Isaiah 44:6-8; Romans 8:12-25; Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Our gospel lesson for today made me recall what I remember as the very first theological conundrum of my childhood.  I was probably 7 or 8 years old, it was summertime, and my Mom had admonished me to go outside and play.  I suspect on that particular day I had been a bee in my mother’s bonnet.  I walked outside into the front yard barefoot, enjoying the feeling of the warm grass between my toes.  That is until I experienced the sensation of sharp pain all over the bottom of my foot.  I jerked my foot up quickly as I looked down to discover that I had stepped squarely on a thistle.  After I had recovered from the pain, made sure there were no needles stuck in my foot, and surveyed the scene hoping that my parents had not heard the expletive I had shouted (not necessarily in that order), I began to wonder why God made thistles in the first place.  What was the purpose or a thistle?  Why did God create something to inflict pain on a barefooted kid such as myself?

And then I recalled what I had learned in Sunday school about Adam and Eve from the third chapter of Genesis where they ate the forbidden apple and became aware that they were naked (which naturally meant they too were barefoot).  The moment of reckoning came when God was walking in the Garden of Eden and discovered Adam and Eve hiding.  Amid God’s response to them were these words:  “Because you have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you…” [i] Eureka!  God didn’t make thistles because He was a cruel trickster.  God made thistles because I was a sinner.  As time went on, I began to translate this shoddy theology and rather immature notion of God into other parts of my life.  The idea of any type of suffering, at least in my mind had to be because I had messed up in some way and God was punishing me.  I held this reasoning about judgment, punishment, and suffering as absolute truth for many years, well into my adulthood and it served to complicate my relationship with God.  In the language of 12-step recovery, this might be dubbed ‘stinking thinking.’

In today’s gospel lesson, we hear Jesus tell a parable about wheat and tares, good and evil, and ultimately judgment.  The slaves of a landowner notice that there are weeds growing in with the wheat crops.  You may know that the weed Lolium tementulum, which is commonly called ‘Bearded Darnel,’ is a type of grass that initially looks just like wheat.[ii]  However, unlike wheat, the seed of this weed is poisonous and produces a narcotic effect when consumed.  The landowner states that an enemy has come in and maliciously sewn this weed into the wheat crops.  The conscientious slaves ask the landowner if they should go in and pull the weeds.  But the landowner knows that the situation is complicated because root systems are now entangled and to pull the weeds would in fact uproot the wheat with it and destroy the crop before it could reach harvest maturity.  He instructs them to let the wheat and tares grow together until the crops are ready to harvest and then the reapers will separate the weeds, bundle and burn them.

In Jesus’ day, Palestine suffered under a brutal occupation of the Roman Empire.  People feared for their lives.  But the awareness of who was good or evil was not static.  It wasn’t as simple as Israel/good, Rome/bad.  There were many Jews, like tax collectors, who colluded with Rome in order to make a living while assuring their safety and well-being.  This made them social pariahs among their kinsman because many would take more than the prescribed amount in order to pad their own wallets.  The religious authorities of the day believed that God would not send a Messiah unless Israel maintained strict adherence to Jewish Law being careful not to ritually defile themselves or the Temple.  Yet, this rigid Legalism turned a blind eye[...]