the devil he could leave you alone but because God is doing something marvelous in you the devil sits up and takes notice and tries to mess it up that ought to be an encouragement to you but there will come a harvest praise God let's bow our heads together Lord Jesus, we look for that day. Scripture speaks of the revealing of the children of God.

The manifestation of your glory in us. When our redemption will be complete. when every sin and cause for sorrow will be removed from us forevermore, Lord, we would live in the light of that promise and expectation.

But this day, in the midst of the weeds, we would rejoice in the wheat that you have planted. Thank you, Lord, for your promise not to be frustrated by anything the enemy can hurl at us because of Jesus. Amen.