16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
We all learned our faith from the Catechism. The Catechism is a series of contrived questions with a series of contrived accurate answers. Each question had it one set answer. Any other answer to that question was considered wrong. We hear the question, give our answer and wait to find out if we're either right or wrong. The Catechism analysed the faith. It tore the faith apart and analysed all its components. The scriptures work the opposite way. They almost always give several different, but correct, answers to the same question. That is the case in today's gospel. The disciples ask Jesus the question: 'What is the kingdom of heaven like?' But he gives multiple answers.
First of all, it should be said that the "kingdom of heaven" (or the "reign of God") doesn't refer to the place we go after we die. It's the term Jesus used to describe God working in their everyday lives. Even those who didn't believe in an afterlife (as many Jews didn't), believed God was somehow present as they went about their daily routines.
Jesus and those who followed him were convinced that God was working in their lives for good. Yet they never could find just one perfect way to express that belief. Notice how many different answers Jesus gives in these few verses.
First, it "...may be likened to someone who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat ..." The result: you've got good and bad intertwined. Only at harvest will they be separated.
Second, it's "...like a mustard seed a person took and sowed in a field." Though small, it grows into a bush large enough to hold perching birds.
Third, it's "...like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened." It permeates and changes every element in which you find it.
We who analyze are waiting to find out which of the three parables is correct, and which two are wrong. Those who synthesize are waiting to find out how many more parables Jesus can employ to describe the same reality.
The authors of Scripture saw faith as something that permitted them to step into God's life - an experience which can never be simply described or explained. Even after one tries to describe or explain it, there's always another description or explanation lurking around the corner, just as correct and valid as the first one.
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 our Catechism would have us believe. It is impossible to draw 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.