Today I am kicking myself for choosing this week's gospel passage from the lectionary, rather than something else. I'm sure that when I read the other choices, they were all somehow more awful to contemplate, but really? Weeds and Wheat? ugh.

So far I have learned that the weeds in this passage (formerly translated "tares") are a specific kind of weed that looks just like wheat until almost harvest time, when the ears form.

And I have learned that doing parables for three weeks in a row is silly.

And I have learned that a lot of times, Jesus' witty stories don't make any sense.

When I was an intern at Church of the New Covenant, I preached once a month. I set myself a challenge at the beginning of the year: to preach at least one sermon on every major genre of biblical literature--"history", poetry, prophets, wisdom literature, parable, epistle, etc. When it came down to the day I had to choose the Revelation text in order to fulfill my personal challenge, I nearly decided to drop it because I felt like I'd been overly ambitious and I didn't *really* need to do that anyway....but I did it anyway. That sermon was terrible, but I did the work and I preached it anyway, even though at the time I thought it was crazy hard.

That's how I'm feeling about the parable this week. I mean, really...weeds and wheat? Really? I didn't set myself a challenge or anything, I just made what seemed at the time like perfectly reasonable worship planning choices...and I ended up with something crazy hard. Here's hoping the Spirit comes up with something to say before Sunday morning.