Three More Parables. (Matthew 13: 24-33)
I. The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares
24 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. 26 But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. 27 So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”
(Matthew 13: 24-30)
The picture painted in the imagination by this parable would have been very familiar to his 1st century audience. Tares were one of the curses against which a farmer had to struggle every day. Tares were a type of weed that we today called bearded darnel. (Lolium Temulentum if you want to get all horticultural about it). In their early stages the tares so closely resembled wheat that it was impossible to distinguish the one from the other. When both had created heads, it became easy to distinguish them; but by that time their roots were so intertwined that the tares could not be weeded out without tearing the wheat out with them.Even the farmers, who tried to weeded them out often found they could not separate the one from the other soon enough. They would not only mistake good grain for them, but very commonly the roots of the two are so intertwined that it is impossible to separate them without plucking up both. Both, therefore, had to be left to grow together until the time of harvest." The tares and the wheat so closely resembled each other that the popular idea at the time of Jesus was that tares were a kind of wheat which had somehow cross fertilized with wheat and created a mixed plant.
Furthermore, the grain of the bearded darnel was slightly poisonous. It causes dizziness and sickness; they had a bitter and unpleasant taste and even a small amount mixed in affected the whole batch of wheat. Their presence added greatly to the cost of wheat production because women have to be hired to pick the darnel grain out of the seed which was to be milled. The separation of the darnel from the wheat could only be done by spreading the grain out on a large tray in which they pick out the darnel one seed at a time. They tare seed was similar in shape and size to wheat, but slate-grey in colour." So, you can see the consequences of tare infestation was very serious.
The picture of a man deliberately sowing tares into someone else's field was not just an imaginative idea That was actually sometimes done at that time between waring neighbours and in fact it was codified into Roman law as a crime with a punishment laid down. This is why the meaning of this parable would have been very familiar to the people of Galilee who heard it from Jesus this day.
Some have said this is one of the most practical parables Jesus ever told.
Firstly, it warns us that there are always hostile powers in the world, seeking and waiting to destroy the good seed when it is planted. We need to have insight that often-malevolent influence is at work in the world and can act upon our lives. Any influence which can help the seed of the word to flourish and to grow, can be quashed by an influence which seeks to destroy the good seed before it can produce fruit at all. This surely warns us to always be on our guard.
Secondly, it teaches us how hard it is to distinguish between those who are in the Kingdom and those who are not. Someone can appear to be good and may in fact be rotten; and of course, we may think someone is bad and may in fact yet be decent. We can sometimes be too quick to label people good or bad without having all the facts or seen their actions by which we might make our judgements. This parable therefore also tells me we should not be too quick to pass judgment. Sound judgement will often mean waiting until the harvest comes. In the end we will all be judged, not by any single act or stage in our lives, but by our whole life. Anyone can make a big mistake, and then redeem themselves by the grace of God. Repenting and atoning for our mistakes by making the rest of life a service to God. No one who sees a snapshot of a life at a point in time can judge the whole life of someone; and no one who knows only part of a someone’s life can judge the life, only God can do that.
Thirdly, it teaches us that although judgment is not hasty, but yet judgment will surely come. It may be that, humanly speaking, in this life the sinner often seems to escape the consequences. It may be that, humanly speaking, also seem that goodness rarely comes to those who deserve it. But Jesus reminds us that there is a new heaven and a new place to redress the balance either way. This passage reminds us that the only person has the right to judge is God alone. For it is God alone who sees all of a person and all of their life. It is God alone who can judge. Ultimately this parable warns us not to judge people at all, reminds us that in the end there is a judgement made, and that judgment is God’s.
II. The Mustard Seed - Small Beginnings
The text continues.
31 Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 32 which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
(Matthew 13:31-32)
The mustard in the middle east of this time was the proverbial illustration for smallness. For example, the Jews of that day would talk about a tiny breach of the ceremonial law being a defilement as small as a mustard seed; and Jesus himself used the phrase in this way when he spoke of faith as a grain of mustard seed, here and in Matthew 17: 20.
However, the mustard seed would grow into something like a tree. If left to grow unchecked, it could grow over 4 meters high. Furthermore, it was a common sight to see such mustard bushes or trees surrounded by birds, for the birds love the little black seeds of the tree, and would settle on the tree to eat them.
Jesus said that his Kingdom of God was like the mustard seed, and it too would grow into something substantial. The point is crystal clear. The Kingdom of Heaven starts from the smallest beginnings, but no one knows where it will end.
In eastern language and in the Old Testament itself one of the commonest pictures of an empire was the image of a great tree, with the subject nations depicted as birds finding rest and shelter within its branches, (See Ezekiel 31:6). This parable tells us that the Kingdom of Heaven begins very small but that in the end many nations will be gathered within it.
It is the fact of history that the greatest things nearly always begin with the smallest beginnings. A single idea can change a civilization, at that idea can begins with one man or woman. In the British Empire it was William Wilberforce who was responsible for the freeing of the slaves. The idea of that great liberation came to him when he read an exposure of the slave trade by Thomas Clarkson. He was a close friend of Pitt, the then Prime Minister, and one day he was sitting with him in Pitt's garden Suddenly Wilberforce turned to Pitt and said, "why don't you give a notice of a motion on the ending of the slave-trade?" An idea was sown in the mind of one man, and that idea changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. An idea must find a person willing to be obsessed by it; but when it finds such a person an unstoppable tide begins to flow.
Christian witness many times also begin with one just one person. British historian, Cecil Northcott tells in one of his books how he dreamt of a liberal empire south of the Zambezi, in Africa. But he found he met massive opposition from Cecil Rhodes and from the Boers. He curated a conference in which he brought young Christians from many nations to discuss how the Christian gospel might be spread in Africa. Some talked of propaganda, and the use of literature, and all the other modern ways of disseminating the gospel in the twentieth century. Then the girl from Africa spoke. "When we want to take Christianity to one of our near villages," she said, "we don't send them books. We take a Christian family and send them to live in the village and they make the village Christian by living there amongst the people."
Still today in any group or society, or school or factory, or shop or office, again it is usually the witness of one individual which brings in Christianity. The one man or woman set on fire for Christ is the person who effects and sets light to others. This was one of the most personal parables Jesus ever spoke. Sometimes his disciples must have despaired. Their little band was so small, they must have sometimes thought how they could ever change the society they lived in, never mind the world. In this parable Jesus is saying to his disciples, and to his followers today, that they must not be discouraged, but they must serve and witness each in his place, that each one might only see something small in the beginning, but from such small beginnings the Kingdom of God will grow until the whole earth will one day belong to the Lord.
III. The Parable of the Leaven
Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”
(Matthew 13:33)
In every case Jesus drew his parables them from the scenes and activities of everyday life. He used things which were entirely familiar to his hearers in order to lead them to things which had never yet entered their minds before.
He took the parable of the sower from the farmer's field and the parable of the mustard seed from the garden. He took the parable of the wheat and the tares using the perennial problem which confronted every farmer of the day. Later he will take the parable of the hidden treasure from the everyday task of digging in a field, and the parable of the pearl of great price from the world of fishing and commerce and trade. But in this parable of the leaven Jesus came closer to home than in any other because he took it from the kitchen of an ordinary home.
At that time bread was always baked at home; Leaven was a little piece of dough kept over from a previous bake, which had fermented in the keeping. In Jewish thought leaven had always been connected with an evil influence; the Jews always connected fermentation with putrefaction and leaven stood for that which is evil. One of the great ceremonies of preparation for the Passover Feast was that every scrap of leaven had to be sought out from the house and burned.
The whole point of the parable lies in recognising the transforming power of the leaven. Leaven changed the character of a whole bake. The introduction of the leaven causes a transformation in the dough; and the coming of the Kingdom causes a transformation in life.
This then of course fits in with the idea in Christianity of the transformed life. As someone once said, “We must never forget that the function and the power of Christ is to make bad men good. The transformation of Christianity begins in the individual life, for through Christ the victim of temptation can become a victor over it.
There are four great social directions in which Christianity transformed life.
Firstly, Christianity transformed life for women. The Jew in his morning prayer thanked God that he had not made him a Gentile, or a slave or a woman. In Greek civilization also the woman lived a life of utter seclusion, with nothing to do beyond the household tasks. Christianity transformed life for women, calling woman into service and even into leadership roles as deacons in the earliest churches.
Secondly, Christianity also transformed life for the suffering and the ill. In heathen life the weak and the ill were considered a nuisance. In Sparta a child, when he was born, was submitted to the examiners; if he was deemed fit, he was allowed to live; if he was considered weak or deformed in any way, he was left out to die of exposure on a mountain side. The worlds first hospital and home for the blind was founded by Thalasius, a Christian monk. The first free dispensary of medicine was founded by Apollonius, a Christian merchant. The first hospital of which there is any record was founded by Fabiola, a Christian lady in Rome. Christianity was the first faith to be interested in the broken things of life.
Thirdly, Christianity also transformed life for the elderly. Like the weak, the old were a nuisance in all the main cultures of that time. The elderly, whose day's work was done, were fit for nothing else than to be discarded on the rubbish heaps of life. Christianity was the first faith to regard people as persons and not instruments capable of doing so much work.
Finally, Christianity also transformed the family. In the immediate background during the emergence of Christianity, the marriage relationship had broken down, and the home was in peril. Divorce was so common that it was neither unusual nor particularly blameworthy for a woman to have a new husband every year. In such circumstances children were a disaster; and the custom of simply exposing children to death was becoming more and more common. In modem times life is almost built round the child; but in ancient civilization the child had a very good chance of dying before it had even begun to live, even more so if it was a female child..
There is nothing in history so unquestionably demonstrable as to the transforming power of Christianity and of Christ on the individual life Almost all Biblical scholars would agree that this parable speaks of the transforming power of Christ and of his Kingdom in the life of the individual and of the world; but there is a difference of opinion as to how that transforming power works.
Sometimes it is said that the lesson of this parable is that the Kingdom works unseen. We cannot see the leaven working in the dough, any more than we can see a flower growing, but the work of the leaven is always going on. The Kingdom is always working and growing.
On this view the parable teaches that with Jesus Christ and his gospel released a new force in the world, and that, silently but inevitably, that force is working for righteousness in the world and God indeed is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year.
But it has also people take the opposite view. Famous British theologian C. H. Dodd, thought the lesson of the parable is the very opposite of this, and that, far from being unseen, the working of the Kingdom can be plainly seen.
The working of the leaven is plain for all to see. Put the leaven into the dough, and the leaven changes the dough from a lump into a an ever rising, bubbling, mass. Just so is the working of the Kingdom of God. When Christianity came to Thessalonica the cry was: "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also" ( Acts 17:6 ). The action of Christianity is disruptive, disturbing, and profound in its effect.
There is undeniable truth here, they crucified Jesus Christ because he disturbed all their orthodox habits and conventions of his day, again, and again. It has also always been true that Christianity has been persecuted because it desired to take both individuals and society and remake them. There is nothing in this world as disruptive to a society as Christianity. That is, in fact, the reason why so many people resent it and refuse it and some even wish to eliminate it. I believe when we come to think of it, we do not need to choose between these two views of the parable, because they are both true. There is a sense in which the Kingdom, the power of Christ, the Spirit of God, is always working, whether or not we see that work; but there is also a sense in which it is plain to see, for those who wish to see it. Many a person’s life is manifestly and dramatically changed by Christ every day; and at the same time there is the silent operation of the Spirit of God on the long path of history.
This parable teaches both that the Kingdom is for ever working unseen, and that there are times in every individual life and in history when the work of the Kingdom is so obvious, and so manifestly powerful, that all can see it, if they choose to see it.