Summary: The meaning of this parable may seem obvious, but that doesn't mean others who need to hear it would ever get it, unless they got hit over the head with the point in time to save them. Let's hope the joke is not on us./em>
My Favorite Year is a delightful 1982 film set in the New York of 1954. The narrator, Benjy Stone, is a young writer for a TV show that looks a lot like the classic Your Show of Shows. At one point he tries to explain to a young woman he wants to impress how to tell a joke.
He tries to get her to repeat a joke that begins "This guy walks into a bar ..." but when it's her turn to try, she says, "A man walks into a bar." Benjy tries to explain that in the world of jokes, it's always "this guy." Always "this guy," never "a man," but in the end he gives up and hands her a dollar for accordion lessons.
What difference does it make to say "this guy" instead of "a man"? It depends whether you want to get your point across or not. Take today's parable. In verse 37 there's a reference to someone several English Bible translations call "the Son of Man." What exactly does that mean? The Common English Bible calls this person "the Human One." The Scholar's Version has "Son of Adam," while translator Sarah Ruden chose "Son of Mankind." All of them are right in a way.
But maybe we ought to take a step backward into the Old Testament roots of "Son of Man." One place we find that term is in Ezekiel 12.1 There, the translators could take a tip from Benjy Stone and translate the Hebrew ben-adam, literally, as "son of adam," where adam means earth, or dirt -- the common substance God used to fashion the first human, Adam.2 So, yeah, one who shares our humanity: "this guy."
We also meet "this guy" --the Son of Man -- in Daniel 7,3 sitting next to the Ancient One, who's on the throne of heaven. Great things will happen to and through this person, whom we also meet in Isaiah 74 as "Immanuel," or "God-With-Us." But in the Isaiah 7 context, he is an ordinary person.
Jesus is divine, but we must not forget that while on this Earth, he was just "this guy."
Now there's more to telling a joke than simply saying "this guy." There are rules. Keep it simple. Get to the punchline. And don't bother explaining the joke (if you have to explain the punchline, you've lost the laugh). Don't try to salvage it.
Unless ... having to explain the joke is part of the joke. The act of explaining the joke to your listeners is funny because of course they already got it. That way you can laugh together at those who couldn't possibly get the joke, which only intensifies the laughter.
In this chapter of Matthew, Jesus tells a series of jokes -- well, we usually call them parables, but they've got punchlines that pack a wallop, directed at the rich, the powerful, the proud and the ones who can't be made fun of in so many words, but everyone knows who they are and how they need to be brought down a peg.
Some of the parables in Matthew 13 are agricultural: There's a parable about the soils, a parable about mustard seeds, one about a treasure buried in a field, another one about treasure hidden in plain sight in the marketplace and one about casting a net to catch fish.
And then there's this parable about weeds.
So who was listening to Jesus as he spoke? Farmers, no doubt, who had come to town because they were between planting and harvest, and day laborers who hadn't been picked to work that day, and fishermen who had been working all night, so they were done for the day, along with everyone else who'd come for market day. Ordinary folks, women and men, who recognized themselves in the characters who inhabited the parables Jesus told.
Each of these jokes, er, parables are simple and direct. Jesus told the story and got to the punchline, like a good comedian who knows what he's doing.
But in our text for today, Jesus does something that he doesn't do often: He explains the joke.
Why would he break a cardinal rule of storytelling, when ... Oh wait. You get it, don't you? Because it's the ones who don't understand that Jesus is talking about them who really need to get the joke.
Jesus was speaking to a world of suffering people, telling them stories taken directly from their lives -- but the rich, the politically powerful and some religious leaders were also listening. They may have recognized his story telling genre from its use in the Hebrew scriptures, but they weren't making the connection.
As Jesus said to his disciples: "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given."5 and then quoted Isaiah: "You will indeed listen but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive."6 Not all those who need to hear these words get it.
Have you ever heard about someone high and mighty pretending to be an ordinary person, but who hasn't a clue about the everyday stuff we encounter in our daily lives? In the same way, the political and religious leaders of the Judeans had almost no real connection to the hardships and triumphs of daily living experienced by the folks Jesus comforted, entertained, healed and saved. That was true in Isaiah's day, it was true in the time of Jesus and it's true now. They never got their hands dirty. They never had to wipe the sweat from their brows.
That brings us specifically to this week's scripture, which focuses not on the type of soils that seeds may fall upon, as in an earlier parable from this chapter, but on a deliberate act of sabotage. After good seed is sown in good soil by good people, an enemy arrives by night and sows weeds, identified in the Greek as dzidzana,7 a common weed known as darnel, that will intertwine with the good crop. So, the farmer decides to allow the crop and the weeds to grow side by side and do the separating during the harvest.
In his explanation of the parable, Jesus is very clear: The enemy is identified as none other than the devil, who, by planting seeds of weeds, can take the afternoon, well, really, the whole summer, off. This enemy doesn't need to tempt good seeds, meant to stand for good people. The weeds do the job for the devil.
It's interesting that This Guy doesn't tell us to weed out the undesirable "plants." He doesn't want to lose good plants pulled up when the weeds are wrenched out of the soil. We're to wait for harvest, and then when the plants have reached fruition, we'll yank them out and separate them then. Then we'll burn the weeds and store the grain.
Who will direct the harvesters? None other than This Guy.
The bad news is that we have to put up with the weeds for now. It's not our place to decide who's in or who's out of the Kingdom of God. That does not mean toxic individuals who do not respect boundaries have a free reign. Jesus made it clear that we are not to tolerate those who would harm the least of these. When he warned, "If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea."8 Certainly this warning, directed at those who intend physical, psychological, emotional or sexual harm is also for those who know such things are happening and do not report what they know to the proper authorities.
But on the other hand, both society and the church have to put up with all sorts of difficult individuals in our midst. Jesus demonstrated through his apostles that we believers will always be a flawed bunch.
Because, hard as it is to believe, God wants to save all of us, including the difficult people. Why else would Jesus bother to explain a parable that seems so obvious? Just because it's obvious to us doesn't mean that those who need to hear it will ever get it, unless they get hit over the head with the point.
So if This Guy, the Son of Man, God in our Midst, the child of a human being, insists we can't pull the weeds prematurely, we certainly ought to try to tolerate, and maybe even love these impossible imposters.
But let us rest assured that if they refuse to get it, the joke will be on the arrogant scoffers, the abusers, the cowards who hide behind power, the bullies -- the ones who don't get the joke in the first place.
Rest assured, Jesus is This Guy. He's one of us. Here is God's presence with us, and it's not a joke. No, the joke is on the rich, the powerful, the prideful and anyone else who refuses to get it.