A Sermon on Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
by Rev. Chris Bohnhoff
It can be really hard not taking scripture literally, can’t it? Like this parable of the weeds: are we truly supposed to just let weeds be, my gardening mind asks? And my theological mind asks, So, the world’s weediness – which Jesus says represents the very real presence of evil in the world – is just something we are to simply allow to grow? While we’re also taught to repair breaches and protect those vulnerable to evil’s effects? How do these ideas fit together?
A big part of me, the justice seeking part, wants to reject this whole wheat and weeds metaphor as way too simplistic, dualistic, and contradictory to other teachings. Because in today’s world, the weeds of nationalism, extractive capitalism, and authoritarianism are surely too big, too invasive, too destructive to just leave for God to sort out at the end of the age, whenever that is. How do we fit this teaching alongside others that encourage a much more active discipleship?
Will you pray with me? Merciful God, benevolent presence, we seek the relief only you can provide. Wheat or weed, sheep or goat, whatever the label, what we all want is the peace of your infinite arms. Help us in our urgency to control our way to security to slow down, to breathe, to release our grasp and expectations, that we may lose our way and find your peace. Amen.
Gardeners know weeds. So do students of history.
In the years following the conclusion of the Civil War, after the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth, the US entered a period known as Reconstruction: of moving forward from the internal conflict that killed well over half a million people into a new way of being a country. By 1870, the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments had been added to the constitution, outlawing slavery and giving Black people born in the US citizenship and the right to vote. Congress approved programs to get former slaves on their feet. Efforts were underway to cultivate a new field of wheat, so to speak.
But not long into Reconstruction, many northerners wanted to move on from race and civil rights entirely. Now that Blacks were citizens, they reasoned, wasn’t it time for the country to think about other things? With the Union’s victory the weed of slavery had been pulled once and for all, they thought, after decades of organizing and advocating for abolition, and finally, war.
Then, an economic depression in the early 1870s further hit the American psyche. The runaway capitalism of the railroad Barrons had crashed the nation’s economy in Restoration’s first moments.
Meanwhile, far from the nation’s capital where all these new laws were passed, no state legislature in the South agreed to recognize Black citizenship. In that half of the country, it was as if those laws didn’t exist.
While the north responded with impatience and distraction, the events of Easter Sunday, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana were indicative of the south’s response to Reconstruction. In his book, America, U.S.A., Eddie Glaude writes, “Christopher Columbus Nash, a white Democrat and former sheriff of Grant Parish, led a violent coup. Several hundred white men armed with rifles and a small cannon opened fire on the courthouse where Black Republicans had claimed their governing authority after being duly elected. The courthouse caught fire, and even as the Black men showed the white flag of surrender, they were butchered by the mob.” In the massacre that followed, 150 Black people were killed.[1]
President Grant responded to the mob violence by sending troops to protect Black citizens. But as violence became central to the southern Democrats’ political strategy, and as the massacres continued and death tolls rose, northern whites went from impatient to antagonistic to government intervention to protect Black Americans.
In short order, with the constant drumbeat of white violence, the political will to build paths for Blacks to integrate into society completely crumbled. By the country’s centennial celebrations in 1876, the “moderate” political position in the north was to disremember Black America. “What more do they want from us?” seemed to be the white response to the whole mess.
In retrospect, it is clear that, while the weed of slavery had been pulled, its deep roots of hatred had not been removed from the nation’s soil. That root persisted through military defeat, and during Reconstruction it sprouted new leaves. In fact, that weed was spreading back into the tired, depleted soil of the north.
As Glaude describes, the centennial celebrations of 1876 told a story that didn’t include the Civil War, or any conflict, because its goal was to help white America feel better about itself, not to reflect on the lessons of the nation’s first 100 years. As W.E.B. Du Bois put it in our opening words, “we often congratulate ourselves more on getting rid of a problem than on solving it.” In 1876, as is still the case even today for those in power, getting rid of a problem means denying a problem’s existence. What weed, they ask?
Into this deeply dispiriting time, Frederick Douglass, the great African American orator and leader, spoke to Black Americans. It was July 5th, 1875. July 5th, New York State’s Abolition Day, the day when Blacks speak their truth into the observance of our country’s birth.
In essence, Douglass told his audience that whites in the north and the south were making peace with each other by agreeing to ignore the weed of racial hatred. He said, “If war among whites brought peace and liberty to the blacks, what will peace among the whites bring? . . . These questions, my friends, make me thoughtful. The signs of the times are not in our favor.”[2]
Here is where our historical examination joins with scripture. In his speech, Douglass did not call for war on whites, or to retreat inward; he called for self-empowerment. Glaude writes, “On the 99th anniversary of the nation, Douglass cried out for Black people to trust themselves, to build institutions that would sustain their interests, and to free themselves from the charity of others. White people might rage, but Black people were still responsible for their own freedom. They must claim it for themselves.”[3]
In the parable, the land owner’s workers ask if they should pull the weeds they found, but the owner replies, “‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matt 13:28-30)
Don’t trample what is good in going after the bad. Don’t place your focus on the evil, because you can’t destroy and cultivate at the same time.
Now, listen carefully: the call is not to live and let live. In the parable, the owner and the workers know the difference between the wheat and the weeds. They know which will be harvested and which will be burned. Just so, Douglass called out oppression, called out how Black Americans were and are here to claim all the justice and freedom that was and is their birthright as citizens under the Constitution.
The call by Frederick Douglass and the parable is to resist the impulse to constantly wage war on weeds, but instead to be the wheat. Be that which nourishes communities, care for that which builds strong bodies and characters, cultivate that which, when harvested, feeds God’s commonwealth. And just like Douglass, when you see weeds crowding out wheat that’s just minding its own business, shading it out, taking all the soil’s goodness, name it. Call it out. Its time of being called to account will come. Just don’t lose sight of your job as God’s beloved: to grow, to nurture, to feed. Will the roots of hatred ever be pulled completely from our nation’s soil? That’s not for us to know. But thanks be to God for planting deep within our souls, deeper than the weed of hate, the love that sustains and gives our lives purpose and meaning, if we simply tend to it. Amen.
[1] Eddie S. Glaude Jr., America, U.S.A. (Crown: New York, 2026),p. 78.
[2] Glaude, p. 93
[3] p. 94
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