Wheat and weeds

Sermon by Pr. Sharai Jacob on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost + Sunday, July 19, 2026

Scripture readings like this one are understandably difficult for many of us to talk about. We know how quickly conversations about readings like this can become conversations about good people versus bad people, the righteous versus the sinners. Historically, Christianity has used the language of evil to divide, condemn, and justify harm.

But Jesus doesn't avoid the subject. In today's Gospel, he speaks of an enemy who intentionally sows weeds among the wheat. Evil is real. It is active. It wounds God's creation. To deny that evil exists, or to pretend it causes no real harm, would be to deny Jesus' own teaching.

Most scholars believe the weeds that Jesus is describing are Darnel, which is a plant that looks almost identical to wheat until it matures. But unlike wheat, it can be deadly if you eat enough of it. Jesus isn't describing a harmless nuisance. He's describing something that imitates what is good while quietly poisoning the harvest. Even as the weeds are hiding, Jesus is unwavering: evil is real.

But there is so much more to what Jesus is teaching us here! 

These weeds cannot be distinguished from the wheat until the harvest. Which means this is not a story about "us" and "them." It is a story about all of us together. Martin Luther describes us as "at the same time saint and sinner." We all bear God's image and we all fall short. We are all capable of extraordinary love and heartbreaking selfishness. This field is messy because humanity is messy. We are all weeds and wheat.

So, just when we're feeling better about this difficult text, Jesus says something even more concerning. At the end of the age, God will gather up all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will be judged with fire and, “...weeping and gnashing of teeth…”

These are words that have often been twisted into weapons. Many people have heard sermons about judgment that replaced God's love with fear, guilt, and shame. Texts like these have been used to control, exclude, and wound people whom God deeply loves. Because of that history, many of us would rather skip over Jesus' words about judgment altogether.

But perhaps we should consider why Jesus includes the final judgement in the first place? Who needs to hear that evildoers will be held accountable in the end? The final justice that Jesus is promising here is not meant to appeal to everyone… But, I think of the children exploited by Jeffrey Epstein, one of whom reportedly declared, "Jesus watches over me." I think of Black Americans who were enslaved, lynched, abused, exploited — all those people whose cries for justice were ignored in their lifetimes. Who are we to say that God has no justice for them? That God sees their pain and simply shrugs?

If God never confronts evil, then what Gospel do we have for those whose lives have been shattered by it? What is compassion without justice? What is healing if nothing is ever made right?

Jesus sees the world as it is. He knows that evil often seems to prevail. He knows that victims do not always see justice in this life. That is why God's judgment is not the opposite of love. It is an expression of God's love. The final judgment is God's promise that evil will not have the last word.

And yet, there is another warning in this parable. The servants see the field and immediately want to pull up the weeds, but the master says no. The servants think that they can tell weed from wheat, but the master knows that in trying to uproot the weeds, they would uproot the wheat as well.

How often have we done exactly that? Whenever we appoint ourselves the judges of other people's hearts, we leave scars. We create shame. We break relationships. We damage the very field God loves. The servants must wait for the harvest. Not because evil doesn't matter, but because the field belongs to God.

Our calling is not to weed the garden. Our calling is to tend it—to nurture and protect every plant growing there. We do not ignore the weeds. We remain alert to the poison they spread. But we also remember that what looks like a weed today may prove to have been wheat all along. Only God can truly separate one from the other.

Living faithfully often means holding together truths that seem to pull against each other. Evil is real, and we should name it honestly. But, we are also incapable of perfectly identifying evil in one another. God alone is the judge. God alone removes the poison from the harvest. That is an uncomfortable paradox! 

But perhaps the good news is that we are not the ones who have to resolve it. Instead of finding a "solution", what if we let Jesus' gift of discomfort guide us into new life?

The Jesus who speaks of judgment in this parable is the same Jesus who ate with sinners, forgave his enemies, and welcomed the outcast. At the cross, God's judgment falls upon evil itself, even as God's mercy embraces sinners. With Jesus, justice and grace are not enemies. We do not have to choose between believing in God's mercy and longing for God's justice. In Christ, we are given both.

So we leave the final judgement where it belongs—in God's hands. Our work is not to tear up the field looking for weeds. Our work is to tend the field with the same patient love Christ has shown us: feeding the hungry, comforting the grieving, protecting the vulnerable, resisting evil wherever we find it.

Because the promise of this parable is not just about fire, it is about harvest. It is about God's unwavering promise that nothing poisonous will remain forever. One day every wound will be healed, every tear wiped away, every victim vindicated, and every cause of evil removed from creation. Then, Jesus says, "the righteous will shine like the sun.” Until that day, we remain Messy Saints and Contradictory Sinners. Still growing, and held gently by the soil that is the grace of God.

Amen.