Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?
The slaves asked a perennial question. If the master was good, whence the weeds? Surely if he was good he would have sown only good seed in his field. And could he not have had a vigilant watch kept to prevent enemies from coming to spread malice, even during the night? If God was good, whence evil? Surely the one who neither slept nor slumbered (see Psalm 121:4) could have prevented the coming of the enemy entirely. Yet, just as it appeared that Jesus had been asleep in the boat, insensible to the storm, so too hear did the master not appear to respond to the enemy by blocking him at his approach.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
It cannot be said that the master desired weeds to grow in his field, or that his aspiration for the crop was anything other than the wheat he had planted. And yet we must come to terms with the fact that he didn't stop the enemies plan before it began. After all, he didn't seem entirely surprised by the report of the slaves. He seemed well enough aware of the fact that he had enemies who might attempt such a thing. But perhaps the reason he didn't stop the problem at the outset was similar to the reason he didn't decide to enforce perfection on the field after the fact. Maybe to completely oppose the enemy would have been such a devastating show of force that it would have interfered even with the intended growth of the good seed. It seemed that the intended environment of growth required some room for autonomy where not every variable was directly controlled. If there was no freedom for weeds to grow neither could the wheat grow to be what it was meant to be. However, this possibility to not upset the master. From his perspective even what the enemy meant for harm could be put to good use (see Genesis 50:20). And not only that, seed that appeared to be that of weeds, even in the mind of the enemy, might yet turn out to be wheat at the time of the harvest. The slaves attempts to be overly insistent that only wheat grow in the field would typically result in sabotaging some of the good seed along with the bad. The good seed was so intertwined with the bad that this was inevitable even if the slaves were perfectly able to discern the one from the other, which was in itself unlikely.
His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
Many of us often express the preference that the stewards of God's field would uproot every weed and leave room only for the growth of perfect plants, failing to realize that in many cases we ourselves are so inextricably connected to the weeds that even we would not pass muster in such a judgment. This is not to say that heresies ought not be opposed within the Church. Clearly ta license to be freely taught in the Church. But the parable does seem to indicate that at an individual level we are not meant to insist on perfection only and immediately. We are meant to have patience until the harvest since God himself is patient. But this is good news. For if we are patient with others we may even become able to be patient and honest with ourselves as we continue to grow.
And consider the patience of our Lord as salvation (see Second Peter 3:15).
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance (see Romans 2:4)?
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