Brief synopsis of the readings: In the book of Wisdom we read a prayer addressed to God. The writer acknowledges God’s justice, who shows strength when his power is not believed, but shows clemency and leniency. “And you taught your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind.” Matthew’s Gospel, again, has a long form and a short form and I will use the short form. Jesus describes a parable where a man sows good seed but at night “his enemy” sowed weeds among the wheat. When the man’s slaves found this they asked him if they should pull the weeds. Recognizing what was done to him the man told them not to pull the weeds for fear they would also pull up the wheat. He told his slaves that they should let both wheat and weeds grow and at harvest time they would be separated. The weeds will be bundled for burning while the wheat will be stored in the barn.
Last week we talked about a farmer with good intentions and limited ability. Today we use some of the same imagery, but ask the question of what happens when we meet someone with bad intent. We don’t know why this man was his enemy and on some level it doesn’t really matter. Maybe he was a competitor who grew his own crops and wanted to make more money. Maybe there was a grudge between the two that had nothing to do with their livelihoods. Or maybe this was just a bad person.
Regardless, once the weeds were discovered, what should he do? I’m not a gardener but they tell me that weeding is just a part of managing a garden, and in its own way it’s therapeutic, a way of preserving the beauty of the garden.
But there is a difference between tending a home garden and raising crops for a living. Nobody cares what a wheat field looks like and weeds rob the wheat of the necessary nutrients. No matter what happens to the weeds the yield of wheat will be lowered. From the moment the weeds were planted and began to grow there was no way to get the full wheat crop back.
According to the farmer there was no way to pull the weeds without pulling out some of the wheat, but that doesn’t make sense. If that were true why did the slaves offer to do it? OK, so maybe this is where the parable breaks down. Maybe we can pull weeds and leave the wheat but we can’t eliminate evil without harming the good.
We all remember where we were on the morning of September 11, 2001 and we all remember our reactions. Amid the shock and grief there were voices who demanded “frontier justice” for the innocent lives that were taken from us. “Kill ’em all and let God sort it out.” “Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting.”
And while that may be our initial reaction I don’t believe that’s what God calls us to do. We are clearly called to root out evil but our call to justice tempers our actions. In the 1984 movie Footloose a Christian pastor railed against dancing and other forms of temptation but he also struggled with how far to take his campaign. When one of his parishioners said that it “[d]oesn’t take much time for corruption to take root” Pastor Moore responds: “And how long is that Roger? About as long as it takes compassion to die?” If you haven’t seen the movie, in the end the pastor ended his opposition to the high school holding a prom, deciding that the prohibition on dancing had gone too far. He decided that while dancing may tempt some of the teenagers into poor choices, prohibiting the dance would rob them of an important high school ritual.
In our first reading from Wisdom the writer says this of God: “[Y]ou taught your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind.” The farmer in today’s Gospel recognized that while pulling the weeds before the harvest may make him feel better in the short run, kindness is better in the long run, even if it reduces his crop yield.
When we “do good and avoid evil” we do what God asks of us but even perfect good won’t always get us perfect results. The self help author Dennis Wholey famously said: “Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you’re a good person is like expecting a bull not to attack you because you’re a vegetarian.”
Like the farmer it’s a hard truth that we need to understand that we can’t obliterate evil (or suffering or poor decisions or spam email) and we sometimes pay the price for others’ bad intent. But we do recognize that evil is not the final answer, and neither are we. We worship an awesome God who has promised us the ability to (quoting Paul in his 2nd Letter to Timothy) complete the race. We may be limping the last part of the race and we may need to rely on the support of others, but we will complete the race.
Sometimes the clemency God shows in the first reading may be given to those who sow weeds and that violates our sense of justice. Sometimes the good that we do won’t work out exactly as we hoped and our crop won’t be as rich as we expect.
These may be part of God’s plan that we don’t see. Perhaps, and I’m loathe to place limits on God’s actions, the farmer’s decision to allow the weeds to grow among the wheat may have an unforeseen result. Perhaps the enemy will see the farmer’s response and recognize his need to follow God. Maybe a longshot, but certainly not impossible. When the wheat crop is brought in there is enough wheat. The weeds were not enough to destroy the crop and the farmer lives with the recognition that he did the right thing. Certainly the slaves see the farmer’s actions and recognize that he is a good man. By the way, and this must be said, this does not confer or imply God’s endorsement of slavery. This would have been an easier reading if they had been servants or employees, but this is what we have.
Let us do what we can in growing the wheat and let God worry about what will happen to the weeds.