Red Rice (or Wheat & Tares)

When I was a young boy, my dad planted seed rice.  Seed rice sold at a premium.  In order to sell seed rice, each field had to be certified by gentlemen from the USDA who would come to each field on horseback and ride through the field and check to ensure that there weren't any weeds in the rice.  Some of the weeds they were looking for in particular were Red Rice and what we called Coffeeweeds (indigo).  Obviously, the reason for the certification of your field was that the rice harvested was going to be used as seed rice.  Purchasers of seed rice don't want to be planting weeds in their field that might reduce their yield, propagate weeds, and adversely affect their profitability. 

In anticipation of the certification, my dad would hire my brother and I and a bunch of our friends and we would spread out shoulder to shoulder across the length of the field and walk from one end to the other.  Some call this "rouging."  We would locate the red rice, pull it out by the roots, and carry it out of the field where we either burned it or threw it out of the field.  We didn't want that seed to contaminate the seed rice and disqualify it from being sold as seed.  Unfortunately, having a tribe of young boys trudging through the rice field will damage a lot of the good rice while attempting to get the red rice out.

I can't begin to explain to you what a miserable job this was.  It was summertime in South Louisiana so it was hot and muggy.  There were wasps, snakes, and mosquitoes.  We'd start early in the morning to try to beat the heat and your pants would get wet from the dew on the rice and you'd get chaffed.  The red rice plants you were carrying would cut your arms and the sweat would burn in the cuts.  Often we'd find marsh hen eggs in nests as we were rouging and we'd throw the stinky eggs at one another, adding yet another level to the miserable index!  This was a dirty job and, I'm sure, qualified as a child labor sweat-shop!  It was always a relief when the guys on horseback came and certified that the field had passed inspection and could be sold as seed rice!

I tell you this because, in my opinion, it perfectly illustrates the following parable:

Matthew 13:24-33

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

Tares among Wheat

²⁴ Jesus presented another parable to them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. ²⁵ But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. ²⁶ But when the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. ²⁷ The slaves of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ ²⁸ And he said to them, ‘An enemy has done this!’ The slaves said to him, ‘Do you want us, then, to go and gather them up?’ ²⁹ But he said, ‘No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. ³⁰ Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

I thought about that parable in relation to the story I began to tell you earlier and will attempt to further illustrate:

The photo below shows a beautiful field of rice, green, thick, lush and healthy.  You see, this is the way rice looks initially.  You drive alongside your field and get out and walk the levees and everything looks absolutely fantastic!!  It's actually exciting to behold.  I wish I had some pictures of my fields when I was farming.  I tell you the truth, I had a field that could have really depicted perfectly a severe red rice infestation!  The photos below were all from rice photographs from the Internet, not mine.

 

But then the day comes when you drive up to the field expecting to see the same beautiful sight as above and...  You instead see this:

Uh oh!  You see the lighter green growth coming up?  That is red rice, the scourge of rice farmers everywhere.  Funny how it creeps up on you all of a sudden.  It sneaks up on you causing you go from absolute happiness to absolute misery in a skinny minute.  You see, red rice does several things:

First, it is prolific and will crowd out the good rice, causing a reduction in yields and thus, profitability.

Second, it is not a pretty white rice like the stuff you buy in the grocery store.  It is red like the photo below and a few grains of this in your sample will dock the quality and grade of your rice and means less money upon sale of your crop.



Some of the red rice is just down-right evil to look at like the red rice below.  It has a long, ugly beard.  A real problem with red rice is that is matures more quickly than your good crop of rice and then "shatters".  That means by the time you get in the field and harvest your good crop, the red rice has already fallen off of the stalk and fallen to the ground, ensuring that your red rice problem will only be worse in the following year - exponentially worse.



Finally, red rice is a wilder variety that grows taller than commercial varieties of rice.  The tall red rice is therefore vulnerable to winds and susceptible to 'lodging."  Lodging means it falls down like in the picture below.  When it falls down, it pulls down the good rice with it, making the good rice much more difficult to harvest and actually destroys some of it.



Further along in the passage, Jesus is asked to explain the parable and what it means.  And He told them:

Matthew 13:36-43

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Tares Explained

³⁶ Then He left the crowds and went into the house. And His disciples came to Him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field.” ³⁷ And He said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, ³⁸ and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; ³⁹ and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. ⁴⁰ So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹ The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, ⁴² and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ⁴³ Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.

So the rice field is like the world. Just like there are good rice seeds and red rice seeds in a rice field, in the world there are people who have accepted the Gospel as Truth and those who have rejected the Gospel and are actually enemies of the Truth. There is no nice way to say it other than the fact that they practice evil.  The "red rice" has an ability to look just like the "good rice" - for a while. But the "red rice" has a propensity to try to destroy "the crop." Both crops are allowed to grow side by side, though, until the "harvest", and at that point the reapers (angels) come in and pull out the "red rice". [This is sort of where the analogy falls apart. We, the red rice pullers, were far from angels, but you get the picture.]

The wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, the wide gate and the narrow gate...  These were repetitive teachings Jesus used to urge people to repent and turn to Him.  Do we heed His Message?  We want to make sure that our "field" is certified to be free of weeds at inspection time!