Twenty- third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 18:15 - 20

I really like to avoid conflict. And yet I’ve met people who seem to enjoy it. Fortunately there aren’t too many of them. But there are two natural responses to conflict -- fight and flight. I usually choose flight. In my career as a physician, though, there were times when I had to correct a person who reported to me in the chain of command. I would bring the person into my office, close the door, and in a calm voice, express my concern about a particular behavior. Naturally the individual would deny that there was a problem, and point out that other people did worse. I would point out other instances of the behavior in an attempt to show that this was a habit. And back and forth it would go, until we grudgingly agreed that the person would try to modify his behavior, even though he didn’t think it was a problem. And things didn’t change very much at all.

Many years later, though, I was not adapting to some new procedures in our department, which had been imposed by the health care system I worked for. I was resisting not on principle, but largely because I did not like being told what to do by people who weren’t physicians. Then one day I got called in by my superior, who was accompanied by a member of the administration, and I was told in a calm voice to adapt. I began to make my excuses. My boss said we weren’t going there; we had invested a lot in the new system and my choices were to adapt or to think about finding some other place to work. I adapted, and after a while became a “super user” who taught others how to negotiate the procedures involved.

Today Jesus invites us to go into those situations which I would rather avoid, situations which we can expect will cause adrenaline to flow. In the original Greek, the gospel says “If you fellow disciple sins (and we aren’t sure whether the words “against you” were in the original)” go and point out their fault, just between the two of you, and if he listens, you have won him over.” The really important point is that your goal is to win your brother or sister over -- to get them to stop the sin. What you are supposed to do is done out of love, because you want that brother or sister in heaven and you know that if they persist in the sin, this makes heaven less likely. That’s why you escalate; if your little talk doesn’t work, get someone to go with you, The importance of this step is two-fold; you want to show the sinner that this is serious, but at the same time, you want to make sure they see the sin the same way you do. And if this doesn’t work, go to the whole assembly. Because we are our brother’s keeper; we all have an interest in his salvation; it really matters enough to put us into this uncomfortable conflict.

Now Jesus isn’t saying that we should go around looking for trouble, going up to people on the street and telling them to put on their masks, for God’s sake! Jesus is clear about what he is talking about is fellow disciples; people who have already committed to following the way of Jesus. Our obligation to people of other religions or no religion at all is different. That is why logic and appeal to moral principles almost never works; ultimately conversion requires a good example on our part and the grace of God on his. The point Jesus is making is that we in this church, St. Mary’s in Longmeadow, are responsible for each other.

Now what happens when someone doesn’t listen to the Church? Jesus tells us to treat them like tax collectors or gentiles. What does that mean? Do we shun them, have nothing to do with them? That has been one interpretation. In Amish communities being shunned is a terrible experience. You are treated as though you don’t exist, even by members of your family. That sometimes makes the shunned person come back into the community. Shunning works, sometimes. But think about how Jesus treated gentiles and tax collectors. He healed the servant of the centurion; he healed the Syrophoenician woman. He commended Naaman the Syrian, who had been healed by Elishsa, and the Widow of Naim, who had been saved from starvation by Elijah. And tax collectors. He was notorious for eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners. And the man who wrote the gospel we have just been listening to was a tax collector. If we are going to treat those who are sinners and refuse to change their ways as Jesus did, that means that after we’ve done everything we can to get them to put the sin behind them and return to the community, we still hold out hope, we still never forget that they are brothers and sisters, that they are always welcome in the beloved community to which they once belonged.

Jesus says some other things in this gospel passage that make more sense when you realize he is talking to his disciples, not the world at large. “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven...” In Judaism of that time, binding and loosing were things that only the authorities could do. Jesus is telling us that the authority is given to our community. And the same is true of his promise that where two or three are gathered together in his name he is there. He promises that he will accompany his disciples as they work together to bring about His kingdom. And the promise that if two of us agree about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father? That's a hard one, and we could spend a few hours on the subject of unanswered prayers. But I like the story of the little boy who told his parents he wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up. Years later, when he graduated from high school, he said he wanted to be a lawyer. His father bcame very upset. “We've scrimped and saved all these years to buy you a ranch so you could be a cowboy!” his father yelled. “But dad,” why did you listen to me? I was only five years old” replied the son.

So we have heard Jesus giving us clear directions about some of our responsibilities to each other. On this Sunday we should ask ourselves whether we are following what he has commanded us to do.

 

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:21 - 27

Alice was a good Catholic girl who was in love with Robert, a good Baptist guy, who loved her too.  Since Robert could not in his heart marry a Catholic, and Alice had no intention of leaving the faith she loved, they had a real cross in their lives.  Alice was pouring out her heart to her mother, who said, “I have an idea!  Sell Robert on your faith.  Tell him about the great saints, the mysteries we celebrate, the history we can trace back to the apostles.  So Alice did, and for a while it looked promising;  Robert was reading books by Scott Hahn and listening to CD’s by Curtis Martin and had even started coming to church with Alice.  Then one day Alice burst in on her mother in tears.  “What’s the matter,” said the mother.  “I thought things were going well with Robert!”  “They went too well,” said Alice.  He told me he wants to be a priest.”  I guess we can’t escape crosses in our lives.  

But seriously, when I hear the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel today, I always feel uneasy.  Take up my cross?  Whoever wants to save his life will lose it?  Whoever loses his life for Jesus will find it?  And here I am, comfortable, well fed, not in any significant pain, certainly interested in keeping things that way as long as I can -- Where is my cross?  And do I really want to take it up?  But as Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”  

On the other hand, Jesus isn’t a sadist, and during his lifetime on earth, he was always making things better for people -- taking away their pains and disabilities, healing them of their demons, even seeing to it that they were fed when they became hungry.  I don’t remember him telling anyone that he healed that it would be better for them if they just took up their cross.  From my reading of the gospels, I have to conclude that Jesus would like it if more people were like I am, and fewer like those desperate people who live in places ruled by ruthless dictators, or those people who have no idea where their next meal is coming from.  

Perhaps the key to this mystery is in the words Jesus speaks to Peter:  The Son of Man must… suffer, must be killed, and rise again on the third day.  Jesus as a human being knew that if he kept doing what he was doing, he would end up the way others who opposed the Roman authorities ended up - crucified.  Jesus and his apostles had seen crucifixions; they were very public, and even if you didn’t want to watch, you were sometimes dragged out of your house and made to watch.  It was an effective way to intimidate would -be revolutionaries.  People who did the crucifying knew how to inflict maximum pain, and yet they made it a point not to kill you outright.  And that’s what horrified Peter and led to his remark to Jesus.  

But Jesus had no intention of stopping what he was doing; he saw his mission as carrying out God’s will, and accepting the consequences, but he also had total trust in the One who proclaimed that Jesus was the “beloved” son.  He trusted -- did not know, as a human being, but trusted -- that even if he lost his life, the Father would somehow turn even this tragedy around.  And with that total trust, Jesus would keep on doing what he was doing.

I suspect that is what Jesus is talking about.  We all face choices, not every day or even every week, perhaps, but all of us come to those points in life where we realize that we have to make a choice -- where our faith calls us to say or do something that will result in some kind of pain.  It’s in those moments when the choice we make can be the one that keeps us comfortable, out of trouble, and unlikely to cost us anything -- we can choose to save our lives -- but we’ve been diminished, we have really lost something.  Or we may make the choice that we know we should make, the choice that might be unpopular, might get us into trouble, the choice that is actually in keeping with our faith -- in which case we accept the consequences, because like Jesus we trust that our heavenly father will in the end bring good out of what seems to be bad.  And Christians all over the world are making that choice, even today -- the choice that makes them second class citizens, the choice that might get them fired from their job, the choice that puts them on the wrong side of the prevailing political winds.  But at the same time, the choice being made is for Jesus’ sake, so they trust in Jesus’ promise.  And, of course, Christians all over the world are choosing not to choose; they remain silent about the great evil of abortion; they use their wealth for their own pleasure rather than to tend to the very real needs of their fellow human beings; they spend the moments of their lives -- never to be regained -- on video games, soap operas and other ways of wasting time.  

And I’m not sure if Jesus is warning us about going to hell when he talks about losing one’s soul.  I think he’s pointing out that if you go through life keeping your head down and not rocking the boat, believing but not being committed enough to those beliefs to actually sacrifice something for them, the constant effort to save your life will wear away at your very nature as a human being, so that very little will be left at the end.  You will have lost your soul.  

Following Christ costs the follower.  Karl Marx once described religion as the opiate of the masses, suggesting that people who practiced their faith did so because it made them feel safe and secure; but the witness of the saints and martyrs is that this is entirely wrong; a person who truly practices his faith is a real risk-taker, someone who models himself on the life of Jesus Christ, someone who has a clear idea of what he believes and why, and is willing to act on those beliefs, because he trusts the same Father whom Jesus trusted.  

Someone once said, “Do you know how to get to heaven?  It’s simple.  Do the things you know you should do, and stop doing the things you know you shouldn’t do.”

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 16:13 - 20

Do you believe in hell?  Do you believe that God sent his only Son precisely to make it possible for us to avoid hell and gain eternal life?  Do you believe the Church has what you need to gain eternal life, or to put it another way, the Church is the ordinary means by which human beings can access the gift God gives us through Jesus?  (Notice, I said “ordinary” means because the Church also teaches that God in his mercy makes the gift of Jesus available to people who are sincerely trying to live decent lives but have not been given the gift of faith.)  The reason I bring these questions up is because probably most American Catholics don’t believe one or more of those statements.  I mean, would a good God send me to hell?  And really, is Jesus the only way to get to heaven?  And the Church?  Don’t get me started!  And besides, I know protestants and Jews and even atheists who are holier than the average Catholic.  But the questions I asked are doctrine; we can find their answers in scripture and in the teachings of the Church and we assent to them every time we say the Creed.  It’s important to us Catholics to now and then ask, are we properly using what God has given us to save our souls?  Because he doesn’t send us to hell, but he loves us so much that if we choose not to return that love by how we live, we can send ourselves there. 

The real question is what Jesus asked:  Who do people say that I am?  Because Moslems revere Jesus as a prophet.  Jews who think about it agree that he is a holy man.  Most people who know something about Jesus, other than those who have decided there was no such person, would have some opinion, usually favorable.  And before Jesus puts the apostles on the spot, he asks them what the word on the street is, and with relief, they tell him.  And then he springs the question:  Who do you say that I am?  And they look around nervously trying not to make eye contact with Jesus.  Finally Peter blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”  Notice that Jesus does not say, “Nice going, Pete, you figured it out!”  He says, “Blessed are you because God told you who I am!”  Faith is a gift; people who are baptized, even as infants, have been given this gift.  Of course it’s obvious that we can throw away that gift.  Some of our children do; sometimes a spouse does.  We all have friends and relatives who used to be Catholic.  But every now and then we see evidence that the spirit is still at work and we see someone come into the Church as an adult, or we see a young person go from indifferent to committed.  The gift is like a garden which needs to be weeded and watered with prayer and study.

Peter is proclaimed blessed by Jesus, and given that wonderful promise that he will be the rock on which the Church will be built, and that what is bound or loosed on earth will be bound or loosed in heaven.  Peter must have felt very important at that point, enough so that he felt bold enough to try to correct Jesus when.he  talks about having to suffer and die.  Jesus rebukes him, calls him “satan”.  And that is the lesson for you and I.  

If we think Jesus is just another prophet or holy man, and that there is no hell, and that the Catholic Church is just another way to get to heaven, we’ve missed the point.  But if we agree that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we may have still missed the point, as Peter did.  Because we still have to answer the question, what kind of Messiah is Jesus to me?  And Peter might answer -- the one who healed my mother-in-law; the one who told me to walk on water, and I did, for a minute; the one who left me nearly speechless on the mountaintop when he appeared with Moses and Elijah; the one who predicted that I would betray him; the one who spoke to me with mercy and forgiveness on the shores of the lake after he rose from the dead; the one that I in the end would give up my life for.  Because Peter never did figure out who Jesus was to him; what kind of Messiah Jesus was; Peter was still figuring it out when he was martyred.  And that’s our situation as well; we have to realize that while we can intellectually agree that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, we are always learning more about what kind of Messiah he is to you, to me.  We in fact can never give a final answer, and if we think we can, we are no longer moving forward.  

And if we are Catholic Christians, our Church is always revealing Christ to us -- because Jesus built his church on Peter’s recognition of who Jesus was to Peter -- a realization that only began with this famous confession.

Our job, as was true for Peter, is to learn God’s ways rather than the ways of man.  God reveals to us his way in the Church Jesus founded and our task is to continue all through our lives learning God’s ways and rejecting those of man. In our lifetimes we will always be asking who Jesus is to me, we will always be seeking the answer as Peter did.  And if we aren’t doing that, we aren’t moving forward in our spiritual growth.  

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 14:22 - 33

I still remember when I was about five years old my parents vacationed on Seely Lake in Montana.  One day my parents and my sister and I were out in a rowboat on the lake.  A wind came up and the water got very choppy, and it started to rain.  My dad threw everything he had into getting to boat back to shore.  I remember the waves washing over the side.  It was a very frightening moment.  I’ve had other experiences.  I like to go out early in the morning and ride my bicycle.  I was stopped behind a van right out there on the corner of Bliss and Longmeadow street, waiting for the light to change.  A big truck came down bliss and the van in front of me politely began backing up to give him more room.  You can’t go backward on a bike.  I thought for sure I would be run over, but fortunately I cried out in fear like the apostles and he stopped.

It seems as though the world is changing very rapidly.  Most Americans have adopted masks and social distancing and hand washing that a racoon would envy without too much fuss.  And just when things start to look up, we have riots going on in many of our big cities.  We’ve got people calling for defunding the police departments.  We have a massive rise in murders and gunshot wounds in some of our cities.  And we hear that the number of Amercans owning guns is about double what it was a year ago.  Education is rapidly becoming a long-distance proposition, and our kids are spending more and more time interfacing with computers rather than teachers and classmates.  Will things ever get back to normal?  Whenever I think about these things, I feel fear.  

Today’s gospel is not telling us that if you have enough faith you shouldn’t have any fear.  Fear is natural, it’s part of our animal nature.  Peter and  the other disciples feel fear -- properly so, because they are in danger of drowning. 

I’m sure you can think of times when you experienced fear.  It’s normal.  But how do you react to fear?  I think that’s the lesson this gospel is teaching us.  When the apostles see Jesus, they think he’s a ghost.  The Greek word is “phantasm” which had a wider meaning -- there was always a hint of evil in a phantasm.  But Jesus tells them very clearly, “Take courage, it is I, do not be afraid!”  And Peter reacts not with trust, but with suspicion:  “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”  There are times when fear rises up in me and it’s momentary -- I forget to pray.  But there are other times when fear is more prolonged and I find myself bargaining with God.  “Lord, if you are really there…”  So the Lord invites Peter to draw closer, to come to him.  And Peter does, and for a minute everything looks great.  But Peter again becomes aware of the wind and the waves and begins to sink.  And of course when he cries out Jesus reaches out and pulls him to safety.  And we hear those words, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”

Is Jesus referring to Peter’s loss of faith when he realized he was walking on water?  Or to when Peter tried to put Jesus to a test to make sure the phantasm was really Jesus?  And maybe that’s the lesson for us.  One way to react to fear is suspicion -- that Jesus is not really there, that Jesus is not keeping his promises to us.  Fear makes me call upon all my defenses, and they are never enough to overcome fear.  But when I try to do this by myself, I always fail.  Another way to react to fear is trust.  When Peter steps out of the boat, he is trusting.  He walks on the water.  His trust doesn’t last very long, but while it is there, what power is in that trust! Jesus keeps his promises.  He says “Come” and invites us to step into the fear and let him be present to us.

As I was thinking about his gospel I remembered that picture a few years ago about the Christians who were executed by Isis in Libya.  They knelt on the ground and seemed to have no fear.  Jesus was present to them and even death could not frighten them, because they knew that Jesus kept his promises.    

Another thing to notice about this gospel; when you look at Peter, he goes from suspicion to trust to suspicion again.  But when you look at Jesus,  he is always moving toward those he loves.  He comes down from the mountain; he walks across the water; he comes toward them when they think he’s a ghost;  he keeps coming, always moving toward them.  And when he reaches them, the storm-tossed waters and the raging wind die down.  And he promises the same to you and I.  He will come to us if we let him, if we trust him.  

“Take courage,” he tells us, “It is I.  Do not be afraid.”  Let your fear lead to trust, not suspicion.  

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 14:13 - 21
In the gospels, there are six accounts of Jesus multiplying the loaves and fishes.  Mark and Matthew each have two; once for 5000 men and once for 4000.  Luke and John describe one each.  Today’s reading is taken from the fourteenth chapter of Matthew.  The other story is from the sixteenth chapter.  But in the second miracle, the apostles still ask,  “How could we get enough food in this remote place to feed such a crowd?”  Apparently they had short memories.
But if we were to look at each story we would see that the authors bend it a little to serve their own purposes.  And Matthew is no different. 
So a really important question is, “Are you sufficiently amazed at this miracle?  Remember, it was 5000 men, not counting the women and children.  Does that amaze you even more?  Does hearing about this miracle, or one like it, as you’ve heard countless times during the reading of the gospel at Sunday Mass make you feel closer to Christ and more willing to lead a Christian life?”  If you are honest you probably say to yourself, “not really”.  Well, me neither.  Could these miracles have happened?  Of course. God can do anything he wants to.  Did they happen exactly as told in scripture?  Can’t be, unless we are talking about six different feedings, because each story is a little different.  Walter Burgerman, a great preacher and scripture scholar, says that Jesus’ miracles should be approached in the same way as his parables.  What is the miracle telling us?  How are we to respond to what we hear?
So let’s look at the story.  First, Jesus has just heard about the execution of his cousin, John.  The scriptures seem to indicate that Jesus and John were close; in fact, after John baptized Jesus, Jesus began doing the same thing as John -- preaching and baptizing.  And some of John’s followers became followers of Jesus.  And John thought that was a good thing, and Jesus remarked at one time that up until that time there had been no one greater than John.  So Jesus, being fully human, being subject to the same emotions that happen to you and I, naturally withdrew to a secluded place.  Jesus mourned his cousin’s death, and as we learn, he took his ministry north, away from Jerusalem, probably hoping to avoid the same fate.  Nothing wrong with that.  But his period of mourning was interrupted by the crowds who followed him, upon whom he had compassion.
That evening, the apostles ask Jesus to send the crowds away so that they can buy food, and Jesus tells them, “You give them something to eat.”  Not, “I will give them something to eat.” When the apostles pull out their own lunch, they don’t have much, and it sounds a little like they are reluctant to part with the food they have.  But Jesus performs a Eucharistic ceremony, and the resemblance to the Eucharist is deliberate, and gives the blessed food back to the disciples to pass out to the crowd.  They are indeed giving them something to eat.  And after everyone is full, they gather up twelve baskets of leftovers -- one for each apostle.  The apostles have more food than they can consume after giving up their meager lunch at Jesus’ command. 
I wonder if the crowd realized there was a miracle?  I’ve been to events where food was handed out and I didn’t see where it came from.  I did not assume a miracle had taken place, but I didn’t discount it either.  I had no opinion.  But the important witnesses to the miracle were the apostles themselves.  I think they took away several points that would be emphasized in the religion that Jesus founded, that the apostles and their descendants elaborated upon. 
First, the obvious.  If you give something of yours away at the command of Jesus, you will not only see your efforts multiply, but you yourself will be compensated greatly.  Jesus makes that promise over and over again -- the measure with which you measure will be the one which will be used to reward you.  If you even give a cup of water to one of these little ones, you will have your reward.  The miracle of the loaves and fishes is just one of the many, many places God promises your generosity will be rewarded abundantly, if not in this life, then the next.  But it will happen.
The second point is related.  One of the reasons our church is so insistent on the fact that in the Eucharist the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus -- and not just a symbol, is because it is the fulfillment of God’s promise.  We bring the Father bread and wine, things we have taken from the earth and transformed into rather simple food and drink, and he returns to us his son Jesus, to be our food and drink, as Jesus promised, of course.  In the Mass God keeps his promise.  What we offer will be paid back beyond anything we could imagine. 
The third point is a very simple, earthy one.  Jesus doesn’t want anyone to go hungry.  And Jesus expects you and I to give them food.  Do you know of any hungry people?  What are you doing about it?  We can’t feed them all, but we can feed one or two or ten?  How are you carrying out the commandment of Jesus to his Church -- “You give them something to eat!”

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 13:44 - 52

When I was four years old I did not want to be a fireman; I wanted to be a cowboy.  My parents supported my decision and bought me a little hat, a toy pistol and a bandanna, and I would ride my trusty tricycle and shoot at neighborhood dogs.  But as time went on, I left this dream behind.  I had many other vocational goals; there was a time when I thought it would be neat to be a priest -- I was about seven.  I flirted with being an auto mechanic, an air force officer, a policeman, even a farmer, since the uncle that I looked up to the most was a farmer and seemed to enjoy it.  But as I reached the age where I had to get serious about my future, my reasoning evolved more to deciding what I didn’t want.  In high school I didn’t want anything to do with professional sports, engineering, being a salesman -- and in college I gravitated away from a profession involving precision, like chemistry.  But I still had too many choices, too many interests.  I liked English literature; I enjoyed my theology and philosophy courses; I really liked advanced math and physics.  And I envisioned myself being a college professor, with a corduroy coat with elbow patches and a pipe.  By the time I had to decide what to do when I graduated, I had firmly decided on becoming a psychiatrist, because that seemed to be a profession that combined everything in which I was interested.  Until I actually took a psychiatry rotation in my training.  I could go on but I won’t.  The point is, everyone begins with a countless number of choices ,and somewhere along the line you have to give up everything if you want the pearl of great price, the treasure in the field.  

Every choice we make is also a renunciation.  We all want the right things, but we want other things as well.  If I marry one person, I give up being married to others.  If I live in one part of the country I can’t live in others (unless I’m a snowbird, of course, but even then…).  If I choose one career, I have to turn my back on other ways to make a living, to live my life.  And if you examine yourself when you have made a choice, but also a renunciation, you find that there is pain over the loss of what you might have chosen.  It may be a very small twinge, but it might be something more difficult.  When I got married I discovered that putting my wife first meant putting my birth family second.  When we chose to spend our money on educating our children in catholic institutions rather than enjoying the good things our income could have gotten us, there was a little pain mixed in to the choice we thought was right.  When I had to choose my specialty in medicine, I had to turn away from many specialties which I found very interesting.  Pain always accompanies our choices. 

The point is that we are infinite beings in a finite world, in finite bodies.  We want everything but have to settle for some things.  We have a finite life span and we make bucket lists sometimes or we just drift other times until we find that we’ve run out of time and we come up against the fact that we now are seeing our possibilities become fewer and fewer.  A friend of mine counts it as a good day when he can go out in his yard and water the plants.  

Jesus gives us these two parables and challenges us:  What is your pearl of great price!?  What are you willing to give up to gain it?  Because it’s not until you’ve made that decision that you can begin to grow.  

A person who finally commits to loving one person above all others is someone who can begin to truly embrace the fruits of matrimony.  A person who has a call to the religious life or the priesthood can begin to reap the joy in these vocations when he or she gives up everything else.  A person who is called to single life, and there are many, can begin to grow in a special way when he or she accepts that other states in life are not for him or her.  

The same can be said of all our choices.  When you hold back, when you refuse to commit, you can’t move forward.  I had a friend who was torn between medicine and music, and tried to avoid having to choose.  Although she was extremely talented in both areas, she never realized her potential in either.  

One of the messages of Christianity is that this life is a trial run.  We don’t understand how it works, we don’t really know what we are talking about when we talk about the life after death; but we are assured by Jesus Christ himself that there is a state of existence when every tear will be wiped away, when there is no more pain of renunciation with our choices, when we are finally infinite beings in infinity.  So today let us embrace our choices, never looking back, knowing that in the long run the pain of being human will be taken up into the resurrection of Jesus.

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

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.