Pentecost VII

After reading several weeks ago about Jesus instructing the disciples he is sending out to proclaim that the kingdom of God is at hand (now! within! among!), this week we continue in Matthew's rendering of Jesus' teaching -- these weeks in parables. Parables are stories that, unlike Aesop, are not necessarily meant to have one single meaning. They may be opened like onions, turned on their heads, moved kaleidoscopically. The wisdom of God can reveal itself slowly over time.

This week, we begin with more seed being sown in fields -- you can almost sense with the crowd the reaction: "Oh! seed! We know this one! The sower is sowing seed, and the seed falls on rocky soil..." But, no! This week we are getting further out, among the weeds...

Or, among the 'tares,' as the King James Version has it. 'The wheat and the tares.' Sounds Aesopian, actually. Someone sows wheat seed in her field; someone else sows Something Else! What to do? Uproot the weeds and damage the potential wheat harvest? Spray pesticide and herbicide impatiently?

This is less a parable about the nature and presence of evil in the world -- although that's here, too, and you can tell that this is where Jesus is connecting with the crowd, who -- like us -- spend a fair amount of time wondering 'why bad things happen to good people,' and 'why good things happen to demonstrably bad people'... -- ...less a parable about evil, and more a parable about the nature of God.

When Paul writes in II Corinthians his famous description of the nature of 'Love' (Love is patient, love is kind...), he is really penning a description of the nature of the divine presence, of God.

God, in this parable told by Jesus in Matthew, is patient. With us. With created things. Consider the time-scale of the cosmos: that sort of meaning of 'patience.'

For, the fields of our own hearts are full of wheat and tares/weeds, both. Be patient when you weed. Let God take the lead, for she knows what she's doing, has been gardening and sowing seed longer than the earth has been around ...and has more time than any of us has. So to speak.