Over the years I have met and become friends with people whom others would consider little better than the devil. I have met murderers, cheats, and thieves, and I have come to one conclusion about all these people who have crossed my path, and that conclusion is that you cannot know what is coming next in their lives, nor can you pin down just where God is in their future and what He can accomplish with a little motivation.
I want you to hold onto that thought —- I want you to hold onto it when you meet people that strike you as evil, and I want you to hold onto it when you feel that you yourselves are out of reach of God.
We do not know what is going to come next, nor can we pin down just where God is and what he is about. Jesus is telling us that there is to be a final judgment, with eternal consequences of heaven and hell. He is further telling us that only God is the final judge who makes the final call.
In Archibald Hunters book, PARABLES THEN AND NOW, he comments on today’s parable, with a limerick that I really enjoyed:
“There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us, to talk about the rest of us.”
I have found that statement to be profoundly true.
In every generation, in every century, in every age, there are people who appear to be more religious than God himself. In every age of the human race, there are people who are so pious, so prayerful and so pure that you can actually see them and smell them a block away. Such people inevitably make you feel….irreligious, guilty and not very good inside.
The people who were like this in Jesus’ day were the Pharisees. They were so pious. When they spoke of God, their voices intoned great reverence.
They were so prayerful. When you saw them pray, their hands were lifted up just perfectly and their faces seem to glow with the radiance of God. They were so pure. They associated only with good people like themselves and they believed that their synagogues were to be reserved only for people who were equally religious. They weeded out the sinners from their church.
These Pharisees had problems with Jesus. That is, Jesus seemed sufficiently religious, but his followers were the riffraff of society. Jesus’ friends were prostitutes—Sheppard’s —Tax collectors. These friends of Jesus were a motley crew.
Have you ever had your picture of someone completely painted only to discover that the light has shifted – that the person you thought you saw – has completely changed? Changed for the better?
Have you ever painted a picture of yourself – a picture in which the colours are all blue – all depressed – all unlovable – only to discover that someone loves you? That someone believes in you? That you are more than welcome in God’s presence?
Have you ever been in God’s presence and hardly noticed it? Have you ever suddenly realized that God had been with you long before you knew he was there? Have you ever been in exile or in fear only to discover God coming to your aid?
The gospel today – the reading about the parable of the wheat and the weeds is instructive for us.
It is instructive:
– not because it prophecies the ultimate destruction of evil doers,
– nor because it teaches us that the weaknesses in our lives are afflictions that come from Satan
No, it is instructive for us because it applauds patience:
– Patience in the face of situations that seem bad to us,
– Patience in the face of attacks by Satan,
– Patience in the midst of our urge to go out and fix things and make them right.
– Patience in the face of our desire to make judgements about others and to act on those judgements
Consider ourselves….What judgement do we make upon ourselves?
How awesome indeed is the place of God
– The place in which the weeds are allowed to grow up with the wheat
– The place in which we fear and long for comfort and think we have none
– The place in which the lost are found and the blind given sight.
We do not know what is going to come next, nor can we pin down just where God is and what he is about. Perhaps there were some overzealous “weeders” in Matthew’s congregation who wanted to purify the community by rooting out the bad seed. This seems to be a temptation for followers of Jesus in every age. We whip ourselves into a weeding frenzy, certain that we know the difference between weeds and wheat, and that we know how to deal with the weeds!
Jesus’ parable makes clear that any attempt to root out the weeds will only do more damage to the crop. Jesus makes clear that we simply cannot be certain who is “in” or who is “out.” In fact, God’s judgment about these matters will take many by surprise. Thank God it is not up to us! We can leave the weeding to the angels, and get on with the mission Jesus has given us — proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God drawing near.
-Dcn. Terry Murphy