What do we do when we find fault? That question has stayed with me all week as I’ve reflected on the Parable of the Weeds (Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43), while the Warwickshire wheat fields have been turning wonderfully white for harvest.
Have you noticed how we’re all expected to be experts these days?
We review restaurants.
We rate hotels.
We comment on politicians.
We analyse football managers.
We critique television programmes.
We even write reviews of the products we buy.
Blimey. We even have to review our recent experience at the dentist and how we were treated in our call to TalkTalk – all of which is recorded for training purposes!
When did we suddenly become experts in all of these things?
When did I become an expert on education, politics, liturgy, the church, other people’s motives.
It seems we have become opinionated about everything.
We’ve been trained to be critical and even unhappy about this, that and the other.
We’ve become Fault Finders,
When did that happen?
We all know the answer to that.
It began in the beginning.
It was then we found fault
and someone to blame.
Long before Jesus,
there’s always been fault in our stars,
even in the Garden of Eden.
Jesus tells a story for people like us.
The Parable of the Weeds is for Fault Finders.
it’s the farmer’s servants who are the Fault Finders.
They find fault in the field.
The fault in the field
is the weeds that had come up
just when the wheat sprouted
and started to grow ears.
“Do you want us to dig them out?”
the farmhands asked the farmer.
The farmer,
who had been sowing and harvesting for years,
since Adam was a lad, says,
“No.
Because when you dig the weeds up
you’ll also uproot what I planted.”
It’s as simple as that.
He told it as a parable of the Kingdom.
He even begins it with the words,
“The kingdom of heaven is like …..”
so that those with ears may hear and understand
that this is the way of the kingdom of God
trusting the Farmer while wheat and weeds grow together until the harvest.
For those with ears to hear,
Jesus is offering a new understanding,
a new way of being in a world at fault,
with others in whom we find fault.
It is the seed of an idea
God scatters in the field
of our imagination.
It is a seed of an idea
that has to grow in the crowded field of our imagination,
alongside fear, disappointment, bitterness, anxiety,
The farmer is teaching his servants to see things differently,
and Jesus, in telling this story,
is teaching his disciples to see things differently.
It isn’t wrong to notice faults.
The servants were right.
There were weeds in the field.
Jesus isn’t asking us to pretend that evil isn’t real,
or that wrong doesn’t matter.
The question is not whether we see faults.
The question is how we see them.
The servants saw the weeds
and could see little else.
The farmer saw the weeds too.
But he also saw the wheat.
He saw the harvest.
He saw the damage that impatient judgement would do.
The servants wanted to solve the immediate problem.
The farmer wanted to protect what he loved.
Perhaps that’s what Jesus means when he says,
“Let anyone with ears listen.”
Learn to see the field as the Farmer sees it.
Learn to see faults with the eyes of love.
Not denying them.
Not excusing them.
But keeping them in the larger field of grace.
The Church has been learning that lesson for two thousand years, and it shows in the genius of our liturgy.
Every Sunday we acknowledge the faults we’ve found in ourselves.
We don’t ignore them.
We don’t excuse them.
We confess them.
Not privately, but together.
In the hearing of our brothers and sisters.
I have always loved the Roman Catholic confession:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters…
It is wonderfully honest.
It tells the truth.
It doesn’t minimise our fault.
But neither does it linger there.
The confession is brief.
Grace is long.
We hear words of forgiveness.
We exchange the peace.
We’re even entrusted with the gospel.
We gather around one table.
We eat and drink together—
the same Jesus who was criticised for eating with tax collectors and sinners still feeds sinners today.
The Church has learnt something from the Farmer.
The question is not whether we see faults.
The question is how we see them.
Do they become the whole story?
Or do we see them in the larger field of grace?
Because the Farmer sees the weeds.
But he also sees the wheat.
He sees the harvest.
And he teaches us to look with his eyes.
To look at those we find fault with…
and to refuse to let their faults become the whole story.
To remember that they too are standing in the same field,
under the care of the same Farmer,
nourished by the same rain,
waiting for the same harvest.
Every one of us will leave church today and find fault with someone.
That isn’t difficult.
The question is what we see next.
Do we stop at the fault?
Or do we ask the Farmer to lend us his eyes?
Eyes that see the larger field of grace.
Eyes that see what he has planted.
Eyes that trust the harvest.
Grits and Grains 