On September 26, 1991, four men and four women began the worlds largest scientific and social experiment.
“Biosphere 2,” it was called, with the idea being that Earth is the first biosphere, and this is what a colony in space might be like. It was a sealed-off complex consisting of a number of zones and stocked with all sorts of plants and animals. The eight scientists were going to live there in this mini-utopia for two years. It was ultimately a failure, though. Crops died. Oxygen levels dropped. Hummingbird and honeybee populations collapsed. Cockroaches were everywhere. And the people formed two rival factions that started hiding food from each other. They did manage to keep it going for the whole two years, but at the end, Jane Poynter, one of the scientists, summed it up saying, “Basically, we suffocated, starved, and went mad.”
It isn’t really any surprise that the Biosphere 2 experiment went the way that it did. They probably should have expected it. But in some ways this life can be similar to the experience of those scientists. We’re living in this world, “Biosphere 1,” and we can’t always escape the problems or the people that trouble us. No matter what we do, no matter how we try to perfect it, this world is a sinful place. We can see it in nature, where decay and disorder reign. And we can see it in people, where even those we hand-pick as our friends might turn against us. Truly, we can’t put our hope in this life. But don’t despair, because the end is coming. Wait patiently for the harvest. Wait patiently for salvation.
In another of his parables, Jesus gives us a great picture of what this is like. Last week we heard the parable of the sower and the seed. This week’s parable similarly uses a picture from farming. Jesus told the people a short story about a man who sowed good seed in his field, but an enemy sowed weeds in that same field. It’s clear right from the beginning that Jesus is speaking symbolically, because even though the picture makes sense to all of us, this doesn’t seem like the sort of thing we’d expect to happen in real life.
But that’s just the setup. The question is, should the workers pull up the weeds or not? I don’t always do a great job of weeding my garden, but I try to keep pulling weeds, at least the big ones. In this case though, the owner tells his servants the opposite. He tells them, “No, leave the weeds.” Why? He says, “because when you gather up the weeds, you might pull up the wheat along with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “First, gather up the weeds, bind them in bundles, and burn them. Then, gather the wheat into my barn.”
Later on Jesus explained the parable to his disciples. This parable contains a whole bunch of symbols. Jesus said,
The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. 38The field is the world. The good seeds are the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the Evil One. 39The enemy who sowed them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the world. The reapers are angels.
As Christians, we look forward to the harvest. We look forward to Judgment Day. We see this lesson taught all over Scripture. A great day is coming, the day of salvation. The day when we’ll see Jesus and his angels. The day we’ll be freed from all the pains of this life. The day when we’re brought into heaven and all things are made new.
This parable teaches us about that day. It also teaches us about the wait. As long as we are wheat growing in the field of this world, there will be weeds. There’s no escaping it. We’re trapped. We’re trapped in the situations that are brought about by sin—sins committed by others and the consequences of sins we ourselves have committed. We’re trapped with the entropy around us, the groaning of nature, the decay and disorder. Even our greatest accomplishments won’t last forever. And finally, we’re trapped with people, people who are a part of our lives in one way or another, people who rule over us, people who do not have our best interest in mind, who in fact are “sons of the Evil One.” This is the life that we are in. There’s no way to remove all of them. There’s no where we can escape to. This world, Biosphere 1, is all we have. There is no Biosphere 2. The field of this world will have weeds in it all the way until the harvest.
This is true even in the church. We might think that if there is one place we could have a true slice heaven’s harmony it would be in the church. Surely there we can root out all the weeds. Surely that’s a sphere we can purge. But even in the church there can be weeds: thistles of discord, nettles of hypocrisy, factions and rumors that spread like tenacious crabgrass.
It can be pretty disheartening to see such things, especially when they happen like that in our own midst. We want better. We expect better. Can’t we figure out our problems? In the church especially, aren’t these people Christians who know right and wrong? But don’t be surprised. Jesus has warned us. There are weeds growing in the field of this world. They will not be removed until the harvest, until the Judgment.
Does that trouble you? As God’s children, sin should always trouble us. But this parable gives us comfort and hope in two ways, for the eternity that awaits us, and for now. For the future, it teaches us to look to the harvest. It will not be this way forever. The sins that bother us and the people who hate us will not trouble us forever. Jesus overcame them by his cross. He won salvation for us. He ascended into heaven for us to prepare a kingdom which we don’t yet see but we know is coming. The devil and his temptations will be gone forever. We will have no enemies to threaten us. We’ll have no aches and pains. Even the little things that get in the way of perfect harmony between us as brothers and sisters in Christ will be gone forever.
What a great thing it is to live in that hope! Apart from Christ no such hope exists. All there is is frustration. All there is is the collapsing Biosphere. All there is is our own short lives, like the grass of the field that withers and fades. No glorious angels. No joyful harvest. No heavenly barns. Truly, to those who reject Christ the end should be a fearful thing, because it brings not blissful nothingness but rather the terror of judgment. Those same angels will cast the weeds into the fiery furnace, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But even now we wait for that day, the day of Judgment, the day of Salvation, knowing the patient love of Jesus. If you do any gardening, this has probably happened to you. You were going along, pulling up weeds, and accidentally pulled up one of the plants you wanted to keep. Maybe you kick yourself but then you toss it aside and move on. There are more, after all. We plant extra plants so that it’s no big deal when we lose a few.
That’s not the Jesus we find telling this parable. Instead, we find a Jesus who is so concerned for each and every one of us that he stays the judgment until just the right time, when the full harvest has come in. He will not carelessly uproot even one of us, or shrug and toss us aside. And so the very thing that might trouble us, living with the weeds of this sinful world, is covered by something beautiful, by the patient love of Jesus for sinners like us. In Word and Sacrament he cares for us throughout our lives from the time he first calls us until the very end, forgiving our sins, strengthening us in faith, leading us to produce a harvest of righteousness.
You aren’t trapped as you live in the Biosphere of this earth and as wheat among weeds. You’re blessed by God, chosen by him, made righteous by his blood. Rejoice in his forgiveness and his patient love. Serve him with all the time and energy you have as this world crumbles around you. And wait patiently for the harvest, the day of Salvation, when you will shine like the sun in the kingdom of your Father. Amen.
— Pastor Seth Georgson