8 Pentecost

 July 19, 2026

 Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43

 + Last week I told a story in my sermon about how I once had an herb garden.

 I was in my early 20s.

 And, for some reason I don’t remember anymore, I had this idea that I wanted to plant an herb garden at my parents’ home.

 I planned it out.

 I did my research.

 I bought all the seeds and was very excited about having these various herbs.

 I dutifully planted them in a corner of my parents’ property and would try hard to cultivate it.

 But, as I said last week, the weeds started coming around the same time the herbs started growing.

 And soon, I couldn’t tell which was which.

 I could not for the life of me figure out what was an herb and what was a weed.

 And, as you can guess, I simply wiped my hands of it and walked away.

 Months later, in this overgrown patch, I found it kind of amusing that some of those so-called “weeds” smelled amazing in the sun.

 In fact, for years, my father would say that little patch of ground had some of the best smelling “weeds” he ever smelled.

 So, when I heard the story last week in our Gospel reading about sowing seeds and especially the one this week, I am reminded of that forlorn little herb garden all those years ago.

 For today, the story Jesus tells us is, like some many of his stories,  both comforting and frustrating.

 In it, we find a farmer who sows good seed, but does so under the cover of darkness.

 An enemy sows weeds among the wheat.

 When the servants discover the problem, they ask the obvious question: “Do you want us to pull the weeds?”

 Their instinct is our instinct.

 We want to fix things.

 We want to make things right.

 We want to sort people into neat categories.

 We want the righteous over here, the wicked over there.

 We want the world cleaned up.

 Nice and neat.

 What does Jesus say to that?

 He says, “No.”

 Leave them both to grow together until the harvest.

 That answer is almost unbearable.

 We look at the violence in the world, the cruelty, the injustice, and we want God to act now.

 We look at the failures of the Church, at our own failures, and we wonder—why is God so patient?

 Perhaps the answer is this: because God knows something we do not.

 The servants cannot always tell the difference between wheat and weeds.

 Their zeal for purity may end up destroying what God intends to save.

 We are not always reliable judges of one another, or even of ourselves.

 The person we have written off may yet become a saint.

 The one who appears strong may be barely hanging on.

 A life that seems hopeless today may, by God’s grace, bear extraordinary fruit tomorrow.

 God’s patience is not indifference.

 It is mercy.

 The reign of God is not built by our ability to identify the weeds.

 It is built by God’s determination never to give up on the wheat, even when it is surrounded by everything that threatens to choke it.

 There is another truth here as well.

 The field is not simply “the world.”

 It is also our own hearts.

 Wheat and weeds grow together within each of us.

 Love and resentment.

 Faith and fear.

 Generosity and selfishness.

 Confidence and insecurity.

 We know what it is to be divided people.

 We ourselves are often so divided within ourselves.

 The good news is that Jesus doesn’t abandon the field because it is messy.

 He continues to tend it.

 He waters it with grace.

 He feeds it with his own Body and Blood.

 He waits patiently for what only time and mercy can accomplish.

 There will be a harvest.

 Jesus doesn’t deny that.

 As you’ve heard me say again and again, evil does not have the last word.

 Justice will come.

 Every hidden thing will be brought into the light.

 Into God’s Light.

 But that day belongs to God, not to us.

 Our calling, in the meantime, is not to become experts at pulling weeds.

 It is not our job to figure out what is wheat—or herbs---and what are weeds.

 It is to become faithful wheat—to sink our roots deeply into the love of God, to bear fruit for the sake of the world, and to trust that the Judge of all the earth knows what God is doing.

 Sometimes, from that mess of weeds, comes a beautiful smell, and when it does, we know, all is not lost.

 That kind of trust is difficult.

 It asks us to surrender our need to control, our desire to condemn, our impatience with God.

 But it also frees us.

 We no longer have to carry the burden of sorting out the whole world.

 We are simply called to follow Jesus, to love our neighbors, and to let God’s grace do its quiet work.

 God’s reign often grows unnoticed.

 So does holiness.

 And in God’s own good time, not ours, the wheat will shine like the sun in the kingdom of God.

 Amen.