The Wheat and the Tares: Are followers of Jesus called to sift the wheat?
Does Jesus call His people to pick up the sickle or to simply love Him and love others? Here is what I believe about that.
Growing up in the church with a dad who was a pastor for much of my life, I had a front-row seat to experience the beautiful ways God’s love is shown through the local church. I watched as people came alongside those who were hurting, who lost family members, who became the hands and feet of Jesus to those who needed it so desperately. I learned to serve the people who had fallen on hard times and needed someone to talk to, a meal, a utility bill paid, or sometimes just needed a friend. I watched my parents answer call after call and open the door time and time again for real people with real hurts and I’m forever changed because of the way they responded, the way they stepped in, the way they didn’t shy away from serving “the least of these.”
Growing up in the church, I also had a front-row seat to see the incredible hurt that can be dished out by people claiming to follow Jesus and deeply believing (in my opinion) they were doing Jesus a favor by the actions they took. I watched as people selected which parts of the Bible to hold onto a little more tightly and which “sinners” were and were not welcome into the church and which could be covered by the grace of God. If I’m being completely honest, looking back, I believe that my views were exactly as the ones I’m describing. Without realizing it, I look back and realize that I had somehow embraced the idea that while, yes, I had sin in my life, I had “made it” into God’s family and was both morally superior to and had attained a level of righteousness that set me up just a little higher most. I didn’t really see sin in my life that would keep me from being in a relationship with Jesus because my sin seemed pretty low on the scale and insignificant to these “big sins” I saw in others. I had given my life to Jesus and felt like I had made it. I had seen the light. It’s a little too easy to form opinions about “sinners” when you’re sitting up on a lofty perch passing judgment to all the people walking below. It’s a little too easy to see yourself as different, better, above all that, untouched by the things that tie these people down. It’s a little too easy to think that it’s our job to bring these “sinners” up to a level of righteous living that we’ve attained. Looking back, I shudder to think of it. I wish I could go back in time and shake myself and people around me for some of the views I held tightly. I held them so tightly that I don’t think I had any idea that another view could even possibly be possible. I was right. They were wrong. I had found the Light. They hadn’t. Simple as that.
Sadly, my story took a lot of life beating the crap out of the people I love dearly in order to shake me up and wake me up to a view that I never knew I could hold. My brother came out to me and my parents that he was gay when I was in high school. The years that followed were a roller coaster in many ways. This challenged everything I had grown up believing in some ways. I shared a home, a childhood, and a lifetime of memories with someone who I knew better than almost anyone on earth and I had seen his faith in Jesus throughout our life. In fact, I learned much about Jesus through my brother. While I was trying to learn how to support him, how to know what to think about this new reality, and how to navigate forward, I remember thinking, my brother is the exact same person he has been his whole life. I just know something new about him that I didn’t before. I didn’t know much, but I knew that somehow, I wanted our family to be able to stay together, stay close, and continue to love each other as we always had. Thankfully, God was faithful and has made that a part of our story. I didn’t know what that would look like. I didn’t know how the people in our small church or community would respond. I didn’t know how our extended family would respond. Heck, I didn’t know how I was responding. It was about 1998, my brother who I loved dearly was gay, and we lived in a rural farming community with a Southern Baptist pastor as a dad. That dynamic started a shift in me that is probably a big part of the reason I hold the convictions I do today. I started seeing Jesus differently. I started seeing my need for Jesus on a very new and desperate level. I started realizing that darn perch needed to be burned and I had to get back down to living life right in the mix of all the people Jesus created and loved just.as.much as he loved the people within the walls of the church. I started seeing that “religion” was very different than “Jesus.” I started seeing my calling in this life to be much different than sitting up on a holy pedestal trying to point out the reasons people weren’t up there with me so they could clean themselves up, see the light, and make it “in” with the rest of our church crew. I started seeing that the only thing Jesus asked me to do was to love him and love others. Love is not easily given from an elevated position out of sympathy. Love is given when you’re shoulder to shoulder with people who grab your heart and often causes you to check yourself, check your opinions and perspectives, and get your hands dirty. I’d like to say that my brother was met with love and acceptance by everyone as they found out the news. Sadly, he and our family lived a lot of years being met with a lot of things far from the love of Jesus from those within the church. Thankfully, there were many that continued to love him just like they always had. Those people showed me so much about the true love of Jesus. For them, I will always be grateful.
Awhile back, I wrote on here about the parable in the Bible known as the Parable of the Sower. Feel free to give that a read for some context. The parable that follows that in Matthew chapter 13 is called the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares. I’ve thought a lot about that story of Jesus over the past few months. Division within our country and our world runs deep right now. I also believe division in the Church, the people who claim to put their trust in Jesus, runs deep. There are arguments around every corner about all the current issues…Transgender, Homosexuality, Critical Race Theory, COVID, governmental regulations for all these things, and the list goes on and on and on. While I do agree that we should all be educated on current issues and do everything we can to get to a close-up perspective on them, I don’t believe we’re putting our energy to the work He has called us to do. I believe we’re continuing to ask the wrong questions. I believe it really can be as simple as His command to love God, love others. In the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares (check it out for yourself in Matthew 13:24–30), Jesus tells a story about a man who sowed good seed in his field. He planted a field of wheat but then an enemy came in and planted a bunch of tares (weeds) all mixed through the field. If you look up wheat and tares, it will show you that these two plants look nearly identical until they produce their “fruit” at the time of the harvest. Anyway, back to the story. The wheat in the field grows up beautifully, but so do the tares. The servants of the owner of the field approach the owner and offer to go out into the field and dig up all the tares, ridding the field of such a terrible disruption to their bountiful crop. They say, “Do you want us then to go and gather them up (meaning the tares)?” The owner responds, “No, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them.” He then tells them very clearly that at the time of the harvest, He will be the one to take care of the sorting. I know there are many ways to interpret scripture but this one has really hit me this year. I believe Jesus is painting a picture of creation and God is both the “owner” and “planter” of the “field”. I don’t believe God has called His people to go out and sort the sinners from the saints. I don’t believe He needs any help in this department. He makes it clear that God Himself is the ONLY one needed for that job. I don’t believe Jesus has asked His people to advocate for laws and rules that exclude marginalized people groups from being able to participate in communities of faith or to keep them from having access to rights to all the freedoms our country has to offer. I don’t believe our churches should be putting up walls to exclude people that live lives differently than others from the congregation and community. I do believe that Jesus has called His people to be united in their love for Him and their love of ALL His people. I do believe that Jesus followers should be united in what they are for rather than what they are against. I do believe that if Jesus followers loved like He called us to love and leave any matters of judgment to the all-knowing Creator, there would be a lot more people who would get to know the love of Jesus. Jesus Himself told his closest friends, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). He could’ve said, “Rid the world of sin and live a life that is morally superior. By that, they will know that you are my disciples.” He didn’t. I think if we can get back to doing the work Jesus DID call us to, we’ll be asking the right question, “How do we really love others the way Jesus would love them?”
May the way we love, lead others to the source of everlasting, unending love.
“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height — to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:14–19)
