Mushrooms and Toadstools is based on Matthew 13:24-30
False Wheat
Fields and wheat and an enemy coming along to sow weeds – all of this was well known in Jesus’ day. Sowing weeds like darnel was a well-known revenge tactic, one that happened often enough that there were laws against it. This isn’t a parable based on folk-tales, but one based on everyday life – a series of events so familiar that the disciples and the gospel writer include the explanation (Matthew 13: 36-43) to be certain the reader understands that Jesus wasn’t just talking about some village scandal.
The urban environment
What would be the equivalent of ‘wheat’ and ‘weeds’ in an urban environment? Jesus’ parable is about two types of plant that look the same until they’re both fully grown. One is wheat – the other is probably darnel, which is a rye grass so similar to wheat that it’s called ‘false wheat’ in some areas. Modern machinery makes it possible to sift out darnel seeds from wheat seeds, but that still wouldn’t help if an enemy came along and spread loads of darnel amongst the freshly sown seed.
All of this would still be reasonably familiar in a rural, crop growing environment. In an area with plenty of wheat fields, this parable wouldn’t need retelling.
Retelling
If we were trying to make this parable instantly understandable, or retell it in a way that might help people hear it fresh, there are several different possible choices for ‘crop’ and ‘weed’. Anywhere that people are maintaining lawns, for example, grass and crouch grass might be a good substitute. Crouch grass looks much like grass but will happily take over any borders, shrubs and perennials, finding its way into root systems so that uprooting it will damage the very plant you want to save.
In the US, another possibility might be tomato plants and horse nettle (which in some areas is referred to as the ‘devil’s tomato’). Darnel is, after all, poisonous. While it looks almost exactly like wheat, eating it can cause illness, hallucinations, even death.
In an inner city environment one crop that someone might grow indoors is mushrooms. Mushroom boxes are fairly popular and most people are wary of toadstools. There are toadstools that look very like edible mushrooms and some of them, like darnel, will make people ill but are unlikely to kill them. So, when I retold the parable, I used mushrooms and toadstools. I was thinking of the common field mushroom versus the Yellow Stainer Mushroom (the blog picture is of a Yellow Stainer), but I used the British English habit of calling any edible mushroom a ‘mushroom’ and any non-edible/poisonous mushroom a ‘toadstool’.
I think the important thing is not the particular crop – but to remember that Jesus used an everyday, relatable, real-life example for this particular parable. We often can’t tell the difference between the good people and the bad ones and it’s God who will have to sort them out – at the end. We will have to let both grow.
Previous parable: The Tiny Speck and the Giant Tree (Matthew 7:1-5)
Next parable: The Ten Budgets (Luke 19:11-27)
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