“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.“ (Matthew 7:1&2)

I wonder how many times we have asked the question — “why does God not just crush the wicked, so that we can have a world of goodness and kindness?” Jesus teaches that we live in a world where good and evil grow together. Jesus tells about two farmers — one who sows good seed to grow wheat, and the enemy who sows weeds among the wheat. And the two crops grow alongside of each other. When workers ask the farmer if they should pull up the weeds, he tells them to let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest time — when he will tell the workers to pull up the weeds (Matthew 13:28-30).

However, despite this teaching — it seems to be the ongoing temptation for followers of Jesus to want to pull up the weeds. Christians have a terrible history of persecuting people who look like weeds: I think of the inquisitions of the Catholic Church, and the Puritan persecutions, and the many, many people who fled their homes because of a different religious belief.

Here is the good news: the Lord of the Harvest has chosen to let us grow until the end of time — so that we have opportunity to move from being weeds to becoming wheat. I can become more than I am right now because God is working with me. And if God allows me to remain in the wheat field without pulling me up — if God allows me this opportunity to grow in Grace — then I need to celebrate that God allows the same in other people. So let us stop passing judgement of who are weeds and who are not — who is “in” and who is ”out.” Jesus says quite plainly that the judgement belongs to the Father. It is not our task to pull up weeds. Let us rather share the love of God with everyone, so that all can know the Grace of God, and that all can be welcomed home at the harvest festival.