Genesis 42.1-25, Matthew 13.24-30
Whitegate, Trinity 9, Proper 12, 28/7/2013
‘Let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest.’
Now it may not surprise you to learn that when I was a young schoolboy I was a bit of a weed. Inevitable really - short, skinny, unathletic, I was considered fair game for the big lads who liked to push other people around. The classic weed in the children’s literature of the time was Basil Fotherington-Thomas, a character in the series of books by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle about life at at St. Custard's School. In the eyes of his fellow-students Fotherington-Thomas was an effete and loathed sissy, reported to bear a certain resemblance to Little Lord Fauntleroy; and regularly dismissed as a being a 'gurl' due to his curly blond locks and his questionable tendency to skip around the school saying such things as ‘hullo clouds, hullo sky’. [1]
Perhaps the classic biblical weed is the young Joseph, out of character in a family of twelve otherwise rough-and-tumble country boys, given - as weeds are - to dressing in fancy outfits and dreaming fancy dreams. His older brothers loathed him, especially because he was the apple of his father’s eye. No wonder their dislike grew into a firm desire to be rid of him, which they did on the day they first threw him down a well and then sold him as a slave to some passing Ishmaelites (who, unbeknown to the brothers, promptly sold him on again, to the Egyptians). [2]
Now because of their physical limitations weeds tend to find ways to protect themselves, they create self-defence mechanisms against the bullies. One of my schoolboy strategies was to befriend the bullies - by becoming one of the gang which played football every break time, making up for my lightness on foot by adopting wily tactics involving making sly digs to the ribs or kicks to the shins of passing opponents - earning me the nickname ‘John bites-your-legs Davies’ and ensuring that, away from the playing field, the bullies thought twice before picking on me.
Weedy Fotherington-Thomases immerse themselves so fully in their world of poetry and fashion that they become immune to the oafish insults of the toughs around them. And Joseph the weed became wily - so wily in fact that in captivity in Egypt he grew in stature to eventually rise through the ranks of Pharaoh’s court, so able to turn his dreams to his advantage, so wise in the exercise of his duties that at a time of famine Pharaoh entrusted him as governor over the land, in charge of the distribution of limited and precious natural resources. [3]
Weeds have their day - as Joseph did when his starving brothers turned up in Egypt, bargaining for food. Where once he had fallen victim to their rough hands, on that day he had the upper hand, and the card he played reminded them of how they had once treated him, their weedy younger brother. He asked them to bring him their youngest, Benjamin, the weakest, weediest, most vulnerable of the eleven brothers. And - remembering how they had once mistreated the weak, weedy, vulnerable Joseph - they feared that this powerful man might do the same to Benjamin. In other words, Joseph taught them a lesson. But not out of malice - out of the love which welled up inside him for the brothers he thought had lost forever. The one-time weed - emotional at the potential for a reunion with his kinfolk - changed their behaviour and won the day for them all.
Through their unexpected reunion with Joseph, the sons of Jacob learned what they had been doing to each other all these years - trying to stay strong by ganging up on their weakest member, trying to stay pure by expelling the one who was different, and by so doing, weakening rather than strengthening their family.
‘We are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen. That is why this anguish has come upon us.... now there comes a reckoning for his blood,’ they said. [4]
Thank God that the weedy Joseph had grown to be a wise man, and that he was still so attached to the brothers who had rejected him that he did not seek a blood-reckoning, but instead helped them to weave a way towards a reconciliation which taught them a lesson, but enabled each one to grow in self-understanding.
Now I’ve been using the word ‘weed’ in a very different way to how Jesus used it when he spoke of the weeds growing among the good grain, illustrating a truth about the kingdom of heaven - that both weeds and good grain grow together, until a time comes where they will be gathered in and separated.
In Jesus’ story weeds are bad and wheat is good, whereas in my various stories about weedy boys the good and the bad are not so clear. Bullies are bad when they make weeds their victims, but weedy boys can be mean and cruel too, in self-protection or self-assertion.
When Jesus said, ‘Let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest,’ just who are the weeds and who are the wheat is not at all obvious, for we demonstrate aspects of each in our complicated lives. No-one is all bad and no-one is all good either. Which is why Jesus said, ‘Let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest’. Grow together - the delicate ones and the brawny ones, the brainy ones and the boneheaded. Grow together - as Joseph and his brothers did, through negotiation towards reconciliation.
Growing together until the harvest - is our call as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Not one of us is all bad and not one of us is all good either, but, accepting our common humanity we can make ourselves able to be challenged and open to being changed. And able to challenge each other’s bullying behaviour, able to weave our way towards a life of reconciliation and amity. That’s how Jesus sees us growing together in the kingdom of heaven. Nothing weedy in that at all.
Notes
[1] Fotherington-Thomas at Wikipedia
[2] Genesis 37
[3] Genesis 40, 41
[4] Genesis 42.21-22
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