Seeds & Sabotage

Toward an Eco-Political Reading of Matthew 13:24-30

Hey y’all!

I know things have been quite around here this year as I work through the last leg of my seminary journey, and for that I apologize, but I wanted to share some news and a recent paper I wrote (made available to all subscribers regardless of subscription type.)

The News

The news is that Compost Christianity is undergoing a slight rebrand. While Composting remains at the heart of my theological thinking and methodology I have felt a shift emerging from the heap as I have sought to continue the work of cultivating an eco-theology for the end of the word. This shift has happened over the last year as some of my language as become more refined, and so out of the continual process of composting has emerged “Seeds & Sabotage | Theology in a World on Fire.”

Honestly, not much will change (with the exception of hoping to post more) with this shift, but it feels like an important turn in my work as I prepare for capstone projects and thesis writing.

The Paper

The below paper is a good example of the theological work of composting as this paper is in s many ways the product of an earlier post (Seeds of sedition) and a similar paper I wrote in a different context (Sabbath and Sabotage.) What emerged when I revisited the text of Matthew 13:24-30 and the theological reflections I had already written was something more overtly political and oriented toward the work of praxis (reflection and action.)

Hope you enjoy!

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Seeds & Sabotage: Toward an Eco-Political Reading of Matthew 13:24-30

Introduction

All too often, the Christian tradition has been quick to forget that while the teachings of Jesus may be “for us” they were not written “to us,” leaving our varied interpretations uprooted from the context, culture, and concerns from which the teachings were first told, shared, and recorded. Using the tools of the historical critical and dialogical methods I will place Matthew’s Parable of the Tares in dialogue with the Gospel of Thomas and Matthew’s Parable of the Mustard Seedin an attempt to cultivate an eco-political interpretation of Matthew 13:24-30 with the potential to engender the radical praxis necessary for responding to the Polycrisis with tactics of adaptation and escalation.^[1] To propagate one such “true” interpretation, that takes seriously the deep socio-political roots from which these teachings have emerged, we must dig beneath the surface of the pages in search of the mycelial-like threads that exist between the “dynamic interrelations” of the earliest Christian communities, allowing their varied contexts, culture, and concerns to inform our interpretive endeavors.^[2] It is here, through dialogue with extra-canonical and intratextual sources that I believe we can cultivate a seditious interpretation of Matthew 13:24-30 that is capable of sowing the seeds of solidarity, Sabbath, and sabotage needed “for us” to live in faithfulness to the “Kingdom of Heaven” in a world on fire.^[3]

The Matthean / Agrarian Context

Most scholars believe that the Gospel of Matthew emerged sometime between 80-90AD within the context of a Galilean Jewish Christian assembly seeking to live and understand the teachings of Jesus in the aftermath of the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman imperial forces.^[4] It is here in this agricultural society whose population was economically “dependent on the wealthy elite” that “lived by depriving” the poor through heavy taxation on what little these farming communities could produce on their “inadequate or barren land” that Matthew’s Gospel, and the teachings of Jesus, take shape.”^[5] Much like the response of the post-exilic Jewish community, the Matthean community had to undertake a process of communal recovery, redefinition of identity, and religious renewal. In a period of transition, they sought to navigate threats to their survival and the crisis of identity brought on by the crucifixion of Jesus on one hand, and the razing of the Temple on the other.^[6] Out of these events emerged an understanding of Jesus as a “new Mose” who interprets Torah, fulfills prophecy, and has ultimately become the new “locus of divine presence” in the face of socio-economic crises and the absence of the Temple.^[7]

The author of Mathew portrays Jesus as a prolific agrarian pedagogue who weaves parables and prophecy together into apocalyptic and “subversive” speech that draws on “nature and common life” using images of “fishnets, leaven,” and “weeds” to teach about the unfolding Kingdom of Heaven, God’s Judgment, and Torah observance.^[8] By doing so, Mathew’s Gospel places Jesus squarely in the lineage of the Hebrew prophets like Amos, and Hosea, who frequently used farming metaphors to cultivate a prophetic pedagogy that addressed a web of interconnected social, political, religious, and economic issues in their day.^[9] The parables of Jesus embody this prophetic tradition as they use similar agrarian metaphors to “remind, provoke, refine, confront” and even “disturb” their original hearers.^[10] The Parable of the Tares is no exception, as is made clear by the use of earthy metaphors to paint a proactive, but albeit obscure, portrait of a kingdom that is above and beyond the kingdoms of the world.^[11]

Interpretive Soil

Before briefly engaging with two interpretations of this text, and then offering my own, it is important that I make clear how my social-location colors my interpretive practices. I am a poor Southern Anarchist Appalachian Christian desperately trying to navigate the ever-worsening effects of the climate crisis in a community that is buttressed between ongoing environmental degradation and the poverty-inducing effects of disappearing industries, like coal mining, because of so-called “green legislation.” Theologically and politically, I have been shaped by liberation-oriented traditions, such as The Diggers, The Catholic Worker Movement, The Black Panthers, Latin American Base Communities, and the New York Young Lords. It is from this soil, in a crisis riddled agrarian context not all too dissimilar to first-century Galilee, that I will offer an interpretation of Matthew 13:24-30 that I believe can cultivate practices of solidarity, Sabbath, and sabotage in a world on fire.

The Day of Judgment and Communal Best Practices

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (Matthew 13:24-30)

Since the days of the Mathean community, the Parable of the Tares has been interpreted in a myriad of ways, with one such interpretation being contained within the text of the Gospel itself as an interpolation (verses 36-43.) This interpretive interpolation is one of divine eschatological judgment, and has, for much of Christian history, stood as the default authoritative interpretation of the parable. We can see an affirmation of this “allegorical” interpretation in the Cambridge University Press commentary on the Gospel of Matthew when author Craig Evans writes “The imagery of wheat gathered into the barn and the chaff thrown into the fire is a colorful way of speaking of the day of judgment.”^[12]For Evans, this parable “focuses on the role played by evil” in the world by distinguishing “good from bad” and “righteous from unrighteous” so as to “illustrate the utter corruption of the world” and the necessity of divine judgment.^[13] While the affirmation of Matthew’s interpretation has remained the dominant interpretive approach, it is not the only possible interpretation of this text.

One such interpretation comes from Catholic priest and theologian Jan Lambrecht who, while not denying the judgment-motif within the parable interprets the text with an emphasis on aspects of communal Christian life.^[14] For Lambrecht, the text appears to be primarily focused on the “rejection of a premature gathering of the weeds” rather than the eventual “separation of wheat and weeds at the harvest.”^[15] In his interpretation, he argues for an understanding that seeks to address a type of “rash,” and “excessively radical conduct” that attempts to enforce a “premature... condemnation” of those in the community that some may deem as “weeds.”^[16] In Lambrecht’s interpretation, the parable becomes primarily about how these early Christian communities are supposed to conduct themselves with one another as to resist any tendency to believe and act as if there could somehow be a “church without sinners.”^[17] While the interpretations of both Evans and Lambrecht have merit under certain contextual conditions, I believe that our present ecological moments necessitates an interpretation of this parable that takes seriously the context of the Polycrisis.

Dynamic Traditions and Pruning Parables

Jesus says: "The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who has good seed in his field. By night his enemy came and sowed tares over the seed which is good. But this man did not allow them, his servants to pluck up the tares, 'for fear', he told them, 'that in going to take away the tares, you carry off the wheat with it. But on the harvest day the tares will be recognisable; they will be taken away and burnt.^[18]

In the book Slavery in Early Christianity, author Jennifer A. Glancy makes the claim that the historical critical method should not only consider the “versions of Jesus’ sayings preserved in canonical writings,” but also take into account the record of extracanonical texts like the Gospel of Thomas.^[19] I believe it is her assertion that the Gospel of Thomas is “important both as a source for previously unknown sayings of Jesus and as an independent witness to sayings familiar from the canonical Gospels” that holds true for the text of Matthew 13:24-30. Whereas the “figure of the slave” in the Gospel of Thomas exists as confirmation of Glancy’s thesis regarding the use of slavery metaphors in the Gospels as authentic to the historical Jesus, rather than later additions, I argue that the inverse is true regarding the Parable of the Tares as it relates to Logion 57 of the Gospel of Thomas. It is, I believe, the lack of an eschatological interpretation of the Parable of the Tares in the Gospel of Thomas’ that provides grounds on which we can question the validity of Matthew’s interpretation as the authoritative teachings of the historical Jesus, and the default interpretation of the earliest Christian communities.

By allowing Logion 57 to enter into a type of intertextual dialogue with the Gospel of Matthew, we can grant agency to those historic interpreters that exist beyond the bounds of the established canonical voice, and with tender care, prune Matthew’s interpolation away to uncover other potential interpretations within the historical contexts of these communities.^[20] This method of approach seems in alignment with other scholars like Amy-Jill Levine who makes note that when we reduce parables to a “single meaning” we destroy the “aesthetic” and “ethical potential” of the teachings, robbing them of their inherent “surplus of meaning.”^[21] While not negating the significance of Matthew’s interpolated interpretation for the author’s community in crisis, but by taking its absence seriously within the Gospel of Thomas we can enter a dialogue with the text that recognizes its original hearers as participants in “dynamic movements” that were attempting to faithfully interpret the Parable of the Tares as it relates to their respective contexts, cultures, and concerns.^[22] It is with the historical critical and dialogical methods in mind that I will dig into the hummus-like “surplus” of interpretations hoping to propagate a reading capable of helping us live seditiously in a world on fire, and thus faithfully to the Kingdom of Heaven.^[23]

Weeds in the Master’s Field: Toward An Eco-Political Interpretation

Now, with the methodological basis for our interpretative endeavors articulated, let us turn our ears to the voices that lie just beyond the words of Matthew 13:24-30. Imagine, if you will, Jesus delivering this parable to a crowd in the region of Galilee, among them tenant farmers and slave laborers growing food on stolen land gained by the tip of the sword, if not through hefty tax debts.^[24] To arrive at a “true” interpretation, we must ask ourselves how these tenant and slave farmers, in the Matthean community and beyond, would have heard and understood this parable in light of their context, culture, and concerns.^[25] It is important to note that, as tenant and slave farmers in the first-century, there would be virtually nothing they could do to cause systemic change in the face of the oppressive labor conditions, endless taxation, and soil degrading farming practices thrust upon them by the Roman and Jewish elite.^[26] What then might they have thought as Jesus likened the Kingdom of Heaven to an act of sabotage, to seeds sown in the slave master's fields? Considering the socio-political and economic context of these earliest hearers, I believe that one way that this parable may have been understood was as a call to radical direct action and acts of sabotage in solidarity with both soil in which they were dependent and the community for which Jesus was calling them to participate in, namely the Kingdom of Heaven.

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches. (Matthew 13:31-32)

While the Gospel of Matthew does not draw an explicit connection between the Parable of the Tares and the Parable of the Mustard Seed I believe our interpretive endeavors are only further nourished when we allow our reading of verses 24-30 to be intercropped with Parable of the Mustard Seed in a form of intratextual dialogue.^[27] When These parables are placed together, in light of the agrarian context in which they were told, we can see how they contain the potential to mutually inform our exegesis of each passage. With verses 31-32 in mind we can begin to ponder how the slave and tenant farmers would have understood Jesus' absurd assertion that the invasive mustard weed could somehow become a tree large enough for the birds of the air to find rest in its branches amidst fields of wheat and weeds in light of just possible hearing the Parable of the Tares.^[28] These tenant and slave farmers know Rome comes to collect whether the harvest is abundant or not, but when they hear these parables, they begin to “see the world in a different way” as Jesus calls them, and us, to forms of resistance and communal-care capable of blossoming in the shadow of the empire’s “vicious system of agriculture.”^[29] By sowing that which their Masters would view as “weeds” alongside the wheat, these workers “risk an act of love” as they grow resources for their community, reintroduce necessary nutrients back into the life of the soil, and resist the dominating forces of empire as people who are as gentle as doves and cunning as serpents.^[30] The empire of Rome may be one of exploitation and extraction, but here in these intercropped parables, Jesus sows seeds of sedition, teaching the crowds that somehow acts of solidarity and sabotage have the power to transfigure even a “noxious weed” into a source of rest, rejuvenation, and Sabbath right under the noses of their masters.^[31] In hearing the words of these parables the tenant and slave farmers come to learn that even if the forces of empire cannot be overcome or mitigated, they must be resisted through the tactics of adaptation and escalation that blossom into solidarity with, and sabbath for all creation.^[32]

Conclusion

It is this material and ecologically rooted interpretation, when placed within the context of our present moment, that I believe provides fertile soil for our communities to learn to resist the destructive forces of empire as we work to build a new world “within the shell of the old.”^[33] Of course different soils need different amendments and the way that these practices will be incarnated will vary from community to community, but in my own context this looks like guerilla gardening, mutual aid, and land reclamation initiatives that cultivate food sovereignty, disrupt and subvert markets, provide communal care, and embody regenerative agricultural practices.^[34] For other communities the seeds of this interpretation may blossom into more explicitly radical actions, like protests, blowing up shutting off pipelines, and acts deemed as “eco-terrorism” by the state, as communities seek to live faithfully to the Kingdom of Heaven.^[35] In keeping with the function of parables, what I have offered here should not be understood as the interpretation, but one of a surplus of possible historically rooted, and contextually relevant interpretations that seeks to provoke and disturb us by daring to ask, “At what point do we escalate? When do we conclude that the time has come to also try something different?” in light of the ever-worsening effects of the climate crisis and the undeniable failure of the environmental movement’s insistence on tactics of mitigation.^[36] While there is still much that could be explored here within this dialogue and parable, I hope that this brief look into the soil of the text has yielded a faithful reading of Matthew 13:24-30 in a way that is true to the parables of Jesus as a form of prophetic pedagogy that calls us to radical praxis under the shadow of empire as we seek to live in a world on fire.

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^[1] Diana L. Eck, “Dialogue and Method: Reconstructing the Study of Religion,” essay, in In A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age, ed. Benjamin C. Ray and Kimberley C. Patton (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 131–149; Andreas Malm and Chantal Jahchan, How to Blow up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire (London: Verso, 2021).

^[2] Paulo Freire, Myra Bergman Ramos, and Donaldo Macedo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1993), 87.

^[3] Matthew 12:24-30; Though I prefer the “kin-dom” language coined by Ada María Isasi-Díaz I will continue to use the “Kingdom of Heaven” throughout this paper as it relates to the text of Matthew 13.

^[4] Vledder, E-J & Van Aarde, AG. “The social location of the Matthean community.” HTS Theological Studies, 51(2), 1995 388-408.

^[5] Sakari Häkkinen, “Poverty in the first-century Galilee.” HTS Theological Studies, 72(4), 2016, 1-9.

^[6] Colleen M. Conway, The New Testament a Contemporary Introduction (Hoboken, NL: Wiley Blackwell, 2023), 138; Marc Zvi Brettler and Ami-Jill Levine, The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 9-10.

^[7] Marc Zvi Brettler and Ami-Jill Levine, The Jewish Annotated New Testament: New Revised Standard Version Bible Translation, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 9-10.

^[8] William R. Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed (Louisville, KY: Westminster: John Knox Press, 1994); Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2024), 107.

^[9] Norman Wirzba, The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age (Oxford University Press, 2007); Davis, Ellen F., and Wendell Berry. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 127.

^[10] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York, NY: Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 4.

^[11] John 18:36.

^[12] Craig A. Evans, New Cambridge Bible Comm.: Matthew (NY., NY,: Cambridge Univ. Press. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012), 274.

^[13] Ibid, 272-273.

^[14] Jan Lambrecht, Out of the Treasure: The Parables in the Gospel of Matthew (Louvain, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Peeters Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1998), 165; Jan Lambrecht also posits the possibility that the parable itself has been heavily reworked to more closely complement the author's preferred interpretation.

^[15] Ibid, 166.

^[16] Ibid, 165.

^[17] Ibid, 164-166.

^[18] “Gospel of Thomas Saying 57,” Gospel of Thomas Saying 57 - GospelThomas.Com, accessed December 9, 2024, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/thomas/gospelthomas57.htm.

^[19] Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2024), 103.

^[20] Diana L. Eck, “Dialogue and Method: Reconstructing the Study of Religion,” essay, in In A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age, ed. Benjamin C. Ray and Kimberley C. Patton (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 131–149.

^[21] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York, NY: Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 1.

^[22] Diana L. Eck, “Dialogue and Method: Reconstructing the Study of Religion,” essay, in In A Magic Still Dwells: Comparative Religion in the Postmodern Age, ed. Benjamin C. Ray and Kimberley C. Patton (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 137.

^[23] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York, NY: Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 1; Matthew 12:24-30.

^[24] Sakari Häkkinen, “Poverty in the first-century Galilee.” HTS Theological Studies, 72 (4), 2016, 1-9.

^[25] Paulo Freire, Myra Bergman Ramos, and Donaldo Macedo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1993), 87.

^[26] Paul Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political, and Economic Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 12-54.

^[27] Intercropping is farming/gardening practice where two or more types of crops are grown together on the same field at the same time. This is a practice that is crucial to indigenous and regenerative agricultural practices.

^[28] “This Super Bloom Is Pretty Dangerous: Invasive Mustard Is Fuel for the next Fire,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 2019, accessed April 7, 2024, https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-mustard-fire-santa-monica-mountains-20190425-story.html

^[29] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York, NY: Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 4; Huntington, Ellsworth. “Climatic Change and Agricultural Exhaustion as Elements in the Fall of Rome.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 31, No . 2 (1917): 175.

^[30] Christina Apostolopoulos, “Not Just a Pretty Backdrop! What Is the Purpose of Mustard in Napa Valley?,” Robert Biale Vineyards, accessed April 7, 2024, https://www.biale.com/2021/03/mustard-in-napa-valley/; Paulo Freire, Myra Bergman Ramos, and Donaldo Macedo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1993), 50; Matthew 10:16.

^[31] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York, NY: Harper One, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 168.

^[32] Andreas Malm and Chantal Jahchan, How to Blow up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire (London: Verso, 2021).

^[33] Paul Magno, Dorothy Day, and CatholicWorker.org, “Why Peter Maurin Matters,” Catholic Worker Movement, accessed April 7, 2024, https://catholicworker.org/why-peter-matters-html/.

^[34] Guerrilla Gardening is the act of gardening – raising food, plants, or flowers – on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or so-called private property.

^[35] Democracy Now!, “Meet the Two Catholic Workers Who Secretly Sabotaged the Dakota Access Pipeline to Halt Construction,” Democracy Now!, accessed December 9, 2024, https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/28/meet_the_two_catholic_workers_who; For legal reasons this sentence should be read as a poor attempt at humor.

^[36] “Scientists Deliver 'Final Warning' on Climate Crisis: Act Now or It's Too Late,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, March 20, 2023), last modified March 20, 2023, accessed April 12, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/ipcc-climate-crisis-report-delivers-final-warning-on-15c; C.J. Atkins, “Already Too Late: IPCC Report Says Global Warming Consequences Now Unavoidable,” People's World, last modified August 9, 2021, accessed April 12, 2023, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/already-too-late-ipcc-report-says-global-warming-consequences-now-unavoidable/.