The Parable of the Wheat and Tares (Matthew 13: 24-30; 36-43)
“Consider the lilies,” says Jesus, and if you’ve been to the Holy Land in the Spring you’ll have seen their beauty, and the beauty of much else in that seemingly dry and barren land. What a wonderful world is God’s creation, and yet there’s a great deal in it which isn’t lovely. When our Lord spoke of the mystery of evil he said, “When all men slept, an enemy did this: he sowed tares among the wheat.” We have to recognise that there are thorns, and weeds, and thistles, and nettles in the world, and when we find evil we know it’s the effect of some evil cause. This raises the question, ‘If God is good, and almighty, why does he allow evil to flourish? This a constant occasion of puzzlement to the saints, and often of despair to the faith of many.
‘All the world is God’s own field,’ we sing joyfully at harvest time. How come then that as the harvest springs up noxious weeds rise with it? In the same world as ours, divided only by time, St. Paul brings light and truth to the souls of men and women, and the Emperor Nero defiles his reign with the foulest deeds. In the same world, divided only by time, we have known two world wars with millions of deaths, men like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and even in our own day the defiling of the image of God which is in us by human traffickers, drug dealers, gangs.... ‘Wheat and tares together sown....’
Jesus was faced with this baffling problem, and it will help us if we can see how he dealt with it. First is that he knew this is God’s world. Second is that the tares aren’t of God’s sowing. ‘An enemy has done this.’ Interpret this how you will, but Jesus plainly ascribes the origins of the world’s evils to a malignant and hostile power. What it is, and whence it came, are matters of age long and unending argument. The Christian’s faith is in a God of goodness and love, and that may not be weakened, or watered down, because evil exists.
Side by side grow good and evil, and in due season comes the time of harvest. Great is God’s patience, but with exactness the wheat will be gathered into the barns and the tares will be used for fuel. Most of us are eager for that day, but it isn’t our responsibility to judge others. To quote Charles Wesley, ‘Our one great business here, with serious industry and fear’ is to make sure that we are sorted among the good grain taking constant care that we don’t deceive ourselves into thinking we are more righteous than we are. “To love my sins - a saint to appear, To grow with wheat - yet be a tare.”
No parable of Jesus may be carried beyond his purpose, yet can a leopard change his spots? A man who is a son of evil, planted in this field of the world tares which can do what no tare can do in the realm of nature. He can have his nature changed and become a child of God, a son of the Kingdom. This is where the Gospel of Jesus Christ comes in. This is what happened to St. Paul on the Damascus Road.
Our business then is to grow, to develop, to fulfil the purposes of Jesus in our lives, and so hasten the coming in of his Kingdom, and never to attempt to pull out the tares unless with them we hinder the work of God.
Ponder on the two thieves crucified with Jesus. Tares we might well think they were, and, indeed one was, but the other, he was the leopard who changed his spots, the tare which became wheat, something which God, to whom all things are possible, was able to achieve through his suffering. To him Jesus said, ‘This day you will be with me in Paradise.’
David Porter