Jesus dismissed the crowds and went into the house. His disciples approached him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds in the field.”

Today’s gospel is one of the rare parables that Jesus actually explains a bit. But even the explanation needs a little more explanation. The parable of the weeds, is the story of the evil one sowing weeds along side the wheat, and the master deciding how to deal with this attack on his good wheat.

Some may wonder why they did not just pull the weeds when they were tiny, but the generally accepted understanding of this parable is that this particular weed was called tares (aka, darnell). This weed was especially insidious because as a small plant it looked just like wheat. And it was not until the wheat was full grown that you could tell the difference. So if you tried to pull up the weed as seedlings, you would invariably be pulling up wheat by accident. It was also well known that the darnell was particularly adept at wrapping its roots around other plants making it so the two plants would very much be intertwined. So pulling them up later, when you could tell the difference, would also result in pulling up the wheat before it was ready to be harvested. So the only real solution is to wait until harvest and separate the good from the bad then.

Further, this passage is proceeded with the enigmatic line, “the kingdom of heaven, can be likened to…” How are we to understand this? Are we to believe that God’s kingdom was meant to have a saboteur that would come and sow evil in our midst, or is there another explanation? I suggest that the point is that because of free will, that some of us will reject God, and even go the extra mile to try to subvert the plans of God. But humans are complex and not all are 100% evil or 100% good. We are surrounded on all sides by evil, and it is even intertwined within us. God cannot come and just eradicate the Evil from our midst, without badly damaging the good good that is in us, because we would not understand why it is happening.

This is because, in this world, we do not have the full context and understanding of what is truly evil and what is actually good. And we will not be able to fully comprehend God’s justice, until we have that full understanding. So from our limited perspective removing evil from our midst would likely seem capricious and totally unfair. But at the end of time (at God’s harvest), the angels will separate the good wheat into the barn and the weeds will be thrown into the fire.

At the time of the final judgement this full context and understanding of evil will be made known to all and we will then know and fully understand how God sees our sin. And then, when we look at God’s justice we will see that it is perfect, and we will not feel as if we are are being punished by an unfair and capricious God. And even if some of those that we love are thrown into the fire, we may be sad for their souls, but we will know that they made that choice for themselves, and in God’s perfect justice they recieved the eternity that they most wanted.

There is one last aspect to this that is so important. That is that there is one big difference between us and the wheat. And that is that the we have the ability to fight the tares before harvest. We are not innocent victims of the evil infestations of our lives. We have the ability to fight back. We must hack away at the evil tendrils that surround and infest us. We are unique in God’s creation in that we have the ability to live as a perfectly uninfested peice of wheat in a field that is overrun by tares, but the choice is completely ours, no one else can do it for us. While is it true that at the end of time God will do it for us, and He will decide if we have chosen to fight or if you have allowed ourselves to be corrupted. But until that great day of perfect justice, we toil side by side with evil.

Many people struggle with the question of why God allows evil in this world in the first place, and I truly believe that is because He wants us to fight for our own eternal souls. We are not helpless little plants that have to wait for the Gardener to assist us, we are called to fight for ourselves. When you finally understand this parable with the explanations given above, this apologetic becomes one of the best explanations we have of why god allows evil in this world and why we are left to deal with it everyday.

The ultimate answer is that God loves us, even all the evil ones, and He wants the best for us, and as such He has given us time to set right the error of our ways, and to get right with Him before the end. So now is your turn to accept this offer, and do what you can to remove the tares that are wrapped around the good things of your nature, and make yourself into good wheat that bears much fruit. We do this so that when the harvest comes you will be ready to be taken into the kingdom with god, and not cast out into the eternal fire.

Oh lord please help me today to be good and produce good fruit. So that when the harvesters come they will recognize me as wheat and not as a weed.