Day 1

Day One: A Field Somebody Sabotaged

Devotional

Two years ago, Pastor Harry and his wife Beth planted a field of sunflowers, letting grasses, thistle, and volunteer plants grow up right alongside them on purpose. It looks like a mess. It is also, by his own account, one of the most beautiful things on the farm. Jesus tells a similar story in Matthew 13: a man sows good seed, and in the night an enemy sows weeds, darnel, right into the same ground. In the blade stage, darnel is wheat’s near-perfect double: you cannot tell them apart until the grain head forms, months later, by which point their roots are hopelessly tangled. That uncertainty was not just an ancient farming problem. For the Anabaptist forebears of the peace-church tradition Pastor Harry has spent his ministry inside of, it was a matter of life and death: the neighbor who might be an informant, the friend you could not quite be sure of. We still feel that old fear today, wondering whether the person two pews over, or another part of the church, is really wheat, or darnel wearing wheat’s face. Today’s question is not whether that fear is real. It is what we do with it.

Scripture: Matthew 13:24-28 (NIV)

“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat… ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’”

From the Sermon

“It is, by any conventional standard, a mess. And it is also, by every account I trust, one of the most beautiful things on our farm.”

Reflect

Where do you see wheat and weeds growing tangled together right now, in the world, in the church, or in your own heart, and what does that stir in you?

Prayer

God of the field, we confess that mess unsettles us. We would rather sort, label, and clear the ground than live with what we cannot yet tell apart. Give us the courage to notice our fear of imposters without letting it choose our actions. Help us trust that you see what we cannot yet see. Amen.

Day 2

Day Two: The Patience That Costs Something

Devotional

When the servants discover the weeds, they ask the obvious question: “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” It is not an overreaction; it is a reasonable question from people who know what is at stake. The landowner says no, not because the danger is not real, but because the roots are tangled: pulling up the weeds now would tear out the wheat with them. Church history bears this out in painful detail. Every purification campaign, Pastor Harry reminds us, believed itself to be protecting true wheat from dangerous imposters, and every one of them killed indiscriminately, the true along with the false. Historian Alan Kreider calls the alternative “patient ferment”: the early church spread for three centuries not through coercion but through people simply living faithfully, trusting that separating wheat from weed was never theirs to rush. That patience is not indifference to evil. It is honesty about who we are, and who we are not: we are not the harvester.

Scripture: Matthew 13:29-30 (NIV)

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.’”

From the Sermon

“That is not permissiveness. That’s the cost of premature judgment, named honestly.”

Reflect

Where have you tried to pull up a weed before its time, in a relationship, an argument, or in yourself, and what might it have cost to wait instead?

Prayer

Patient God, we are quick to sort and slow to trust. Forgive us for the times we have acted as harvesters when you never asked us to. Teach us the difference between caring about what is true and taking judgment into our own hands. Grow in us the kind of patience that costs something. Amen.

Day 3

Day Three: Not the End, But the Completion

Devotional

When Jesus explains the parable, he says the harvest comes at “the end of the age,” a phrase that Pastor Harry says has done us real harm, because it sounds to modern ears like a fuse burning toward an explosion. But the Greek word, synteleia, does not mean termination; it means consummation, completion, closer to “when the whole thing finally comes to fullness” than “when it all gets destroyed.” The harvest is not God losing patience. It is the moment growth completes itself and what was tangled finally becomes clear, not because someone forced it apart early, but because it is finally what it was always becoming. And notice where the good seed is sown: not into a private greenhouse, but into the field, which is the world, the same tangled ground where the weeds are also growing, with real agency, right alongside us. That is where the wheat was always going to grow.

Scripture: Matthew 13:38-39 (NIV)

“The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom… The harvest is the end of the age.”

From the Sermon

“The harvest isn’t God losing patience and swinging the axe. It’s the moment growth completes itself.”

Reflect

What unresolved thing in your life have you been waiting on, and how does it change your waiting to think of the ending as completion rather than destruction?

Prayer

God of the harvest, we grow impatient waiting for things to be made clear. Help us trust that completion is coming, even when it feels slow. Remind us that we are sown into the world, not sheltered from it, and that this is exactly where you intend for us to grow. Amen.

Day 4

Day Four: Those Who Shine

Devotional

The parable’s explanation ends with a single line: “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” Pastor Harry suggests we misread this sentence nearly as badly as we misread “the end of the age.” Shining is not the reward for good sorting. Drawing on Anglican priest Ian Mobsby’s language of “kin-dom,” a term theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz gave the church to reimagine God’s reign as a family of equals rather than a hierarchy, Pastor Harry reframes righteousness entirely: those who shine are not the ones who separated themselves from everyone else. They are the ones who let themselves be transformed by the patient, merciful love of God. They are not the ones with the sharpest eye for spotting darnel. They are the ones who finally trusted the Sower more than their own judgment.

Scripture: Matthew 13:43 (NIV)

“Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

From the Sermon

“They have learned to trust the Good Sower more than their own judgements.”

Reflect

What would it look like this week to trust the Sower more than your own judgment, of yourself or of someone you have already sorted into “weed”?

Prayer

Merciful Sower, we admit how often we trust our own eyes more than your patience. Transform us, not into better sorters, but into people who shine because we have let your love work on us. Teach us to trust you more than our own judgments, today and every day this week. Amen.

Day 5

Day Five: Grown Together, Grief and Joy in the Same Ground

Devotional

A few weeks earlier, Pastor Harry told the congregation the honest truth about grieving his father: harder than expected, not well. For most of his life, his instinct with grief was the same instinct he once had about that pasture: weed it out, clear the ground, grieve efficiently, and move on. But he has stopped trying to pull it out. He is letting grief and joy grow tangled together in the same ground, the way that sunflower field is tangled every summer now, and it is making him more of a person, not less. Henri Nouwen’s image of the “wounded healer” names why: our own unhealed places, held honestly, become exactly the ground where we are able to sit with someone else’s pain. The invitation for all of us, farmers and students and everyone carrying grief alongside something good, is the same: we are not asked to sort the field. We are asked to grow in it, faithfully, patiently, tangled up with things we did not plant, until the growing is complete.

Scripture: 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort others.”

From the Sermon

“The grief hasn’t cancelled the joy. It’s grown alongside it, root to root, producing a depth of character a cleanly weeded life never would have.”

Reflect

Who in your life is carrying grief and joy tangled together right now, and what would it look like this week to sit with them instead of trying to help them sort it out?

Prayer

God of comfort, thank you for not asking us to weed our own hearts clean before we come to you. Teach us to let grief and joy grow root to root, trusting that you are at work in both. Make us wounded healers for the people around us this week, patient with their tangled ground the way you have been patient with ours. Amen.

Study Guide

Let Them Grow Together

Small Group Discussion Guide

Pleasant Valley Church of the Brethren | Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Summary

This week’s sermon explores Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43), drawing on my own sunflower field, where weeds and wildflowers were allowed to grow up together on purpose. I traced how the fear of “imposters growing among us” shaped painful chapters of church history, including the persecution of the Anabaptist forebears of the peace-church tradition, and argued that we do not have the standing to separate wheat from weeds without doing more harm than good. I reframed “the end of the age” as completion rather than destruction, and redefined the righteous not as sharp sorters but as people transformed by God’s patient, merciful love. I closed with a personal reflection on grief, letting grief and joy grow tangled together rather than weeding either one out.

Opening Prayer

God of the field, we come together tonight carrying our own tangled ground: things we understand and things we don’t, people we trust and people we’re not sure of, grief and joy growing side by side. Quiet our instinct to sort and fix. Open us instead to grow together, patiently, honestly, trusting you more than our own judgment. Amen.

Ice Breaker

Have you ever grown, or seen, a garden, field, or yard where something “messy” (wildflowers, a cover crop, an untamed corner) was allowed to grow on purpose? What did you notice about it? What did it teach you, or what did it make you uncomfortable about?

Key Verses

Matthew 13:30, “Let both grow together until the harvest.”
Matthew 13:38, “The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom.”
Matthew 13:43, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

Group Discussion Questions

In the parable, the servants want to pull the weeds right away. Why do you think the landowner says no? What does his answer reveal about the difference between caring about evil and taking judgment into our own hands?
I explained that the Greek word for “end of the age,” synteleia, means completion rather than termination. How does that change the way you hear the parable’s ending?
In the sermon, I traced how the impulse to “sort wheat from weeds” played out in Anabaptist history, with tragic results. Where do you see that same impulse, sorting who is “in” and who is “out,” at work in the church or the world today?
Darnel could not be told apart from wheat until the grain head formed, months into the season. Have you ever misjudged someone, or been misjudged, before the full picture was clear? What happened?
I described shifting my own approach to grief, from weeding it out to letting it grow tangled with joy. Is there something in your life you have been trying to weed out before its time?
Henri Nouwen’s phrase “wounded healer” suggests our own unhealed places can become the ground for helping others. Where have you seen that be true, in yourself or in someone you know?
“Those who shine are not those who have succeeded in separating themselves from everyone else.” Who is someone in your life you have quietly sorted into “weed,” and what would it look like to trust the Sower with them instead?
This week, what would it look like for you to grow rather than sort, in a specific relationship, situation, or part of your own heart?

Life Applications

Identify one relationship or situation where you have been trying to “pull weeds” early. This week, practice patience there instead: choose one specific, concrete way to hold off on judgment. Check in with your group next week on what you noticed.
Choose one person you have quietly sorted into “weed.” Reach out to them this week with one small act of ordinary kindness (a text, a call, a shared meal) and see what happens. Be ready to share how it went.
If you are carrying grief alongside something good, give yourself permission this week to let both be true at once, without rushing to resolve either. Journal one sentence a day about what that is like, and bring one line to share.

Key Sermon Takeaways

We are not asked to sort the field; we are asked to grow in it, faithfully and patiently.
Premature judgment has a cost: pulling weeds too soon tears out wheat too.
“The end of the age” means completion, not destruction; the harvest is a promise, not a threat.
Righteousness is not sharp sorting; it is letting ourselves be transformed by God’s patient, merciful love.
Grief and joy can grow root to root in the same ground, producing a depth of character a cleanly weeded life never would.

Closing Prayer

Good Sower, thank you for planting us in this field together, weeds, wheat, and all. As we leave tonight, help us carry what we’ve talked about: less certainty about who to sort out, more trust in your patience. Grow us together until the harvest, and until then, teach us to grow, not to sort. Amen.