Thought for the week - 19 July 2026

I had never heard of Mares Tail until I moved here a few years ago. Now, I know quite a lot about it as I have spent here years getting gardeners to eradicate it from the grounds and picking it out of my own garden. The roots grow seven metres deep as you probably know, so picking it looks better, but does little. This year I have poured bleach onto the front gravel and that seems to be doing the job, and hopefully in a few years it will have worked its way down. You may though favour letting things just grow, and rewilding gardens. But what should we do about the weeds? That’s a problem facing every farmer and gardener — a problem that Jesus uses in one of today’s Gospel parables. We’re told about the darnel growing in the midst of the crop sown by the farmer. This isn’t just about whether your garden looks pretty or not, it’s about whether your crop will fail or not, whether you will be able to live this Winter. Weeds in a crop are an unwanted, destructive nuisance.

The parables we hear this season are agricultural, and rightly so, for agriculture has sustained the world for millennia, and still does today. It’s not difficult to apply this to the Church here on earth because it’s only too obvious that it’s a mixture of good and bad people. And rightly so, indeed I am sure that we can all be good and bad at various times in pour lives – the church is not a palace for the perfect to dwell in, but a campsite for the wounded and the hopeful, to tend to each other and grow in faith, hope and love. When the nuclear holocaust comes, those who are left may be glad that they purchased good tinned food, water cleaning tablets and cigars, but more blessed are those who will share what they have. It is said that the church is full of hypocrites. Good! I hope so, because they are in exactly the right place to change. Serious sinners, though, can be different, and the weeds today show how they can kill a field.

So how should the Church should deal with these threats to the Good News taking root and growing. Some would be like the impetuous servants in the parable. They would weed out the destructive sinner. Then, they hope, the Kingdom here on earth would consist only of good, holy people, with no room for sinners. Naturally they would include themselves among this elite band of Christ’s faithful followers. It is very easy to feel better than others, but in a post-apocalyptic world, would you share your food and water, and if not, when you found out your fellow survivor was a Doctor, would you expect her to help you? Testing times reveal who we are.

Christ’s approach teaches that in pulling up the weeds we could do more harm than good. The same happens when people try to suppress unsavoury and harmful ideas. Banning a book or film will only give it unwanted publicity and increase its number of viewers. We are told the Dark Web is full of things we would rather ignore and is a great secret, but a great secret that everyone seems to know about! Mein Kamph has been forgotten because it is easily available and, clearly, drivel. Unreadable, dull drivel.

We need freedom of speech and thought and religion when freedom of speech is denied then dictators flourish and the very thing we want to preserve -the freedom to sow and cultivate the Word of God – is denied to us and therefore denied to the world. Why do dictators often ban the Bible? Because it gives hope, and the knowledge that the rulers of this world have no power over what really matters.

So we must be patient and be about our work of sowing and growing before the second coming, the time of harvesting, judgement and sorting, which will come like a thief in the night, So be prepared. This is the place of our preparation.

In this time we must be prepared for a mixture of good and bad people, saints and sinners. Like the farmer, we can be mistaken in distinguishing the one from the other.

So Jesus urges a patience which Peter’s 2nd Letter develops. He sees God’s delay in passing judgement and sorting out the good from the bad as a sign of his loving mercy. ‘The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.’ He wants to give the sinner the grace and time to repent and become a saint, the noxious weed to become a fruitful plant. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen in agriculture, but it does here, in this place of grace.

In the meantime Paul urges us to wait till the second and final era of harvest time. Then the Lord of the Harvest will pass the final judgement. He alone is qualified to distinguish with certainty the good from the bad: ‘Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness’. So it is that we are tasked with the work of the Kingdom, and of nurturing each other in the faith, in season and out of season.