Jesus told them another parable: “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, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
“The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
“‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.
“The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
“‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them.” – Matthew 13:24-29 (NIV)
I used to banter with my neighbours when I caught them “wasting time” on weekends: head down on bended knees, weeding their garden. “What a sight! Get a life!”
I recently heard those words boomerang back to me when I was caught red-handed uprooting dandelions from my garden after a downpour.
For those obsessed with a lush green lawn, dandelions are an invasive and uninvited weed. During winter, their rosette bases camouflage as grass, anchored by a deep taproot. In spring, their yellow daisy-like flowers morph into a white ‘puffball’ of wind-blown seeds to expand their invasion of my hallowed lawn.
The uprooting of weeds from moist soil may have looked like laborious repetition, but it felt like spring cleaning. There was something simple yet miraculous about working hand-in-hand with the seasonal rhythms and cycles of Creation.
The dandelion’s jagged leaves ostensibly resemble a lion’s teeth, hence its name stems from the French dent-de-lion. Their ‘teeth’ looked more like defence battlements of a fortress. Indeed, extracting these foot-long tap roots from my ‘fortress’ was like extracting a lion’s tooth – a very exacting art!
One passing neighbour tried to correct my (mis)classification: “At least I was weeding! Dandelions aren’t weeds! They’re good for the lawn!” He proceeded to enlighten me on their pollen that feeds bees, their leaves that boil into herbal medicine, and their tap roots that brew into ‘coffee.’ I did some fact-checking and he was right! These weeds contain antioxidants and are highly nutritious.
Children love to blow the seed heads to make wishes: another insidious ploy that these self-germinating opportunists deploy to tempt my grandchildren in my ‘Eden’!
As I toiled in the soil, it evoked the etymological ‘roots’ of humility, from the Latin word humus meaning (down to) earth. Digging even deeper, a Rabbi recently told me that the name Adam derives from the Hebrew word Adamah, which also means earth. This makes perfect sense as the “Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground’” (Genesis 2:7).
As I uprooted the ubiquitous invaders from deep in the dirt, I bundled them for removal. If ‘they’re good for the lawn’, perhaps they’re even better for my compost heap. In time, these rejects would decompose into the rich dark organic matter (humus) that improves soil fertility and plant fruitfulness.
Right under our noses, the garden is rich with echoes of Eden and Gospel parables. For example, my compost heap consists of rejects and broken parts: peels, leaves, clippings, eggshells, packaging and scraps. Yet the Creator miraculously enables this dead debris to breathe new life into old soil. Perhaps in God’s time, and in subsequent chapters of our lives, none of our brokenness goes to waste either.
When I returned to the lawn wearing my ‘Gospel’ lens, I had a dandelion-inspired epiphany about the parable of the weeds. When the weeds sprouted with the wheat, the servants asked the owner “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” In his wisdom, the owner declined because “you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.”
Indeed, my weeds disguised themselves as green grass until their yellow flowers shot up. Only then could I distinguish them from the good seed that I had sown. Only after the rain could I uproot them from softer soil. Only in that ripe moment could I avoid damaging the lawn.
Next time my neighbours catch me ‘wasting time’ and tell me to “get a life!”, I will respond with: “This keeps me grounded and reminds me to stay humble.”