Br. Lain Wilson

Matthew 13:24-30

Several years ago, I stood staring at a twenty-five-foot row of seven-foot-tall weeds. “You can take all of it out,” I was told. “All of it except a lilac bush that’s in there.”

That all seemed clear . . . except I had no idea what a lilac bush looked like. So I spent the next several hours checking and rechecking that this plant that looked like ragweed, that in fact looked like the dozens of ragweed stalks I had just pulled out, was, in fact, ragweed.

I eventually found the lilac, which looks nothing like ragweed.

The distinctions between “wheat” and “weeds” in today’s gospel are in fact much subtler than ragweed and lilac, so much so that they were nearly indistinguishable as young plants. Separation happened after harvesting, indeed, after threshing, when differently colored grains could be clearly discerned.[1]

Our parable today thus speaks to the patience that farmers would have shown in a familiar situation. It’s a patience Jesus asks his followers to demonstrate as they see all that is wrong around them, all that cries out for judgment: “Let both [wheat and weeds] grow together until the harvest” (Mt 13:30).

This parable speaks to the end of things, the “harvest.” But Jesus also speaks to his listeners, to his disciples and to us, in the here and now. The parable of the weeds reveals to us a necessary posture of compassion, forgiveness, and humble honesty.

It is very easy and natural for us to notice and call out the weeds around us – those who are different than us, who hold different priorities and go about their lives in different ways. It is easy for us to want to condemn them – want to see them come to judgment. But if Jesus urges patience, he also reveals that the distinction between wheat and weeds is subtle, surprising, and, perhaps, indiscernible to our eyes. We Brothers speak in our Rule of Life of “honor[ing] the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies. Only God knows them as they truly are.” Even those we hate, who seem to stand for everything we are opposed to, whom we would just as soon see as weeds to be gathered and burned, deserve our compassion and forgiveness as fellow creatures, known and loved by God.

Where do you notice resistance in yourself to exercising compassion and extending forgiveness?

Just as importantly, this parable speaks to the humble honesty we must turn on ourselves. Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously wrote that the “line separating good and evil passes . . . right through every human heart.” We, each of us, bear within ourselves wheat and weeds. We, each of us, have the work before us of a lifelong conversion. The humbling part is that, like the weeds of our parable, we may not always be able to discern what needs to be converted. The humbling part is recognizing that and praying to God, as the publican did, “Be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Lk 18:13). The humbling part is that this honesty may be how we are best able to cooperate with God’s work in the world.

In the end, we can only trust. Trust that God is merciful. Trust that we will be forgiven as we have forgiven others. Trust that God knows our hearts infinitely better than we ourselves can. And trust that, when we come to the harvest, God will gather us in.

Amen.

[1] W. Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1975), 2:73.