I’m haunted by the face of a young man with a wide, friendly smile and lively, kind eyes. Last Monday morning in the quiet streets of a small town in Maine, a 25 year old father from Columbia was murdered by our government. His wife said that he had many dreams, but the dream he held closest was to be a parent. “Every morning,” she said, “my daughter would wake up and call out to Papá to tell him she was awake and had slept well.” Guerrero worked two jobs, delivering groceries and cleaning at a veterinary office, still; he made time to take his daughter to the park every afternoon. “From the moment he held her in his arms and held her tiny hand, he never let her go,” his wife said.

And then, on Thursday, we woke to yellow skies filled with smoke and a number on the air quality index I can’t remember ever seeing before. I felt distress as a weight on my chest all day long, as I contemplated how the air that sustains our lives can become a poison. Sitting inside our safe air-conditioned home, I watched neighbors bike by, not for the fun of it, but clearly needing to get somewhere. Driving around, I saw people out doing yard work and construction, people who clearly had no choice but to show up and put in their day’s work, while taking those hazardous particles deep into their lungs. I saw terrifying photos taken from boats racing over choppy water, walls of smoke and flame in the background, as whole indigenous communities in Ontario fled for their lives. And I wondered, too, how our more than human relatives were coping. Where do the birds or bees or squirrels go to find relief?

The story Jesus told about the wheat and the weeds is part of a string of parables in Matthew’s Gospel that are supposed to illustrate what the kingdom (or kin-dom) of heaven is like. How will it be, when, as Jesus taught his disciples to pray, God’s will is enacted “on earth as in heaven”? To be honest, I’ve spent pretty much this entire week (right up until this moment), scratching my head over today’s strange little story. Which is appropriate. Parables are supposed to make us wonder, to surprise and startle us, to provoke our imaginations. It does also help to remember that these stories are not allegories that make one to one comparisons. So when Jesus said, “the kin-dom of heaven may be compared to…” he was looking at the whole field, all the characters, and all their actions, the entire sweep of the story, from planting to harvest.

If there’s a call to action in this tale, it seems to be “let the weeds grow.” I, for one, am not a big fan of this gardening philosophy. As I was telling the kids last week, when I was young, my dad would send me to the garden to pull weeds that had grown almost as tall as me. Those weeds were scary! No. It’s better to get ahead of the weeds before they take hold, suck up all the moisture and nutrition, and produce a million new seeds.

The weeds in today’s parable are not generic. In Greek, they are identified by name, as ‘darnel,’ or ‘false wheat’. Apparently, false wheat is almost identical to real wheat in its early stages of growth. It’s not until the kernels form, and the harvest nears, that the difference is clear. And, darnel is not simply an annoying pest; it is dangerous. When eaten, it is poisonous, and can cause serious illness or even death. According to the Bible Hub dictionary, “Roman law actually forbade the malicious sowing of such weeds in an enemy’s field[…]”

So, the kin-dom of heaven is like the planting of the good seed along with the nighttime invasion of poisonous look-alike weeds. This kin-dom story probes moral and practical dilemmas—how to tell what is good or harmful, nourishing or poisonous; what to do about interference and sabotage. On the one hand, those involved in the parable clearly notice and name the presence of evil, the work of enemies. The slaves recognize the false wheat, and the master knows an enemy has been in the field. On the other hand, the similarity between the weeds and wheat suggest ambiguity and complexity and warn against hasty judgements. The same guy who told this story commanded his disciples to love their enemies. And noted that God makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and unjust alike. And further noted that one’s enemies could be members of one’s own household. Indeed, the master cautions the slaves that pulling the weeds will also uproot the wheat. Like it or not, the fates of the good seed and the seed planted by the enemy are intertwined. These opposing forces are interdependent.

This little story certainly rings true as I reflect on these times in which we live. This world is like a farm in which good and evil, nourishment and poison, grow side by side. It’s a contested space, a field of struggle, filled with tangled and competing forces. On the one hand, evil is real. We can see it and name it. It’s evil that our air is turning to poison. It’s evil that, more and more, survival depends on having privileges many can’t afford. It’s evil, the murder of our neighbors, the families ripped apart, the terror and grief, the whole mass deportation plan.

At the same time, the complex global systems in which we live continually produce both good and evil outcomes that we are all implicated in. Forming a sustainable relationship with the earth and each other in a way that will stabilize our planetary life support systems, that is a collective, systemic venture. None of us can do it alone. And our immigration system is simply doing what it was designed to do, what it has always done, even when we’ve not been paying attention, which is violently enforce racist ideas about who does and doesn’t belong. It didn’t start with the people in charge now and it won’t end when they’re gone. None of us who call ourselves citizens can claim innocence and we are all responsible for, together, imagining something better.

So is there Gospel good news for us in this confounding little story? I am musing over what this parable is trying to say about who God is, where God is, what God is doing. I’m clear that no particular character represents God. The householder, for instance, who sows the good wheat seed, is a wealthy landowner with slaves. So he does this work of nourishment within a larger context that is oppressive and evil. He represents an extractive society, built for the elites, through the exploitation of ordinary people. I am trusting that Jesus did not have this landowner in mind to represent God.

Where I sense God’s presence most is in the mystery and miracle of growth. The bundling and burning of the weeds is not one more example of the harmful, punitive models of justice we humans are so invested in. It is a reckoning in which truth and good prevail and healing happens that will benefit all of us. It is a renewal of our systems so that they can serve justice and life, so that we can all be safer, free-er and more whole. The promise of this parable is that even as the weeds thrive, so does the wheat. Amid all that is evil, all that threatens, deceives and poisons, what nourishes us will continue to grow and there will be harvests. We will give thanks. We will feast. We will laugh and cry and tell stories. And together with God, we will keep on tending the fields of the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.