Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

First of all, parables give us a glimpse into the kingdom of God.  They speak about its coming into our world and into our lives.  While we can hear this parable in terms of what was happening in Jesus’ ministry, and also in terms of the end of the world, I am going to treat it as it speaks to our lives in the world today.  It is a story of about what should be our response when we find evil within.

The immediate response can be to tear it out.  But here is where the master in the parable is instructive.  Three things are interesting about the master here.  First he is more pro-wheat than anti-weeds: “If you pull up the weeds,” he says, “you might uproot the wheat along with them.”  He is committed to keeping the wheat alive so it can grow.

Second, he is into the long view.  He sees what is before him and recognizes an enemy has been at work, and that the weeds are right there with the wheat.  But he figures he can wait until the harvest and separate the wheat out then – again, lest the wheat be damaged.  Finally, in the master’s approach, the present is a time for patience and forbearance.  Acting hastily now will bring about a future that holds no promise.

What wisdom does this parable hold for us?  It is not hard to see the God of creation in this story: the God who waits for us to come to full growth, the God whose future includes a day of reckoning, but, most of all, the God whose present is marked by mercy.

Our God so loves this world that when the original gardener didn’t work out, God gave his Son the job of bringing about a new creation.  And this Son, even though rejected and seemingly overwhelmed by the evil of those who put him to death, was not allowed to be conquered by death but was raised to new life.  This Son is now the source of our life for all who believe in him.

This parable raises some questions for us.  Are we more pro-wheat or anti-weed?  Do we allow people the time to grow by way of God’s grace into goodness?  It can be very tempting to want to pull up and toss out.  Problem ended.  But pulling up weeds can lead to greater loss than anticipated.  Can we trust that the future belongs to God?  In the end God will be there to harvest all that is good.  In the meantime, with patience and forbearance, can we focus on the good?

This approach can be difficult to trust when one faces our world today, for example, living with the real possibility of another terrorist attack.  Is there anyone who would not want to weed out those who would bring about the destruction of innocent lives?  But the impulse to respond with equal devastation only incites more hatred and increases the likelihood of even greater violence.  Is it possible to transform the human heart when it has become what one might well imagine as the dwelling place of evil spirits?

Does this end up leaving us with a kind of holy indifference towards what is evil?  Certainly not.  But it calls us to be careful what we decide to root up and to consider how costly such action can be to the life growing around it.  Most of all, we are called to live in the awareness that God will be there when all is done, to claim the good for life in the kingdom.  Today’s Eucharist calls us to enter more fully into this promise and live our lives out of it.

Paul A. Magnano