Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field

Trinity or The Hospitality of Abraham by Andrei Rublev.  1411 or 1425-27.  Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

 Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house.  And His disciples came to Him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field."  He answered and said to them:  "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.  The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.  The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.  Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.  The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire.  There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"

- Matthew 13:36-43

We have been reading through chapter 13 of Matthew's Gospel, in which Jesus begins to preach in parables.  On Saturday, we read that Jesus taught:  "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, 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."  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."  All these things Jesus spoke to the multitude in parables; and without a parable He did not speak to them, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying:  "I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world."

Then Jesus sent the multitude away and went into the house.  And His disciples came to Him, saying, "Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field."  He answered and said to them:  "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man.  The field is the world, the good seeds are the sons of the kingdom, but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.  The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels.  Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.  The Son of Man will send out His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire.  There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"  Jesus taught this parable of the wheat and the tares in the reading for Friday of last week.   It built upon the parable of the sower, the first parable given by Christ.  In chapter 13, Jesus is teaching in this new way, now that the crowds are so large there are many who come simply from curiosity, because His ministry has reached such proportions and is so well known.  But in private, He explains the parables to His disciples.  First He explained why He was teaching in parables, and then He explained the parable of the sower to them.  Here in today's reading, He explains in private this second parable given, that of the wheat and the tares, in which the tares are weeds that resemble the wheat, but which fool the eye, as they are not edible nor nourishing as the wheat.

If we think about wheat, we get an important image for the Gospels.  This is the image of the Eucharist, as the Eucharist is fashioned from wheat -- through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit, traditional faith teaches us that Christ is present for us in the Eucharist.  Communion, then, is an image of the Incarnation of Christ, in which the divine Son becomes incarnate human being as Jesus, and walks among us to give us the word.  Many early Church Fathers have given us the understanding that the Incarnation itself happened so that God could make the offer to us that we might become more "like God."  St. Clement of Alexandria writes, "Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god" (Exhortation to the Greeks, 1).  So prevalent was this understanding among the early Fathers of the Church, that it forms the very foundation of the Councils that were to come, and thus the basis for our faith.  In the image of the wheat and weeds, Jesus gives us a prefiguring sense of the importance of the word He brings, and in its explanation to the disciples He emphasizes the difference between those who would be sons of the kingdom and those who would be sons of the evil one.  Both grow together in our world, and this is the state of the world.  But in this parable He gives us an image of the final judgment, what is important to God, and the manifestation of the Kingdom.  There is a discernment to be made, a judgment which will come at the end of the age, a lifetime to walk a walk in which we attempt to find true communion with Christ through His word, and be a "son of the kingdom."  The end of the age is an eschatological image which is simply too far away for us to really comprehend or even know what it is about or will look like.  But nevertheless, Jesus introduces the disciples (and us) to this understanding for a reason.  He gives us not simply a choice, but a path, a "way." (When Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" in John 14:6, that word for way in Greek also means "road.")   In this parable and its explanation, Jesus is giving us a sense of the great difference the interior choice and orientation makes, whether our communion is with God through Christ, so that we may become more "God-like" as "sons [meaning heirs] of the kingdom" or whether we are separate from such a true path.  All the value and worth, as given in the images in this parable, is in being that good wheat, that which will form this communion with God, and grow us as children of the kingdom.  That which we love, that with which we seek union, is that which we will become.  This is a clear and consistent understanding of the teachings of Christ.  While the day of judgment and the end of the age may be things so far away from us that we are not even capable of imagining or fully understanding them, nevertheless our present lives in the here and the now have meaning.  Every little step, the internal choices we make, are important enough to Christ that He would give us this parable and its vivid imagery to think about.  What do we love?  Do we take His word into our hearts?  Does Communion as a concept mean something to you?  In the image of the Eucharist, do you find the food that encourages you to "take in" His seed and to become more like Him, a "son of the kingdom"?  Each of these images brings us closer to the understanding that what it is we love in our hearts forms a kind of orientation and choice that may be a basis for every other thing we choose.  We can always stop to pray for God's will for us.  We can always pause to consider our love for God and remembrance of God.  We can honor God with love in our hearts.  We can learn to live, in the simplest moment, in a way that honors this choice in the heart, this basic orientation of identity.  The way that Jesus puts it, it little matters what everyone else is doing all around us, what we find that will distract us from this orientation, and all the ways that others don't necessarily care anything at all about it.  Nevertheless, we are assured through His interpretation of the parable that the small cares of the heart do indeed make a great deal of difference -- in fact, all of the difference to Him and to the angels of heaven, the kingdom He plans.  What we need to understand from the parable is that this end of the age which Jesus foresees is made up of the small moments of our lives.   Each moment may seem insignificant, even our lives may seem so.  We might be frequently tempted to ask what difference our particular lives make, unless we're convinced we're "important" in some worldly sense.  But it is not so to Christ, for the good wheat is that very thing which will make up His kingdom.  When we're tempted to think our momentary choices don't matter, let us remember this parable and the love that He asks us to return.  It is in that communion that His kingdom is built, His word or seed takes root, and upon which even the end of the age will rest.   We may stop to wonder why the Gospel gives us the explanation of this parable after Jesus has told two more (see Saturday's reading, above), the parable of the mustard seed and that of the leaven.  In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus teaches about the tiniest seed that grows into a tree which harbors "birds of the air," an image of angels.  The icon above is an image of the hospitality of Abraham, in which he "entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:1-2).   This is also known as an icon, or image, of the Holy Trinity.  The story of Abraham, too, is a story of judgment and the action of angels, a teaching about intercession, of small acts of hospitality, and of the power of even a single faithful person (see Genesis 18).  Angels figure in today's reading prominently, as those who will reap the harvest at the end of the age.  Let us understand the power of the smallest choice in the "smallest" of lives, which may truly harbor angels "unawares."  It does indeed, in the images of Christ and the teachings of Scripture, make a great deal of difference -- all the difference in the world.