Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
/Dominica XVI per Annum A
23 July 2023
Our life as Catholics is fit into a hierarchical communion, a community with different gifts and areas of service, yet sharing one and the same faith and journeying to our common home of heaven. We know that we do not call all the shots in the Church. In fact, we call very few of them when you consider that we have higher authorities over us.
Quite often we might struggle with life in the community of the Church. There are aspects of our religious life that are mysterious to us. Perhaps there are things we don’t comprehend and need to work in order to better appreciate. There are things in our common life in the Church that leave us unsettled and disappointed at times, even downright angry. We wonder about certain decisions that are made. Some of the authorities over us don’t always seem very inspiring. Maybe we wonder how and why they were even chosen to begin with. Some seem to be unimpressive simpletons. Some seem to have a thing with money, and you sort of wonder about that. And still others seem to muddle the truth. We may scratch our heads about the decisions of our chief leader. How could he have chosen “that guy” for a special office and role? Doesn’t he see how bad some of these choices are? What could he possibly be up to? What does our chief leader mean by some of the stuff he says? It’s like he just won’t speak clearly. Why doesn’t he do something to make things better, more like it should be?
The chief leader of which I speak is, of course… Jesus! Jesus is our chief leader. It is Jesus who is the Head of his Body the Church. It is Jesus who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, as we read in 1 Peter 2:25. It is Jesus who is the leader and perfecter of our faith, as we read in Hebrews 12:2. It is Jesus who chose often unimpressive simple fisherman to be apostles. It is Jesus who chose at least one who was a tax collector and another who had his hand in the money bag, the one who eventually committed great evil in betraying him. It is Jesus who speaks in those mysterious parables, those teachings that are more than just images and stories, more than just comparisons, but rather stories with an unexpected twist. Riddles we could say. It is Jesus who speaks the parable today that forces us to contend with something unexpected and undesired: namely, that the kingdom is like a man who sowed good seed and in that field there is both wheat and weeds. And more unexpected and undesirable to us, those weeds are permitted to be there even though they are sown by an enemy. It is Jesus who employs this image by which the man who sowed good seed is not surprised that an enemy is also at work. And it is Jesus who uses this image by which the man is patient to wait until final harvest for final justice.
So, you know what that means, right? If Jesus isn’t surprised by the weeds, and if Jesus is patient to await final justice at the harvest, well then, we don’t really get to act surprised and exasperated about the weeds in the Church. We don’t get to exact immediate punishment and justice at all the crazy things we see in our time. The Lord spoke this parable centuries ago. It’s still an apt image today for life in the field of the Church. Wheat and weeds. And aren’t we just like the slaves of the householder in the parable? “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?” And we go on just like the slaves, “Then we’ll go pull up the weeds, right?” Nope. The Master gives us not only the unexpected twist that there are weeds among the good seed, but also the further twist, “Let them grow together until the harvest.” When we see evil and sin in the Church; when we see weakness from our leaders; when absolute confusion seems to reign; when heresy and immorality seem to be given a privileged spot; when the good and courageous leaders always seem to pay the price; when it seems like all we hear is that we are supposed to listen to and walk with those who reject Christ’s teaching and who give no sign of willingness to convert… there is that fire of indignation that arises in us like the slaves in the parable and we want to say, “Lord, if you’re not going to pilot the boat, I will.” This parable just doesn’t let us have it that easy. And it is a perfect lesson for our time. If you are even casually aware of the state of affairs in the world and in the Church, the Gospel words of this parable are likely words we need to sit with and meditate upon for a good long time.
Now I realize that this parable and what I am saying is not a complete template for how to navigate the multiple frustrations, or any one problem in the life of the Church. By no means should anyone think that the lesson is that in the life of the Church there simply are no standards and we just turn a blind eye to error and sin and things contrary to the Gospel. Not at all. There are things that require courageous responses. There are situations that need to be addressed. There are wrongs that need to be rebuked. And that does happen. But also, it often doesn’t happen the way we would like. This parable doesn’t really give us a comprehensive answer for how to handle the weeds in our time. And the parable is not at all saying that the weeds will go without punishment and justice.
There are topics and issues in our common life that have to be addressed. That is true of every society of human beings. The Church is no different in those challenges. I’m not saying this parable tells us to ignore problems or to just dismiss them or to be naïve. But I also don’t know how we answer all the challenges we see and the ones still to come. What this parable can help us do is to focus on what we have authority to impact for the better, rather than focusing on someone else’s wrongs or what someone with higher authority needs to do. This parable can make us contend with being a bit more sober about life in the field of the Church. The parable can also help us marvel at the generous patience of the Lord. And somewhere in that riddle of the parable we might pause just long enough to realize: You know, I better look inward first because through my sins I can be like a weed at any given time. And had the Lord responded to the feverish calls to tear up the weeds at just the wrong time? I myself might well have been, or well may be, pulled up and burnt. And so, thanks be to God for the time for me to become good seed as a child of the kingdom! Prayer, and frequent confession, and conversion, and good relationships in the faith, and the life of sacramental grace turn me from a weed into wheat.
The Lord is unlikely, it seems, to be chosen for the HOA field of the month award. But his field will be the only one standing at harvest time and we have the time now to turn our focus and our energies more on becoming good wheat. The alternative may be that we so focus on everyone else’s weedy-ness that we miss our own.