Wheat and Weed—side by side

Introduction

Parables of farming

This is the time to be telling parables about farms and farmers, as we are now rushing toward the full growth of summer, and are about to pluck our first tomatoes. The few farmers left among us, who still put our hands into good Mother the Earth, appreciate these earthy parables more than a supermarket society which doesn’t have a clue about the food supply.

Last week we had a parable about a farmer, who went out to sow seed, and some fell on a footpath, some fell on rocky ground, some among thorns and thistles, and then some fell on good rich soil. Today we have a parable about another farmer who has sown a sack full of good wheat grain in his field. But as the days go by, he discovers he’s got a bumper crop of weeds springing up on him. The hired hands come rushing in exclaiming, “Boss, didn’t you sow good wheat grain in your field? How come there are so many weeds popping up all over?” The master thinks his neighbor has done something foul, because one of his cows got into his cornfield. The hired hands are all gung-ho for rushing out and ripping up the weeds. But the master who is a better farmer than the hired hands cries out, “No! No! For God’s sake, if you rip up the weeds now, you're going to rip up the wheat as well. Let them be--wheat and weed side by side till harvest” (Mt 13:24-30).

Life is a mix.

Human life is a mix of wheat and weed side by side till harvest. That is to say, nothing in this life is all wheat or all weed. Nothing is all good or all bad. Nothing is all white or all black. The fabric of human life is ambiguity, and the color of life is gray. Gray might not be your favorite color but that's the way it is. Human life is a mix. That’s my take on the parable of the week, and it should set you in search of your own take.

The mix is all-pervasive.

Human life is a mix of wheat and weed, and that mix is all-pervasive; it runs through everything. All human joy is a mix; there's always some shadow that falls upon it, and the greater the joy, the greater the shadow. All human beings themselves are a mix wheat and weed. All the saints we canonize aren’t as good as we make them out to be. All the sinners we denounce aren’t as bad as we make them out to be, except perhaps in a very few historic cases, like Hitler, where that monster was every bit as bad as we made him out to be.

Even all human goodness is a mix of wheat and weed: our humility is dabbed with pride; our generosity is faintly sprinkled over with self-interest; our so- called God-centered lives subtly point also to ourselves. In his essay entitled Beyond Tragedy, Protestant theologian, Paul Tillich, characterizes all human effort as “basically tragic,” if it weren't for the grace and mercy of God who covers it all over, hides it as it were, and places it Beyond Tragedy. This, of course, is an echo of Martin Luther himself who claimed that all our virtues are like "so many filthy rags," and all our own individual lives, good as they might appear, are like “so many manure piles covered over with a layer of snow." That's pretty strong imagery, but take it for the point it wants to make: there’s a mix of wheat and weed even in the lives we claim to be good.

Even your church is a mix of wheat and weeds, of saints and sinners, of good news and bad news. If that gospel truth had been better imbedded in the hearts and heads of some Catholics, they wouldn’t have suffered the crisis they did by the revelation of sexual abuse by some priests. With that gospel truth in heart and head, Catholics who love their church do not lose sight also of her weedy side, and of her constant need to be challenged and to be called to repentance. Those who claim that their church is all “wheat” brook no criticism of their “Holy Mother the Church.”

An “all wheat letter”

In a letter dated June 30, 2002 (three Sundays ago) a woman writes: “I felt compelled to write after leaving today’s Mass at old St. Mary’s church. I am a parishioner at St. Stephen on Howell on the south side but I visited Old St. Mary today. The priest at the 10 a.m. Mass spoke about Vatican II and how it taught that the Church is not the hierarchy but the People of God. And he spoke about the hierarchy as being arrogant and aloof. He said that at the present moment the hierarchy is humbled and chastened by our crisis, and is in a listening mood more now than ever before. …. Essentially” she writes, “what the priest was encouraging was dissension from the traditional infallible teachings of the Church… I am always dismayed, hurt, and upset when I hear our clergy encourage us to look within our own fallible understanding of faith and morals instead of looking to our infallible church that Christ established…. I beg of you to please encourage the faithful to not dissent from Mother Church but to pick up our cross and walk in her true teachings.” -- Here is a woman who sincerely sees the wheat in her church but not the weeds, despite those words of the gospel: “wheat and weed side by side till harvest.” That’s the mix of everything in this life, even of her church.

A “wheat and weed response”

I usually don’t answer letters if they’re mean and ugly and hateful in the name of our holy Catholic faith. That’s just as bad as being mean, ugly, and hateful in the name of Allah. But her letter was very honest and sincere, and I could even detect a loving person behind it. So I answered her letter but with a very brief response, because such matters cannot be adequately dealt with by the written word but only personally, face to face. I simply quoted for her the words of Andrew Sullivan from Time magazine, June 17, 2002. He’s obviously a man who sees not only the wheat in his Catholic church and also its weeds. He writes, “Perhaps what American lay Catholics need to say more clearly is that the aim of our desire to change the church is not to undermine but to save it. We love our faith—just look at how few Catholics have abandoned the church in this current crisis. We love our priests--just see how many parishioners have rallied round their own pastors in his time of trial.” Then he adds, “But what we have witnessed means we would be delinquent if we didn’t fight for real change. We are actually more faithful than those others” who see only the wheat (these last are my words).

The other line I wrote her was this. “After that Sunday Mass of which you gently and sincerely complain, another nice lady approached me at the front door of the church, and said, `Thank you, Father, for restoring my faith in the church.’” And that only goes to prove a very interesting twist: Often your weed is someone else’s wheat. That too we can’t forget.

The mix is forever. Patience!

Human life is a mix of wheat and weed side by side. That mix pervades everything. And the mix is forever; it never goes away; it’s always with us. If you’re looking for “the great day of clarification” which will clear up all the messy mix of life, and all you’re going to have is just pure wheat unadulterated by any weeds, you’re going to have to wait a very long time, because, Scripture says, that comes only “at harvest,” only at the end. Since the mix of life never really goes away, it is always calling for patience from us. Always beckoning us to relax, to take it easy, to calm down, to blow the air out of our lungs, and to take peaceful possessions of our souls. The parable, in fact, is all about patience. When the hired hands come rushing in and ask the master, “Should we rip up the weeds?” he cries out, “No! No! For God’s sake be patient. Rip up the weeds and you’re going to rip up the wheat. Let them be--wheat and weed be side by side till harvest.”

It reminds us of another parable about patience. “A man has a fig tree growing in his vineyard. He goes out looking for figs on it but finds none. So he says to his gardener, `Look here! For three years now I haven’t found any figs on my tree. Cut it down! Why should it go on using up the soil?” But the hired hand who proves to be a better farmer than the boss pleads saying, "No! No! For God’s sake, be patient! Let’s give the tree a chance. Let's try hoeing around it and manuring it. If after that it bears no figs, then we'll chop it down" (Lk 13: 6-9).

Patience: the power to suffer.

Patience is no shabby word. It comes from the Latin patior. It means “to suffer.” Patience is the power to suffer the mix in human life. Patience is the power to suffer the mix of wheat and weed in your church, in your spouse, in yourself, in your kids.

This past week a friend asked what do you say to a mother and father whose daughter hangs around kids with rings in their ears and nose and everywhere else, and the father just hates that with a passion? And furthermore the daughter is planning to move in with her boyfriend, and the father is ready to tell her, “The moment you do that, you’re no longer our daughter.” What do you do with the wheat and weed mix in one of your kids? If you’re too gung-ho for ripping up the weed, you might also rip up the wheat. You might lose a daughter. What do you do? You call upon the power of patience. You call upon the power to suffer the mix in your kids and to wait till harvest, “that great day of clarification,” which comes in its own good time.

Patience: an endangered species.

But patience, the power to suffer the mix of life and to wait, is an uphill battle, especially in our culture of the instantaneous. In our fast food industry we have instant food. In our e-mail revolution we have instant communication. In our credit card economy we have instant gratification of what we need and don’t need. In our computers we have instant information. In our street drugs we have instant bliss. In a culture where everything is instantaneous and you don’t wait for anything, we lose the power to be patient, and to wait for God’s own good time. Our times call for “the redemption of patience, for buying back the power to suffer whatever it is that will minimize our suffering and maximize our joy.

Conclusion

The center down deep

Divine patience is God’s power to suffer the mix in us. It is God’s power to not love the wheat in us and to not hate the weed in us, but simply to love us. Period. That’s called grace, “Amazing Grace.”

Human patience is our power to suffer the mix in each other and in human life in general. That doesn’t mean we sit on our hands. No. We do what we can to help matters along. We hoe around the fig tree and give it manure. But after that, patience is the power to retire to a center down deep within our self where we summon faith, and where we let go and let God, and where we stop talking angrily to our selves about the messy mix of life and start talking to God about our daughter or our son or our spouse or our church. In that center down deep we temper our love of the wheat and our hatred of the weed in the mix of human life, and we take peaceful possession of our souls as we wait for the day of harvest.