Ep 97 - The Hope Hidden in the Weeds

Why does God allow good and evil to exist side by side? Reflecting on Jesus' Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds, Fr. explores the surprising patience of God and the temptation to judge too quickly. This episode shows how God's grace works slowly, both in our hearts and in the world around us, and why Jesus ends this teaching with a message of profound hope: even the smallest acts of goodness can quietly transform an entire society.

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Hello and welcome to episode 97 of Brother from Another Father as we celebrate the 16th Sunday in ordinary time.

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Last week's Gospel of the Sower and the Seed was an attempt to try to explain the different responses to Jesus. This week's gospel of the parable of the wheat and the weeds is Jesus trying to explain to his disciples how they must deal with those who reject his message. And the answer is rather shocking. Jesus says that his disciples must do nothing about those who reject and oppose his message. And this answer of Jesus is rather shocking because it goes against the very grain of our human nature, which is to want to judge, to want to say who is good and who is bad. The Pharisees were the exemplar of this trait in our human nature. In fact, the very word Pharisee means the separated ones. The Pharisees wanted to judge, wanted to be very clear about who was good and who was bad. And they wanted to separate themselves from the filth of this world and keep themselves away from sinners and tax collectors who they condemned Jesus for associating with. And as a result, the Pharisees, because they wanted to separate themselves and remain all pure by themselves, they missed the coming of God. They missed God's visitation in the midst of his people in the person of Jesus. But the Pharisees were not the only ones who wanted to be very clear about who was good and who was bad, and for punishment to be visited upon the evildoers. We see this in Jesus' own disciples, James and John, when they say to Jesus, Lord, that Samaritan town that rejected you, that refused to welcome you, do you want us to call down fire on them? They wanted an immediate judgment. But Jesus rebukes them and gives them a very different response to how to deal with evil, with sin in our midst. In this parable of the wheat and the tares, the tares or the dinol, these weeds, had a very similar appearance to wheat. Indeed, even today, farmers will struggle to distinguish between the wheat and the dinol or the tear or the tares. And so the danger is if you are not good at distinguishing between what is wheat and what is weeds, you may end up uprooting the wheat instead of the weeds. And even if you're good at distinguishing that which is weeds, the root system of the wheat and the weeds are so intertwined that when you uproot the weeds, you end up uprooting the wheat as well. And so Jesus' conclusion is let them grow together. But that's incredibly hard for us as human beings. I'm sure we all know of friends who, when we ask them, why do you not come to church? They say, Oh, the church, it's all full of sinners. You don't practice what you preach. And that's their excuse for not coming. I've seen it even within the church itself, with an inability on the part of the faithful Christians to deal with the messiness of life. Many people will say to me, No, Father, I can't be part of this group anymore. There's just too much sin. The people there, they're not repentant, they're so stubborn. Father, it's too, it's too much. I don't have the bandwidth for this. My life is too short, I'm gonna focus on praying and praising God. I see this so often, so many times. People want to check out of groups. The temptation is also to check out of a marriage and to say, uh, no, it's just not worth it. It's just there's just too much mess here. I can't deal with this person. I'm I'm gonna check out of it. It's this human tendency, this inability to deal with a curious mixture of good and of evil. We even have it in ourselves. This parable is not just to be applied to our church or to the world, it's to be applied to ourselves as well. Within our very own hearts, there's this curious mixture of good and of evil. And every time we go to confession, we go firmly convinced that I'm gonna root out all this evil. This is the last time and it's not, we know it. And God seems curiously patient with us, curiously patient with our humanity, with this curious mix of good and of evil. And God invites us to this same patience with ourselves and with the groups that we belong to, whether that's at work, whether it's our families, to be patient. Because the work of God's purification is mysterious, but it also takes time. We need to be patient. It's not like instant coffee. The work of reconciliation, I mean, I do this so often when I work with groups or when I work with couples or something. It's hard work, it's hard work getting people to acknowledge their own weakness, bring it before the light, and then allow God to redeem that darkness, to redeem that sinfulness. And we each in our own way need to learn how to come before God and to recognize, Lord, I know I have this weakness in me, I know I am pairing this sinfulness in me, but I also know that I'm powerless to do anything about it. And I'm going to trust in you that you in your own time will deal with it. Because for anyone who's tried to root out their sinfulness by sheer brute willpower, you will know that it often doesn't work, and often you end up doing more damage to yourself. Not only to yourself, but if you're hard on yourself, you'll tend to be hard on others. You apply the same strict, unforgiving attitude on yourself, you apply it to others, and you become intolerant of other people and arrogant and judgmental. And so it is this parable that Jesus is is telling us to encourage us to be patient not only with ourselves but also with one another, as we journey together to the fullness of perfection that will only come at the end of time. That is the point of this parable. The harvest is the end of time. It is God alone who will be able to judge between evil and good and root out the evil. And I find it interesting that Jesus immediately follows this parable with another parable that almost subverts this message. The point of the message of this parable of the wheat and the wheats is how easy it is for good to be infiltrated by bad. You know, we say that it just takes a few bad apples to turn the whole harvest bad. You know, it just takes a few bad people to sow some despair. I'll talk later about the the letter of the bishops, the pastoral letter on the upcoming elections. But one thing that they do talk about is the proclivity of people, especially youth, to violence. And we know that it just takes one or two people to incite a riot, and then it's pandemonium and chaos. And the bishops say we need to be wary of this, and we need to encourage each person to remain peaceful as we go towards elections. And so we know that it just takes a few bad people to turn the whole barrel bad. But then Jesus tells another parable, the parable of the mustard seed. And in order to understand this parable, we have to know that at the time of Jesus in first century Palestine, the mustard seed was considered to be something of a weed, a weed that you would sow in your garden, you would say, Okay, I just want one mustard plant, because as you know, mustard, it's a very strong herb, you just need a little of it. So you just plant one mustard seed, but then suddenly that that mustard plant starts multiplying. And it it had the tendency to kind of take over a garden, just like weeds do. And if anyone, if you've uh had, if you've tried to root out weeds out of your garden, you'll know that it's it's an almost impossible task because you deal with the weeds over here and then they spring up over there. You deal with them there and then they spring up somewhere else. We're always fighting a running battle with weeds. And what Jesus seems to be saying by comparing the kingdom of God to a weed, the mustard plant, is to say that the kingdom of God won't go away that easily. You know, the kingdom of God is like a weed, it's tenacious. You try and stamp it out here, evildoers will try and get rid of good over here and it'll spring up over there. And so Jesus is almost telling us the opposite message. If it's easy for evil to infiltrate good, the wheat and the weeds, it's just as easy for good to infiltrate evil. And what he's telling us is that it just takes a few people, a few good people, to transform a society. And that's the same message that we're being given in the other parable that he tells in today's gospel of the yeast or the leaven and the dough. Three measures of flour, we need to understand Jesus liked hyperbole, he liked exaggeration in his parables. Three measures of flour was enough flour to make 60 loaves of bread. So enough bread to feed hundreds and hundreds of people. There's no housewife in the world who would be baking with three measures of flour. But he says, just a tiny bit of leaven, just a tiny bit of yeast will make all of that dead weight, all of that flour suddenly become springy, suddenly become light and full of air. His message is one of incredible hook. It just takes a few good people to transform society, a few people ready to follow Jesus' command and be the light of the world. And as we go towards elections, perhaps this is something that we need to remember as Zambians. That it just takes a few good people to shine the light, to make good choices in order for our nation to move forward in the direction that God wants us to go. God bless and have a good Sunday!