A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 11
July 19, 2026, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Isaiah 44:6-8; Psalm 86:11-17; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
I stood at the edge of my backyard garden in Stuttgart. It was a good sized garden. I had tilled it up by hand, carefully planted everything, watered, babied it. Stuttgart had that good, fertile soil, the kind where if you planted erasers you could grow pencils. The plants had come up nicely–flowers, tomatoes, okra, peppers, squash. I had tried to prepare for weeds, but not well enough. It was about this time of year. It was hot. We had just had one of those weeks with heavy rain–and maybe it had been a little while since I’d had time to get out there. The result: the weeds were taller than all my plants. I was too tired and it was too hot to mess with it. I dropped all my garden tools and got out the weedeater. That evening, as I bought my vegetables at Walmart, I told myself, “God is good, all the time; all the time, God is good.”
Today Jesus tells us a parable about wheat and weeds. We know what wheat is, but the translation for weeds is not an exact one. A better translation would be darnel-weeds. You can also translate it tares, or poisonous ryegrass. It’s a mimic crop. In the early stages, it looks identical to wheat. You can’t tell them apart, the roots of the weeds intermingle with the wheat. You can only tell the difference at the harvest. The seed heads and the grains look different. The difference between wheat and darnel-weed is not benign. Consuming the darnel-weed leads, not to nutrition, but to intoxication, dizziness, and vision problems. If the darnel-weeds aren’t sorted out and somehow find their way into the flour, it can lead to severe illness or death in humans and livestock alike.
Jesus is describing a big problem for those Judean farmers listening to him. It’s a dangerous, even deadly, problem. It needs to be dealt with right. The farmer has two options: tear up the field and start over like me with my weedeater, or wait until the harvest and separate the good from the bad. The farmer chooses the latter.
“So it will be at the end of the age.” Jesus gives the interpretation. The wheat are the righteous, children of the kingdom; the darnel-weeds are sown by the enemy, children of the Evil One. And we might assume Jesus is talking about people. I think he is in part. Jesus says that his angels “will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers,” but that “the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”
My friends: Our actions matter. How we live in this world matters. Whether we do good or evil matters. Whether we live in virtue or vice matters. God calls us to virtuous living, to grow in faith, hope, and love. God calls us to live in obedience to God’s word (that’s what righteous means). We have the freedom to do that—the freedom of the children of God. But there is a price for freedom. God grants us freedom, and that freedom, if left untethered to God’s way, will lead us down the wrong way. This happens to all of us, and the call is to repent. To return to the Lord. To be re-rooted in those baptismal promises to grow in faith, to resist evil, to love our neighbors as Christ himself, to proclaim by word and deed the good news, to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of all people.
Of course, the danger of all that is we can become self-righteous. “Thank God I’m wheat!” And we begin to dive into hypocrisy, looking down on those who must, surely, be darnel-weeds. Remember though: You and I, the servants, can’t tell the difference between wheat and darnel-weed. That’s for the angels to work out.
But there’s another interpretation of this parable that is true to what Jesus says today, and it doesn’t have to do with who is wheat and who is darnel-weed. This interpretation acknowledges that there’s wheat and darnel-weed in every soul: In me and in you. Like the parable of the Sower last week, we all have rocky and thorny soil in us, and there’s darnel-weed in there, too.
This interpretation has to do with the Problem of Evil. It’s an ancient question. It goes like this: If God is all good, all powerful, and all present, why is there evil in the world? If God is all good, all powerful, and all present, why is there suffering? If God is all good, all powerful, and all present, why is there darnel-weed in my life choking out the wheat of faith, hope, and love?
The parable provides an answer: The Enemy has done this. This is not the work of the all good God, but the results of being in a fallen world. And the good and the bad grow up together–the wheat and the darnel-weed. No one gets a wheat-only life, not even the perfect Son of God who endured the cross. But nor does anyone get a darnel-weed only life; there is goodness to be found in every soul. There’s no way for us to separate it all out.
But the promise of the parable is that at the end of the age, when the Son of Man comes with his angels, it all will be sorted. The heartache and injustice, the suffering and pain, all evil and sin in my life will be set to one side, and only the good will remain: the joy, the gladness, the virtue–faith, hope, and love. For we do not believe that evil ever gets the last word: not in the world, not in my life, and not in yours. The goodness of God, the wheat that was sown in our hearts by the Son of God, will win in the end. Let it be, Lord.
I have a dear friend. Lately she’s been standing and looking at the field of her life. She’s getting close to the end. Like me in Stuttgart at the edge of the garden, she sees that the weeds have grown tall. There’s been hardship: a difficult divorce, the death of a child, a terminal illness, suffering and pain, plenty of things she didn’t get to do. For some people, all they would see is the weeds. They might want to mow it all down–it would be too much to sort through. But if you looked through the eyes of my friend, you would see the wheat is there. Sometimes I wonder if she sees the weeds at all. Yes, the wheat is there in abundance. There are old friendships that sustain her. There is quiet time in prayer. There is art and beautiful memories. There is a faith in Jesus that is comfortable asking questions and never gives up. There is proof of reconciliation even after the most painful breaks. As she approaches the end, there is peace that passes all understanding.
My friend stands at the edge of the field of her life full of wheat and weeds, and she commends it all to Jesus and the angels. They will sort it out in the end. And her heart whispers a prayer she has come to believe with all her heart, even in the middle of the suffering: God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.
Storied Grace 