Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time “A”.  July 17 2005.  Our Lady of Grace 7:30, 11:30, 6PM.  Wisdom 12:13, 16-19.  Romans 8: 26-27.  Matthew 13: 24-43.

A young native woman in New Zealand, a member of the ancient Maori people, loved to listen to the new white missionaries talk about Christianity.  She was fascinated by the words of the strangers.  One day when she was leaving the hut used for a Christian church a man from her native community threw a potato at her, hitting her hard and filling her with anger.  The man resented the newcomers and the effect that they were having on some members of his community.  Rather than screaming in anger or in pain or picking up the potato to hurl back  at the man who had attacked her, the young woman bent over and picked up the potato and wrapped it very carefully in her lose fitting clothing. When she got home she very careful cut the potato into several pieces.  Then she planted the potato pieces in the ground and very patiently waited for the harvest.  Several months later she dug up two bushel baskets of potatoes from the ground where she had planted the potato pieces.  She carefully took one basket of potatoes home to feed her family.  The other basket of potatoes she brought to the hut of the man who had thrown the potato at her in anger.  She told him that she was trying to return his kindness in giving her the potato.  Soon the man who had thrown the potato began coming to listen to the missionaries preach.  He thought to himself  “Any God that can teach people how to turn anger into kindness and injury into generosity must be the God who designed and created the universe.”  This is the God he had been looking for, the God in whom he wanted to believe.

Jesus raises a very important question in today’s gospel.  What do you do with the weeds?  Some people look at the world around them and the only thing they see is weeds.  Weeds capture their attention and dominate their conversation.  In the end dealing with the weeds takes up all their energy.  Many people don’t like weed pullers because they come off so negatively about life.  Today Jesus tells us not to focus on the weeds.  His words are very direct, “leave the weeds alone, and let the wheat and the weeds grow together until harvest time.”

The way that God acts is important in understanding today’s gospel.  God does more than leave the weeds alone.  God finds some goodness even in the weeds; God uses the weeds to show us his power in transforming the world.  Hatred and violence are certainly weeds that the Evil One, the Devil, has planted in our world.  The young woman who was hit by the potato thrown by an angry, hateful man, not only didn’t cruse and yell at the man who assaulted her,  she picked up the potato, the weapon he had used against her and planted it in good ground, so that the weapon used by evil became the seed of something good.  Her faith and love changed a weapon meant to cause pain and give insult into a source of food both  for her family and for her enemy. 

When God planted the Garden of Eden the Devil stepped into the Garden and planted the weed of disobedience, and Adam and Eve sinned.   Even though sin had consequences for Adam and Eve, from the first moment after original sin God did not focus on sin; God focused on redemption.  The sin of Adam and Eve became an opportunity and a grace.  At the Easter Vigil the Church sings about the happy fault and the necessary sin of Adam and Eve.  God used Original sin as an opportunity to give us much more than we had before.   God used the sin of Adam and Eve to give us Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  The Devil planted a weed in God’s garden and God used the weed as and opportunity to bless us with even more of his love.

When hatred, religious blindness and envy were the weeds planted in God’s garden to destroy the Savor of the world by nailing him to a Cross, God used the ugly execution block of the Cross to speak his most tender and  powerful words about his love for the world and for each of us. God turns the Cross away from being the Devil’s tree of execution and humiliation into God’s new tree of peace and love.  In God’s plan the mustard seed that becomes a large bush or tree is often a weed used by God for his own purposes.

Jesus said, “When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.  The field hands came to the owner and said, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?...do you want us to pull up the weeds?  The Master said, “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat as well.  Let them grow together until harvest.”

Not only does God protect and cherish the weedy field of this world, the Kingdom of God is like a leaven in the field making the whole fruitful.  As we grow in understanding of the way that God works, we see that God often works the unexpected miracle of making at least some of the weeds bear good fruit. Making weeds bear good fruit may well be the biggest miracle of God’s grace.  

To be good people we have to know how to work with weeds.  There are weeds in all of our lives.  Focusing on the good in ourselves and believing that God can make goodness come from our weakness and even from our sinfulness is essential to a good and holy life.  Focusing on the good in our children, even when we know that there are many weeds in their lives, is very important in helping our children embrace their gifts and not be discouraged by their failures.  Believing that God can transform mistakes into unseen opportunities helps parents continue to be positive in talking to their children.  Seeing the world in which we live through God’s eyes allows us to see weeds and wheat growing together as we wait to be surprised by the way that God will make the whole field productive and fruitful.  A popular saying reminds us that if life gives us lemons we have to learn how to make lemonade.   God specializes in turning sour lemons into thirst quenching lemonade.   For the grace to live with courage in the weedy fields of our lives, we give God thanks and praise.