An ancient Greek legend tells of the inhabitants of an island who received a warning from their gods that their island would soon be flooded. The islanders met to discuss how they might best deal with the impending disaster. They sought counsel from three wise people living on the small island.
The first wise person suggested that the islanders start building a temple to the gods, even though they probably would not have enough time to finish it. At least, he reasoned, the gods would know their good intentions.
The advice of the second elder was for all inhabitants to forget their differences and become united in spirit. The gods would then see to it that they were kept together in the next world.
The third counselor offered this advice: “Well, we will just have to learn to live underwater.”
Jesus is saying something similar to us this morning: “Well, we will just have to learn to live with the weeds.”
In the time of Jesus, another word for weeds was fool’s wheat. It was a common practice to plant fool’s wheat in the fields of one’s adversaries as an act of vengeance or sabotage.
In the early stages of growth, it is impossible to distinguish the wheat from the weeds. By the time the difference becomes apparent, the roots of both are so intertwined that if the weeds are pulled up, the wheat will be uprooted as well.
When the servants asked whether they should pull out the weeds that were woven into the wheat, what was the master’s response? The master replied, “No, if you pull up the weeds, you might uproot the wheat along with them.” In other words, the good and the bad must coexist; otherwise, both will be destroyed.
Jesus’ parable is a radical idea. The people in His time, and even today, despite Jesus’ teachings, often still operate with an “eye for an eye” mentality. The thinking goes something like this: “If you harm my family or me, then I have the right and duty to annihilate you because you are a bad person who did a bad thing.” This parable challenges that way of thinking.
Action-packed movies illustrate this mentality well. Often, we are not sure who the good or bad people are. They battle hand-to-hand, somersaulting across skyscraper rooftops, delivering knuckle blows to the face, spinning kicks to the head and wielding ever-new secret weapons.
Eventually, the bad guy plunges over the edge of a building with a terrified expression, heading toward the inevitable splat. The weeds are ripped out and destroyed! And we like those endings.
If only we would remember that each of us is a mixture of the wheat and the weeds. None of us is perfect; we each have our shortcomings, our weeds.
We often fail to realize that we can be weeds to others. When we are rude, proud, arrogant, jealous, insecure, defensive or caught up in our own importance, then we become the weed in someone else’s garden.
One thing is clear from this parable: Jesus uses it to explain the reality of good and evil, holiness and sinfulness. Wheat and weeds exist in the world. No one goes through life without rubbing elbows with evil or encountering people who do bad things.
Because God has given us free will, evil exists in the world. Even good people sometimes choose to do evil.
When I am asked why I chose to spend twenty-five years ministering in prisons, my answer is simple, and it is found in today’s parable. I am drawn to communities that are culturally, ethnically, politically, economically and socially diverse. These communities are often filled with believers and nonbelievers: Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Native Americans, the undocumented, politicians, killers and swindlers, cheating stockbrokers and the greedy, the disadvantaged and the advantaged, the mentally challenged and the highly educated, the gay or straight, single or divorced, drug dealers and drug users. I am drawn to the challenge of ministering to both weeds and wheat. Often, in prison, I was not sure who was who.
As a prison chaplain, I prayed daily, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love.” I still pray that prayer every day so that I remain focused on love and resist judging who is wheat and who is a weed. That judgment belongs to God alone.
Fortunately for us, the God we believe in is generous, loving and forgiving.
Today’s first reading from the Book of Wisdom speaks of the character of the God who judges us: “But though you are master of might, you judge with clemency, and with much lenience you govern us.” And later we hear, “You gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.”
The second reading reminds us that “the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness.” I find this both comforting and consoling. It is the Spirit dwelling within us that enables us to make the right choices, to produce wheat instead of weeds, to promote good rather than evil.
Christ never envisioned His Church as an exclusive community of saints only, but as an inclusive community of wheat and weeds. “Let them grow together until the harvest.” A Church that is kind and lenient toward its members, whether conservative or liberal, gay or straight, married or divorced, educated or uneducated, healthy or terminally ill, will be an inspiration to a deeply divided world.
Remember, each of us is a combination of wheat and weeds. We do not have to live underwater, but we are called to live with the weeds among the wheat.
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