Homily for Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
We can see from the gospel passage that the people Jesus preached to were country people, a people who were close to the earth, aware of the rhythm of the seasons and with a keen eye for harvest time. This context has been obvious in the gospel parables of the last few Sunday. You will recall that the gospel last Sunday was the Parable of the Sower. Today's gospel parables concern themselves with a similar theme, the growth of the word of God and the challenges it encounters as it strives to take root in our lives.
This parable had a particularly urgent application in the case of Jesus himself. He kept company with some very unsavoury characters: tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, outcasts of all kinds, sinners of every shape and size. The company he kept was constant source of scandal to his contemporaries. "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them" the religious leaders of the day, the Pharisees, had complained regularly. The response of Jesus was to tell that parable.
Jesus compares the church, the people of God, to a field where wheat and weeds grow side by side until the harvest time. Only then are the good separated from the wicked. In the world around us good and bad people mix like wheat and weeds growing in the same field. This prompts the question asked by many upright if impatient believers: Why does God who is good allow evil to flourish? They want to see vice rooted out immediately. Such an attitude too readily forgets that every human heart contains a mixture of good and devil. We are, without exception, a sinful people and should be conscious of our failings. Life is more complex and complicated than drawing clear-cut lines between saints and sinners. The church is not an exclusive community of the virtuous and the saved. The Church exists because we sinners stand in need of salvation and redemption. The patience and tolerance extended by God to our personal sinfulness is to be shown to those whose faults are known to us.
The Gospel story gives us an insight into the life of God whose power is best displayed in endless patience. He is at all times concerned with the conversion of his people, never with their destruction. With him no one is ever written off or considered beyond redemption. His mercy is more urgent than his judgment and his nature is best revealed in his tolerance towards the wayward. God cares for everybody, but especially for those whose lives are choked by sin. The Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day, viewed his patience and his regard for sinners as a source of scandal. But God's ways are not ours, and it is just as well for us. He saves us from ourselves.
The good news is that it is never too late for a sinner to turn back to God and be accepted. Weeds can never become wheat, but by the power of God a sinner can become a saint. Let us all be thankful that when our time comes will be judged by God and not by each other.