July 12, 2026 - Seventh Sunday after Pentecost: What Should We Do About the Weeds?

July 12, 2026Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43Romans 8:18-25
“What Should We Do About the Weeds?”
Carol DeVaughan

One of my favorite cartoons is an old Peanuts one in which Lucy is disgusted with Charlie Brown and finally declares “Charlie Brown, you are the crabgrass of life!” You know, that green grass-like stuff that we do not want in our lawns.

Decades ago, some highway planner, concerned about the erosion of the red clay soil along roads in the South, came up with a plan to import a sturdy vine from Southeast Asia known as Kudzu. This plan was quite successful – too successful, as it was discovered kudzu was very, very sturdy and invasive – worse than our bane of honeysuckle. Before long the vine not only covered the roadside, which was good, but also the surrounding trees and electric poles, road signs, everything.

So now the problem became how to get rid of it. One solution was discovered in the spraying of Roundup, then a fairly new product from Monsanto.

Soon after I settled in St Louis, I saw a brief write-up in the Post about the owner of a hot dog shop in eastern North Carolina who had noticed a utility pole nearby covered which looked like Jesus on the cross. (I have a photo if you want to see it later.)

“I glanced at it, and it looks like Jesus. You can’t spray Jesus with Roundup.” The St Louis article went on to say that, although the writer couldn’t speak for the people here at Monsanto, he was pretty sure they wouldn’t want their Roundup sprayed on Kudzu Jesus. He continued, “Besides, the folks there kind of like the symbolism. It doesn’t matter what you do, Kudzu is going to be around. Ain’t that a lot like Jesus?”

Within the 13th chapter of Matthew there are several parables intertwined – the sower, kinds of soil, seeds, treasure planted in the field. All of these hold important truths for us in this day and age, just as in Jesus’s. Today I’d like to focus on the weeds and our role in who is in and who is out, a pertinent and timely question for us in the church today.

In this parable are amazing insights into the life of the church. The church is a mixed-bag reality. Ted Wardlaw has written commentary on both of these parables. He compares those who want to weed the field to those of us today who try to use behavior or theological or biblical certitude as litmus tests.

We find ourselves faced with how narrowly or broadly to draw the boundaries. Who shall we let in, and who is out? Who is accepted by God and who is not?

Then Wardlaw makes an important point – even as we ask those questions, “we assume it is our job to draw up the specifications regarding the wideness of the church’s welcome. How wide, really, can it be, and still be the church?”

In the parable, the master gives the servants a hard answer – “Let both the wheat and the weeds grow together until the harvest.” And so the question for us, how do we do that? How do we live among the weeds, not knowing exactly when the harvest will come or if the wheat will survive? And of course, this all assumes, we assume, that we are wheat and not weeds!

How do we know when to spray the kudzu or the crabgrass? How do we have that kind of infinite patience that seems to be required as evil surrounds us? Yet we think we should not just be passive and let anything goes.

Hard as it is, we are not the ones to do the judging. We are to offer a kind of radical hospitality that includes everyone – whether we really like it or not. We are to show God’s love indiscriminately.

It’s so often hard to think that way. Some people try to isolate so they don’t “catch” what they see as infectious evil around them. Some try to destroy what is around them to create a safer space. Some are unable to recognize that others may consider them toxic and try to avoid them. We are so sure we are good wheat, we are right, correct, have God’s viewpoint down pat. One of the scariest things I hear from folks these days is “I know I am right.”

But what if, in the call for infinite patience, in the practice of not trying to judge, in constantly working to share God’s love, we are in fact helping eliminate the out-of-control growth of the weeds? What if the saying that we help plant the seeds, but God brings the harvest is true? Sometimes all we can do is trust that God knows what God is doing, even when we can’t see it.

Rachel Held Evans wrote in one of her essays about an experience that was revelatory for her in her journey from strict conservative evangelicalism which has all the answers to a more progressive belief system.

She says she walked into a world inhabited by flesh and blood humans who didn’t stick to the atheist/Muslim/feminist/gay/liberal/poor/skeptic/foreigner script, a world less characterized by black and white certainties.

She writes, “I thought I was called to challenge the atheists, but the atheists ended up challenging me.

“I thought God wanted to use me to show gay people how to be straight. Instead, God used gay people to show me how to be Christian.

“I thought the world needed my answers, but it turned out, I needed the world’s questions. I needed to learn how to doubt well, listen better, and be humbled by how little I know.

“The world, it turns out, is not all weeds. There is evil growing, certainly, and fear and hate and prejudice. But I’ve found life sprouting out of all sorts of unlikely soil, wheat enough for a lifetime of harvests. … God, it seems, is rather stubbornly committed to extracting me from the notion that this is all about being right.”

We Christians believe that for the sake of the whole world, flaws, evil, weeds and all, God will accomplish God’s purpose. We don’t have to understand it. We certainly don’t have to decide who is wheat or weeds, nor do we have to try to eradicate what we judge to be weeds. Rather we should doubt well and learn to live with ambiguity and uncertainty.

But here is our certainty. Through Jesus Christ, God’s will for creation will be completed and fulfilled, and we will be part of that. That is God’s promise and we can trust in it.