Welcome to the life of a Young Clergy Woman, we never really know how our sermons hit on Sunday mornings. I can usually tell by the energy in the room if they are, at minimum, actively listening. However, as one starts to preach regularly, it becomes apparent that helpful feedback is an expectation to let go of! (Not to mention the fact that unconscious age and gender bias often prevent from helpful feedback)
Preach a great sermon? — “Great Job, Pastor”
Preach a sermon where I studder and barely make a concise thesis? — “Great Job, Pastor”
Preach a sermon I think is GREAT? — “I don’t know, Pastor, it just wasn’t for me today.”
Below is a sermon that I preached this past Sunday, July 19, 2026. I like this sermon, though the energy in the room was… dull. I did get a “I really liked your sermon today, by the way” from the one person who was fully engaged and embodied during worship. So I thought, I am going to gather some courage, and post my sermon somewhere online. Here it is….
Farming Tips from Jesus: To Weed or Not to Weed?
Scripture – Matthew 13: 24-39, 38-431
This is lectionary year A – meaning we are studying the Gospel According to Matthew until Advent. Matthew is known for a couple things. The beatitudes, justice and protection for the vulnerable, emphasizing Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, and most importantly the Greatest Commandment of them all Matthew 22: 37-40
“37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
The Gospel of Matthew challenges us to treat each other with respect and dignity and love for all – in a world where fear, power, and manipulation reign supreme. That could be said for Jesus’ time, and probably our own too.
Jesus teaches in parables, short little stories and comparisons that challenge us and make us think, maybe think in new ways and deeply about injustices and problems we experience and encounter. Dr. Karoline Lewis said in the sermon brainwave podcast2 for this passage that Parable in Greek can be broken down into meaning “to throw alongside of”…. And she made a statement that these Jesus followers are experiencing unheard of teachings, and witnessing straight up unexplainable miracles, and in the process Jesus is throwing these challenging stories at them to guide them on their journey.
Every night, I end my day reflecting on the day. What I experienced, how I felt, what got done and what didn’t get done, and I process and decompress and shed off the day. I imagine that the large crowds that followed Jesus did the same thing every night as they witnessed his ministry. They likely asked themselves, and God, what does this all mean? Jesus helps them ask those questions and encourages them to reflect by speaking in parables. They are like a tool, meant to help us on our way, if we can figure out how to use them first.
Plainly put, parables make us think, and scholars generally agree that the purpose of them was for us to see the world from a different angle. Here is the best part about the Parables in Matthew, they all relate back to the natural world. They are literally “grounded” in Creation which is why I think they are so challenging.
Jesus begins with parables with “the kingdom of heaven is like…” something earthy. Out of all the kingdoms we know, none of them are rooted in Creation itself, but rather are rooted in power and authority over other people. The parables themselves are revolutionary for that fact alone.
Here is the Gospel of Matthew in one statement according to Pastor Steph:
Matthew challenges us as Jesus followers and disciples to bear fruit and help bring the Kin-dom of Heaven to full realization here on earth. It may not happen in our lifetime, but we are called to bear fruit for the next generation to keep the work going. And bearing fruit is as easy as loving your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And loving your neighbor as yourself.
That’s it. That’s the Gospel of Matthew in a nice tidy bow – except that loving your God with all your heart, soul, and mind is hard enough. And loving your neighbor as yourself, in my opinion, is the hardest thing we do. And we do not always get it right.
Today’s passage comes during a speech Jesus is giving to a large group of people. And this speech is about three agricultural parables. The first is the Parable of the Sower who sows seeds on the path, on the rocks, in the thorns, and on good soil. The second is the parable of the wheat and weeds, and the third is the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
Today we will focus on the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds.
Read: Matthew 13: 24-30.
The Parable of Weeds among the Wheat
24 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
Jesus said this to the crowd of all the Jesus followers. This is what the general public heard from him. This is the parable that is to get their attention and stir things up in their soul. The same goes for us. So let’s take a moment to ask some questions – that don’t have clear answers.
- What does this mean?
- What do I notice in this passage?
- If the kin-dom of heaven is like this – what does it mean to be a wheat stock, or a weed?
- Who is the enemy?
- And the question I asked upon reading this is – what does it mean to grow together wheat and weeds, and why?
Spoiler alert – the Disciples didn’t get it either which is another theme of the Gospel of Matthew – the Disciples just don’t get “it.”
So they ask, and Jesus explains the parable to the Disciples, not the general public. We, too, as Disciples have this explanation accessible to us. However, that does not mean we still understand the parable.
I have to be honest with you, preaching this passage gives me anxiety. Culturally, I grew up in a time and place where the adults still tried to instill the fear of God into us by preaching a fiery, dramatic, second coming of Jesus that looks like war. This theology is also referred to as the Rapture. And it is still used to this day to scare people into being christians and “good people.”
I am not saying that theology or stance is wrong or sinful. I am saying that it does work for me. I worship a God of Love, and not of fear. I worship a savior who gave his own life, so that we didn’t need to fear any more. I also have anxiety, and it is scary enough to live, I certainly do not want to pray to a God who makes me scared of death too.
So as I read the rest of our passage today, all I ask is that you keep an open mind. Remind ourselves that parables are meant to change us and make us think – not necessarily ground our whole worldview into this one explanation of the “end of days.”
Read: Matthew 13: 31 – 43
Jesus Explains the Parable of the Weeds
“36 Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37 He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38 the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40 Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42 and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43 Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”
See why I was anxious about preaching this? What if I told you that all our collective cultural ideas about the Devil and Hell are all from poems like 13th century Dante’s Inferno and 16th century Paradise Lost by John Milton. Our cultural collective images of the Devil are rarely grounded in the bible.
Here – the devil is an agricultural infiltrator – sowing seeds of weeds meant to deceive, harm, and choke out the Sower’s and slaves’ hard work. It’s not some spiritual entity coming to attack us – it’s a person, maybe even an angry neighbor, coming to vandalize our property in order to set us back from doing work to feed people and bear a good harvest of good and bountiful fruit.
The devil is less of the pointy red man who throws us into a fiery sulfur pit for having impure thoughts — instead the devil is something the sows the seeds of injustice, systems of oppression, imposters in our field, pretending to be wheat, yet trying to kill, silence, or stop the wheat from growing.
Our temptation is to pluck the weeds out of the field, to purify the field into only holy, righteous, wheat. However, this weed Jesus treats as something that just coexists in the world. Pulling the weed will disrupt the whole growing process for the vulnerable wheat. It’s entangled, it might even be similar looking to wheat. Scholars point to a plant called “Darnell” that looks like wheat, grows like wheat, but is actually poisonous to ingest. You definitely don’t want to mistake Darnell for wheat.
I personally, am really bad at gardening. I probably couldn’t even tell you what is wheat and what is regular grass.
This summer I prepped my old sandbox-turned garden by adding last year’s compost and some extra soil. I intended to sow one kind of plant, potatoes. How hard can it be to grow potatoes? However, it was too early to plant, so I let the composted soil stew a little longer before planting the potato roots. When it came time to plant, some weeds popped up. Some were grass, I know what grass looks like. But these other plants that sprouted up didn’t look like grass, or any weed that we have in our yard.
Now, I suck at plant ID. I almost failed forestry because I can not tell you the different types of maples or oaks or even pine trees. So, like a good millennial that I am, I took a picture of it and asked AI. – don’t judge me too harshly.
Google told me it was cucumbers. Since I failed to grow cucumbers last year, I figured that I must have accidentally composted some with seeds in it. I thought, I will let it grow and check in a few weeks if it is a fruitful plant, or a weed. And by then, maybe it won’t be too late to plant the potatoes.
Those weedy looking plants turned out to be Watermelon! How do I know? Because two months later I have at least 6 little round balls attempting to grow, and more in the very early stage of bearing fruit. Now, I do have some agricultural infiltrators who is wreaking havoc on my watermelons; there is still grass popping up here and there, and it gets tangled, and if I try to pull it, it will uproot all the little tendrils on the vine and cause it to die. So the grass stays. The other infiltrator is a lot cuter and harder to manage – bunnies. They really love chewing on the watermelon vine.
The Devil and the fiery pits of hell is not what is cursing my watermelons – aggressively weeding, moving the vines, not watering, and the darn cute bunnies might be the demise of them… or maybe I will still get one or two. That would be pleasant.
I would have never experienced the delight of summer voluntary watermelons if I aggressively weeded, and pulled, and attempted to purify my garden bed for boring russet potatoes.
I think one of the many points that could be made is that Jesus understands that there will be good people mixed in with the evil people. It’s almost a fact of life – and our job is to not weed out the weeds, but instead GROW ALONG SIDE THEM.
When the world is trying to choke us out – When the world is trying to keep us back from reaching to the sun, or rather reaching to the Son of Man – we grow anyway.
It is not our job to determine what is weed, and what is wheat. It is our job to be wheat, even if we come to the harvest with weeds tied around our ankles, we come bearing fruit in spite of that. The point of the end of days explanation is not to scare us into being wheat or to be righteous and weed out all the imposters – its used to give us hope that no matter what, our savior, the Son of Man, Jesus knows the difference between Darnell and Wheat, and with that we are given hope that even if we can untangle ourselves from the sins, injustices, and oppression in this world, we still grow alongside it….
As long as we grow to love our God with all our mind, soul, and body and our neighbors as ourselves — we will be given a spot in the barn and in the kindom of Heaven.
It’s a parable about hope that all will be redeemed, the causes of sin will be gone in the Kin-dom of Heaven. Even the weeds that get burned up in the fire will be reduced to ash, and put on the field for next year’s wheat to be fertilized.
- NRSV, updated edition, 2021, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2013%3A%2024-39%2C%2038-43&version=NRSVUE ↩︎
- Working Preacher. (2026, July 21). Sermon Brainwave 1093: Eighth Sunday after Pentecost – July 19, 2026. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5lcjqMEaiQ ↩︎
Hearth & Threshold 
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