We are sinners in the hands of a loving and forgiving God.

At our liturgies this weekend, I had the great privilege of baptizing the four newest members of our faith community:  Ada Mary Peffer, Maximilliam Mitacc, Logan Aaron Mott, and Amelia Rae Reinholtz.  The youthfulness and vitality of our parish life is  beautifully illustrated in the number of baptisms that are celebrated in our Sunday liturgies.

As I reflect on today’s Gospel of the parable of the wheat and the weeds, my conviction is we live in a very weedy world.  Isn’t it true, there is much too much violence, hatred, power-grabbing, self-centeredness in the world today?   In the land we call Holy, their leaders are hurling missiles back and forth at each other killing innocent people.  We have to look no further than ourselves to recognize too much self-centeredness and not enough God-centeredness and other-centeredness in our lives.

Where have the weeds come from?   In the Gospel, the servants said to the master:  Do you want us to go and pull them up?  He replied:  “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them.  Let them grow together until the harvest.”

I have that same question when I look out at my garden:  Where have the weeds come from?  Their ongoing presence in my garden is more the result of my laziness of myself as a gardener than some spiritual wisdom.

Not so with Jesus.  Jesus tells that this parable to illustrate the patience of God in dealing with weeds.  Wait until the harvest.   The Church of Jesus is not to grow impatient with the weeds.

What weeds are we talking about?  This is an important awareness in the spiritual life of anyone of us and in the spiritual life of the Church as a whole.

Yes, the weeds of life are about us.  We are all sinners.   We all have demons.  In term of this parable we all have weeds – the weeds of pride, the weeds of materialism, the weeds of anger, the weeds of lust, the weeds of self-centeredness, and the weeds of holding grudges.  Often enough, we are more aware of these weeds in the lives of others than ourselves.

There are significant weeds in the life of the Church – the weeds of sexual abuse, the weeds of power, and the weeds of not living out the Gospel that is preached?

What are we to do in the face of the weeds that are about us?  The parable suggests that God is patient – much more patient than ourselves.   Matthew’s Gospel could be renamed the Gospel of Punishment Postponed.  May we pray for the grace of the patience of God.  This does not mean passivity or helplessness or an attitude of giving up.  Does this mean that we are to sit back and pick daisies while the innocent suffer?  It means we are to love ourselves and others who are sinners and who have weeds that disappoint us.    The truth of our lives is that we are all sinners whom the Lord has turned his gaze upon.

The Gospel tells us that God can tolerate weeds far better than we can.  This God sounds a bit like that crazy landowner who left the weeds with room to grow.  A mentor for me is Pope Francis who said:  “Who am I to judge?”  Following the example of Pope Francis, may we refrain from judgment.  May we experience the joy of the Gospel and witness to the kindness and patience of God in the way we are with one and all.

What are to make of the weediness of our very Church that doesn’t always reflect the love of Jesus in the lives of people?  Do we look for a Church without weeds so that we can focus more fully on God.   As illustrated in the parable, as disillusioning as this may, the weeds are going to be present till the harvest at the end of the world.  The Church will always be a Church of sinners.  Again, this doesn’t that we are to the passive recipients of evil as in sexual abuse.  We are to stand for the Gospel and hold ourselves and others up to a Gospel way of living.  But at the same time, as long as people are people, there is going to be some weediness in our own hearts and in our world.

What are we to do?   In fact, aren’t we in the field ourselves, still growing?   And just what are we, weeds or wheat, or both at different times?  Would we want someone, other than God,  misjudging us before we have had time to grow to full maturity?

The apostle Paul said something very remarkable in his second Letter to the Corinthians:  Paul boasted of his weakness.  He boasted of his weediness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.  Like Paul, we do not have to deny the weeds of our lives or the weeds of the Church.  We can let them grow till the harvest to make us more aware of our need for God’s grace.  At the end of the day, we are all sinners in the hands of a loving and forgiving God.