You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.
We are in the weed season in North America – hot, humid weather, storm-fed downpours. Everywhere we look, in our yards, on city streets, there are weeds to be pulled. I have an ongoing discussion with some of my parish gardeners about the dandelions in our church lawn – I don’t consider dandelions a weed. They are pretty; they have flowers; they break up the monotony of the grass.
I had a friend who used to say, “Weeds are a social category,” meaning, there is nothing innately wrong with many of the plants we deem weeds – except that they are not what we planted, not what we envisioned in our beautiful gardens. Perhaps she glossed over the fact that the undesired plants can take nourishment and water and sunlight from plants with more fruitfulness – but she has a point. Who are we to decide what’s in and what’s out… or, more importantly, who’s in and who’s out, who’s wheat and who’s a weed? Jesus’ story implies that it is not our call.
The servants in Jesus’ parable propose to pull up the weeds an unnamed enemy has sown in the wheat field in the dead of night. The field’s owner has a different plan: The servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” But he replied, “No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
If we are to co-exist, then, what are we to do with people who manifest themselves as quite obviously weed-like – net takers, abusers, manipulators, terrorizers? The parable isn’t of much help - parables are limited. In this one, the weeds and wheat are inanimate, rooted, fixed. There is no provision for their choices or for them to interact with one another. No parable was meant to tell the whole story.
What then is to be our position toward weeds? How might we be called to help transform weeds - or accept them? We might start by remembering that we share a common nature with all people, and that even the worst possess an innate humanity which is worthy of honor even if all their behavior and presentation to the world is not. Somewhere in there is a child of a mother and a father, a hurt and broken child worthy of our prayers, worthy of asking God to bless and heal and forgive. Sometimes it’s up to us to ask God to forgive someone before they are ready to do so for themselves.
We can ask the Spirit to tell us when we’re being called to more interaction with a given “weed” than just praying for God to bless and heal her. Are we invited to be in relationship with him? To listen, to help?
Today, let’s bring to mind some people we’ve deemed “weeds” in our gardens. As we pray for each of them, bringing them to mind and envisioning them bathed in God-light, we might also imagine them transformed from weed to glorious bloom, from pinched of face to relaxed and smiling, from mean to nurturing. It is a way of giving specificity to our prayers.
Above all, we remember Paul’s word that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Eph 6:12) More on that tomorrow.
The weeds are not the enemy, and the wheat is not in charge. Thanks be to God!
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