Romans 8.12-25; Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

If you have a garden, then you will know all about weeds. But sometimes it isn’t always clear, apart from to the planter, which are the weeds and which are very much not weeds. Some years ago, we had someone who gave us a couple of hours a week help in the garden. One day my wife suggested that he weed a couple of the flower beds, only to find at the end of the morning that he had pulled up the much tended and much loved forsythia plant.

Even with the best of intentions it is very easy to make mistakes when sorting out the wheat from the weeds.

And that simple proposition is at the heart of our gospel reading this morning.

It is a parable – a story – a farmer sows good seed on his land and waits for it to grow, but much to the surprise of his slaves, one day they spotted that in amongst the wheat were what our bible version calls weeds. Other versions refer to them as tares. The word in Greek is zizania, a wild grass, sometimes translated as darnel, technically: lolium temulentum.

In more recent times (at the beginning of the 20^th century) a Russian plant geneticist, Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov, (this really isn’t a line from a Tom Lehrer song), discovered that weeds can evolve to look like domesticated crop plants, and that when you remove the plants that don’t look like the crop you leave behind, it mimics that crop and thrives.

Darnel is just such a mimic. It bears a close resemblance to wheat until the ears appear and ripen, when you will see that the wheat ears appear brown whilst the darnel ears appear black. There are two concerning issues with that – first darnel is actually a poison, and can bring about a drunken nausea which can be fatal, and second its roots spread through the soil and get entwined with the wheat roots, making it difficult to pull up the darnel without also pulling up the wheat.

Jesus was way ahead of Vavilov, and his landowner in the parable told the slaves who were offering to go in and root out the zizania not to do so as they were likely to pull up good plants too, but leave it all until harvest time and then he would instruct the reapers to separate them out, burning the weeds and putting the wheat into the barn.

Our lectionary then skips over two more stories Jesus told and goes to the time when the disciples ask Jesus to explain to them the parable of the wheat and the weeds.

But the other two stories are important. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like a small mustard seed which after it is planted eventually grows into a great tree and the birds of the air come and make nests in it. He then said that the kingdom of heaven is like yeast which a woman mixes with flour but then has to wait until the dough rises.  They both emphasise in the same way as does the wheat and the weeds, that God’s kingdom is very much about waiting and being patient.

And that is something we can find hard to live with. We look around us and see much that disturbs us, and we want it sorting out, and sorting out now! Whether we are looking at international events – why can’t the wars in Ukraine and the Gulf be ended now; or locally at events in the UK and even more locally here in York – we want that Station Gateway Project finishing and finishing now.

And in the church we face a similar longing for the resolution of issues that divide us. Last Sunday we welcomed here at our Eucharist members of the Church of England General Synod, and as we read of their debates and decisions, we may have found ourselves wondering why God doesn’t step in and sort it all out. Though of course we may not all be wanting the sorting out to be done in the same way.

And so against that background of his having told those three parables, the disciples ask Jesus to explain in particular the one about wheat and weeds. And Jesus explained it by talking about the kingdom. And that should be no surprise because with Jesus it is always about the kingdom, God’s kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom which Jesus had come not only to announce but to bring into being. That kingdom he says is being established right here in the midst of this world, as people come into it like children. And as our reading from Romans told us – children who become heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus.

But there are those who remain outside that kingdom, not giving their allegiance to God, and they are there alongside the children of the kingdom. And that is how it will be until the end of all things, when the distinctions will be clear, and all that is wrong and evil will be brought to an end, and God’s kingdom will then be seen in all its brilliance and glory.

All things will be shown for what they really are and all things will be put right.

Throughout history there have been those who have believed that we should have a church which is a community of people who all believe the same truths and who all understand the outworking of practical Christian discipleship in the same way. Then we will have a perfect church. A true church. And that spirit is very much alive and well in our time.

The one piece of advice I remember being given very early in my Christian life was: “If you find a perfect church – don’t join it because it will then be no longer perfect”.

The church has always been a hospital – full of those who are in the process of getting better. Always a place where grace has been hard at work. If we set about trying to separate out the righteous from the unrighteous, the faithful from the unfaithful, the deserving from the undeserving, we will not succeed. We cannot succeed because only God has perfect judgement.

And if we expect God to step in and punish those responsible for war and consequent human misery now, why would he not also have to step in and punish me for my comparative misdemeanours?

Whenever I point the finger at anyone else, then there are always three fingers pointing back at me. Just as the group of twelve who heard the explanation contained Judas, it also contained the other eleven who were each a mixture of good and not so good features. If you have seen the TV series “The Chosen”, you will have seen some of those disciples very well depicted with their good and not so good points.

So, if we were to demand instant justice for all now, where would we each stand?

I would add one caveat. Here at York Minster we are a welcoming church, but we also aim to be a safe church, and we all have a responsibility to protect those who are vulnerable. That’s why we have such an emphasis on safeguarding. And why we insist on safeguarding training and that it may be necessary from time to time to set boundaries in order to keep everyone safe. But that is about keeping people safe and not about creating a pure church.

What Jesus is saying is that God has, does and will act justly – in his good time. Meanwhile he is patient – incredibly patient. And that patience gives space for transformation to take place. As Peter, who had every reason to be thankful for Gods’ patience with him, said in his second letter: “the Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

But the other side is that the bad will not last for ever; judgment and vindication will take place. In God’s sight truth matters, justice matters, victims matter; God is not indifferent to suffering and there will come a day when all that harms and destroys life will finally be overcome. The weeds will not inherit the field; the kingdom belongs to God.

The lesson for us today is that we are not to try and get ahead of God, or to complain that he is not acting now to put right what we think is wrong.

Andrew McGowan put it this way: “Our role is to watch, and wait, and work. God has done well at the beginning of all things, and will again at the end.”

Amen.