Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
July 19, 2026
One of the most difficult things to talk about – something that philosophers and theologians alike have grappled with for centuries – is what is formally known as “the problem of evil.” It goes something like this: If God is all good and all powerful, why does He allow evil?
Sadly, the answer many in history and in present time give, is that because there is evil, there can be no God. That God or some benevolent being outside time and space is pure myth, wishful thinking, a delusion by weak people.
Many of our nation’s founding fathers believed in God, but some of them were Deists. They believed in some divine creator, but that he left the stage eons ago and plays no part in the universe anymore.
Some think God is a mere flim-flam, a weak, helpless creature who can’t do anything to fix this world, and He is not worth our time to worship, to pray to, or to even think about at all.
In the old Star Trek, the Next Generation series, the character known only as “Q” seemed to symbolize such a god. That God is more of a causer of mischief, that he, once in a while does something good, but most of the time is just in the way of human progress or superiority.
In the parable for today, Jesus gives us a very different answer to the problem of evil. Now, bear in mind that Jesus owes us nothing; He doesn’t owe us answers to these great and difficult issues such as evil and pain. We are creature, He is God and there is a vast difference between He and us that we ought not pridefully overlook. Even so, the Lord chooses to be gracious and kind to us and to give us answers, and for this we should be thankful.
Why is there evil in the world today? Jesus says it is because we have a loving, kind, merciful and good God. Whoa, there’s evil in the world because God is good? Let’s go through the parable and see if we can make sense of our Lord’s teaching.
A man goes out and sows seed – good seed, plentiful seed. Good seed that would sprout and grow good plants that bear good fruit. But someone else comes in the middle of the night and scatters bad seed. His intent is to hurt what the good sower sowed. The good sower wanted good seed to grow and produce fruit and the evil sower wanted evil to choke out and hurt the good.
In a large field it is often very difficult to deal with the weeds. Even with all our modern technology, farmers still contend with and struggle with weeds. And especially along the headlands of a field, farmers will often let the weeds grow. They’ll spray them to try and keep them from becoming overly aggressive, but they just keep coming.
Now, a farmer could just spray it all with very deadly poison that will take down the weeds, but there’s a risk that it will hurt the good crop as well, and these weeds seem to develop resistance to many of the herbicides that are safe on the good crops. And, let’s face it, it’s often very costly to contend with the weeds.
So, farmers will often let some of the weeds grow. It’s just economics. They won’t let the whole field be taken over by water hemp or whatever, of course, but they know that some weeds will remain and will ultimately be separated out at the harvest with the big combine machines.
This is how the Lord manages His church. After the seeds were planted by the good sower and after the evil sower, in the cover of darkness, scattered his evil and bad seed, the servants began to notice that there was a problem in the field.
First, they thought that the good farmer sowed some bad seed among the good, that he messed up somehow. But the good farmer had to correct their thinking and inform them that someone broke into the field and sowed weeds among the good seed.
The servants are like, “Let’s just rip out the weeds, problem solved.” But the farmer says that if they do that, they risk hurting the good plants.
Now, God is the good sower or farmer, the field is the world, the good seed is the believers who live by faith and abide in the Lord’s teaching and the evil seed is the unbelievers, the false teachers and heretics who are put into the church by the evil sower, the devil. And the servants are the apostles and their descendants by call, the pastors God places in the churches of His kingdom.
So, in part, this is a lesson for pastors. And there is a good saying for young pastors fresh out of seminary or on a new call: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Sometimes new pastors who get their first calls, or maybe accept a call to a new church, they’re quick to rush in and try to fix everything wrong with the congregation. But in so doing, they accomplish more harm than good.
See, orthodoxy, or being faithful to the Word, is patient and waits on the Lord. Heterodoxy, or being unfaithful to the Word, is quite often very impatient and in a hurry and refuses to wait for the Lord. Sometimes pastors, like the servants in the parable, want to fix the problems – they want to make their congregation pure and abiding in sound doctrine immediately or they get frustrated and sometimes find themselves leaving the ministry altogether. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting a church to be orthodox and faithful and for her members to be faithful in attendance and living their lives faithfully at home and at work. But you can’t make it happen overnight and in fact, it is an ongoing process. Yes, our nature wants quick and lasting change. It’s why every 4 years the presidential election might feel like life or death if we don’t get the exact president we want.
But in the Lord’s gardening, He says no. The good gardener tells the servants to be patient and wait, because he does not want to see any harm come to the good crop. He tells them that the bad crop, the weeds, it will face its due in time, that the evil sower won’t get away with his dark plans, but to be patient.
When we deal with the problem of evil or suffering in the world, we want to fix it – NOW – we want some magic pill or some 6 step plan or some political leader to just come in and wipe out what ails us and harms our nation, and we want it now. We are good at reacting. We are not so good at patience.
But let’s not be “sophomores” about all this. And if you don’t know what the word “sophomore” means, take the time to look it up. Let’s not be sophomores because we do not see the big picture. Remember that we are like grass when it comes to history and when it comes to the Lord’s interaction in history. We are here one moment and gone the next. In the brief time the Lord allots us, we should spend it learning and growing and not reacting and being foolish.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care or that false teaching shouldn’t concern us; that false prophets, preaching the devil’s dark lies in our midst shouldn’t give us pause. But what it means is that, when it comes to church growth and all the stuff that keeps us up at night such as worship attendance and membership numbers and budgets…God is much bigger than us and He has been dealing with these issues in the church for centuries upon centuries. He doesn’t need our advice or quick, reactive measures.
We so effortlessly fall into this 24-hour news cycle of how we live out and carry out the faith and I think that sometimes we need to stop, take a breath, and realize that whatever problems or pain or evil we face in this little blip on the map of the universe called Milaca, this even smaller blip in the history of the Christian church called St. Paul’s is no different than all the other blips of time and space.
Here the Lord has graciously and lovingly planted good seed, and He tends to it and nurtures it, but even so the devil has also planted his evil seed and that may be people, it may be false teaching, it may be bad practices. But neither I nor any of you would do well to rip it all up and explode the place. The Lord WILL deal with all the evil of the world, including the evil here and around us in Milaca in His time and not one bad leaf or fruit or stem will escape His wrath.
But it is possible that the good we do here, the mercy we provide, the faithfulness we exhibit in our time and talents and treasures, and the patience we have, might result in one of the weeds or briars in our community to convert, to repent and believe, to come to this font for holy baptism and have their sins washed away.
This is why, in the good and gracious and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love Lord’s mind and heart, He tells us to be patient. We will never be as patient as Him, at least not in this life, but as we grow into the crop to which He has called us, we learn the good fruits of the Spirit and we learn to exhibit the mind and heart of God, albeit imperfectly, but that’s what the Spirit of our God does.
Yes, we will struggle as these weeds attempt to choke out our spirits and distort the truth of the Gospel among us. As a pastor, when I look out into this congregation or other congregations of our beloved LCMS and I see things or hear of things that should just not be thought or practiced in a church of God, I struggle and I suffer and I want to fix it…but I learn to hold back and to deal with what I see in a patient and intentional way. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.
It bothers me when I see Christian families, moms and dads and kids, all gone, out doing whatever the world would have them do, and not here among the people and the gifts of God regularly, but what is a pastor to do? Beat down their doors and grab them by their collars and drag them to the rail and force wine down their gullets? And yes, dear children of God, these things, these distractions, this is the work of the weeds, the devil’s dark seeds meant to hurt the good crop. Don’t ever think that such distractions are just unmotivated and disconnected things. The weeds are far more pervasive than just what is obvious.
And the false teaching that literally screams from the pulpits of so many churches. I posted a video on Facebook the other day of a pastor in the Canadian ELCA who, in “her” sermon said that believing in Christ’s resurrection is archaic; she kept calling His resurrection a “resuscitation” as if He may not have really been dead. Yeah, that’s certainly a darkly planted seed sprouting up to a tall weed among the wheat. And the Lord WILL deal with that on His great Day of judgment. Our prayer, of course, is that, in the meantime, the good wheat doesn’t succumb to the false dogma of the weeds and itself become weeds.
Evil isn’t an idle thing. Like tubers that grow beneath the soil, evil lurches around among us sometimes even unsuspecting and it pops up in places and in ways and we are often totally unprepared. And sometimes evil looks so much like the good; sometimes the weeds of the field look and act much like the good, and should we make a rash movement to root out the weeds, we might end up hurting the good plants.
This is why the parable is all about God’s mercy and kindness toward us. There is evil in this world because the Lord has no interest in hurting or destroying we of the good seed which He planted. He loves us and cares for us deeply, so much so that He, the holy and perfect and righteous God who abhors evil and sin puts up with it for our sakes, and because He knows that on the Last Day all will be revealed, He also knows that evil will not prevail.
So, take heart, rest in His mercy and goodness and kindness He shows toward you, and be patient. He will, in His time, deal with whatever evil lurks amongst us or amongst the LCMS or amongst the whole Christian church, the false teaching and the teachers who spew it out, the evil practices which distort the Gospel and marginalize His commandments and teaching; He will come through for His good crop and harvest us into His eternal presence and burn and destroy all the rest, of this you can be sure.
And, as the Introit proclaims, “Teach me Your ways, O Lord, that I may walk in Your truth; unite my heart to fear Your name,” and as we learn His ways, may we learn what His mercy and goodness for us really means for we who love the Lord. Amen.
