Matthew 13:24 - 43
Our country is going through difficult
times now. When you are old like me, you have some perspective. I
remember the Vietnam war and the turmoil in society that was going on
then. People were marching in the streets; radicals were burning
things and demanding justice and an end to the war. Soldiers home
from the fighting were being spit on; some people were taking refuge
in Canada to avoid the draft.
Another time there was turmoil; it was
during the days of the Moral Majority. It wasn’t as violent, but
it was another attempt at revolution. Jerry Falwell and people like
him wanted to purge the country of things not Christian. Laws were
being enacted, politicians were pandering, and Pat Robertson had made
the 700 Club one of the most popular programs on television -- thinly
disguised political commentary under a banner of religion.
And if I had lived even longer, I
could probably point to other times in our history when there was
huge upheaval and the feeling that maybe this time all the evil would
be uprooted and we would finally have a perfect society.
Now I believe that in this country
there is such a thing as white privilege. I remember hearing a story
about an African American woman who went out on a first date with the
man who would eventually become her husband -- also African American.
He was a young engineer who made a good living and had a fairly
expensive car. She noticed that there was a stuffed bear in the back
seat along with a coloring book and a number of tissues on the floor.
“You told me you weren’t married!” she exclaimed. “You said
you didn’t have a family!” The young man reassured her that he
wasn’t married and didn’t have a family. But when he had
purchased his car, he kept getting pulled over by the police who
wanted to see his proof of ownership -- because they wanted to make
sure he hadn’t stolen it. He was told by a friend that if the back
seat looked like it had held a kid, it would give off a different
perspective and he wouldn’t be bothered so much. And it worked.
Now I don’t have to put a teddy bear in the back seat of my car;
that’s white privilege.
I think all of us would like to see a
world where no one was judged by the color of their skin. Martin
Luther King certainly hoped that day would come, and indeed, that’s
kind of at the basis of the demonstrations and demands that are
making the news. And Black lives matter, and if you say, “All
lives matter” the Black Lives Matter people will scream in
frustration -- “You are missing the point!” But here’s the
thing. Jesus tells us in this parable of the wheat and the weeds
that we are missing the point.
It’s a natural tendency to believe
that we can tear out the weeds and be left with just the wheat.
That’s what Karl Marx believed. And everywhere his theories have
been tried, human misery of an unprecedented degree followed. We
have the same problem in our church. There are people who believe
that if we just get rid of everything that changed after Vatican II,
we will see a revitalization of Catholicism. Jesus is reminding us
that there is no such thing as a perfect society, because there is no
such thing as a perfect person -- Him and his mother excepted ,of
course.
A second point of the parable is
that.the farmer allows the wheat and weeds to grow together until the
harvest. That means both are sharing the soil and the sunlight and
rain necessary to grow. The wheat could refuse to grow if it had to
share things with the weeds, but that would be very foolish. And
like it or not, we all have got to seek reasonable compromise with
those with whom we disagree.
The third point Jesus makes is that
the one responsible for the weeds is the devil. When we see the kind
of things that are going on today – destroying statues, occupying
sections of cities, turning our big cities into target ranges – ,
even if they seem to be about righting ancient wrongs or finally
achieving justice, if it doesn’t proceed from compromise, it just
means changing one center of power for another. We know the devil,
whose very name comes from the word that means “divide” has an
interest in causing violence and trouble between races, classes,
religions, countries. He wants us to try to rip out the weeds and
destroy the wheat in the process.
And there is one more point here. In
the old translations the enemy was said to have sewn darnel, not
weeds. Darnel was a plant that looked a lot like wheat, and was hard
to distinguish until it had matured. I believe Jesus wants us to
have enough humility to know that we can’t tell who is a weed and
who is a stalk of wheat with any degree of certainty. What we can
do, and what the darnel couldn’t, is to become wheat, the best
wheat we can be, and pray that those around us will have the grace to
do so as well.
When you are old like me, you can
remember a time when race relations where much worse than they are
today. Though they aren’t perfect now, and probably never will be,
real progress comes from following the teachings of Jesus, who in the
end told me to follow a very simple rule – to love my neighbor as
myself.
