The Wheat and the Tares

Typically Jesus taught in parables. One of those has to with the labourers reporting to the master that they had gone to inspect the fields and they found that the wheat that they had laboured to plant had been contaminated by tares that appear to have been sown during the night by a ruthless enemy. I have never seen a wheat or a tare plant, but what is clear is that they had a striking morphological resemblance. S much so that unless one painstakingly scrutinized them, he/she could unintentionally destroy a wheat plant thinking it was a tare.

I am still in the hermeneutical process with this passage to arrive at the precise meaning behind this parable. What i will say at this juncture is that a cursory examination of the church will certainly cause one to seriously question the validity of the discipleship of some members. There seems to be in every congregation some persons who have all the external trappings of a genuine disciple yet they are a constant source of problems in the church. They are always at the centre of each squabble, their names are called in each new plague of gossip, they are always grumbling about this that or the other. This is the first passage that came to mind as I looked at those kinds of persons. I would not want to be too quick to judge anyone, far be it from me, I know that I am not perfect, yet I just wonder how is that some members just don't seem to be changing from their former ways over such a protracted period of time.

When I complete the exegesis of the passage I will make another post. Until then ... Shalom!