The Harvest

Continuing in the vein of seeds and sowing, let us consider the parable found in Matthew 13:24-30. Christ describes for us the kingdom of heaven, showing us whose it is, what it includes, and what is removed. By implication, the location of the kingdom is also shown.

'The kingdom of heaven is like a man that sowed good seed in his field.'

At once, we see that one entity possesses the entire farm: the field, the barn, and all else. It is the farmer. In other words, it is the one who has invested himself into the labor. This farmer has bought land, built a barn, prepared the field, and put his best seed toward his goal.

We can see a clear connection between the farmer in the parable and God in his kingdom of heaven. What we must also be able to see is that God is not a flesh and blood farmer. He is a spiritual farmer, who plants spiritual seed in a spiritual field. If it has anything at all to do with flesh and blood people like you and me, it has to do with our spirits – that is to say: our minds.

What might be the goal of a spiritual farmer? If he prepares our spirits, and plants spiritual seed there, he himself being spirit, he expects a spiritual harvest: a matured spiritual product, or the end result of growing spiritual seed in the field of our spirits. This harvest will see two ends. One is storage for reuse, while the other is consumption.

As the story continues, the flesh and blood farmer of the parable slept, and while he did, his enemy sought to spoil the harvest by planting among the wheat a weed that is fit neither for consumption, nor again for reuse. The tares of the parable are a plant that is almost identical to the wheat. At maturation, however, it proves its uselessness with an obvious lack of fruit. The enemy went his way, the hired help noticed the tares, and the farmer concluded that his enemy was to blame.

What might this part of the story say about the spiritual truths to which Christ points? Does God sleep? Is the devil waging a war of attrition? Is the planting of tares part of a cycle – to which we must ask, are there enough good seed to insure a continued and flourishing enterprise? The spiritual nature is indeed one of cycles. Those who attend such truths, like the servants in the parable, approach the matter only through a genuine interest in the outcome, and despite natural passions, will always defer to the wisdom of the farmer.

Many of us picture this parable as a depiction of the end (the one in which the angels come forth and sever the wicked from among the just.) We tend to see our souls, that is to say: our personal identities, as the harvest. If that is the case, then we must also assume that the tares are almost identical to who we are: pseudo-souls, almost-people, not-quite-folk. They walk among us.

On the other hand, it is safe to say that a spiritual entity, who plants spirit in spirits, is not planting people. It is also safe to say that people are not the desired harvest. What is the good spiritual seed of a spiritual farmer? God is God, good is good, spirit is spirit, mind is mind. There is only the One. What we see in the parable is the mind of wheat as opposed to the mind of tare. We see a fruitful mind as opposed to a fruitless mind.

It is true enough to assume that our identities are not the same as our souls – for as we see in the Biblical creation story, a living soul includes a body of flesh and blood. Still from our point of view, we are very much attached to our spiritual allegiances. We either think and act like what God is working toward, or we think and act like the thing Satan planted in the field – which field still very much belongs to God.

The final determination of the parable is that both wheat and tare develop together. The wheat becomes more wheat-like, and will never change its nature. The tare becomes more tare-like, and its nature cannot be changed. If the tare is in your mind, God will bundle all such thinking together to be burned (and here, my suggestion is to view that not as hell and damnation, but as a source of fuel.) If the wheat is in your mind, the fruit will be consumed spiritually to maintain and magnify the spirit, while some of that fruit will be stored, to be planted in new fields.

I alluded to the location of the kingdom of heaven at the beginning of this study. Like the farmer, who has his field and barn and seed and hoped for harvest, all of this work being his – heaven's kingdom is where the work of God is enacted. It is all here, in the thoughts of our minds, and all around us in our works, for it is we the servants who watch the fields.