Sixteenth Sunday In Ordinary Time- Weeds And Wheat

There was an interesting report in the news a while back. It was about an event designed for college kids. The purpose was to get them to take weeds seriously. One pundit called it “the World Series of weeds.” Agriculture students from universities in the U.S. and Canada competed in being able to identify weeds and to prescribe the right chemical to kill them. “They need to be able to recognize weeds when they are tiny,” said James Worthington of Western Kentucky University, president of the North Central Weed Science Society. “When [weeds] get big enough that anybody can recognize them, it’s too late to do anything about them.”1

All of us, have, at times, been too late recognizing the weeds growing in our lives, from things like character defects, to drugs or depression or harmful friendships or negative attitudes like bitterness, resentment, bigotry.

We are too late because we were asleep.

Matthew 13:25 says “while everyone was asleep, [the] enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.”

Should there have been a watch kept?

— Not for something like sowing or planting seed which is business as usual. The servants display a certain freedom: There is no prophetic watchtower in this parable, in contrast to other "be prepared,” parables, which is a clue that this parable is an allegory regarding the question of why is there evil in the world? 2

The parable does not address stopping immediate harms in our communities, like gun violence or crimes against the unborn by abortion.

A sin belongs to the internal forum (the forum of conscience).

A crime belongs to the external forum in society.

Citing lots of scripture, the catechism teaches us in no. 1850 that “[all] Sin is an offense against God…”

Why is there evil in the world?

Like parasitic weeds that rely on neighboring host plants to complete their life cycle, evil is a privation; the absence or lack of the good that ought to have been present. On the molecular level, some weeds even have genes that are shared by the host plants and the parasitic weeds.

Several scholars have identified the particular weed in our Gospel as darnel (Lolium temulentum). It is a poisonous weed that grows to about the same height as wheat. It was almost impossible to distinguish the one from the other in the early stages of growth.3 Rabbis regarded darnel to be a perverted kind of wheat, and “its Hebrew name was fancifully related to a similar sounding word meaning “fornication.” Moreover, the roots of the weeds intertwine with that of the wheat and to pull the one out would mean to injure the other. 3

In his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Gulag Archipelago, the great author, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, says, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."4

Yet, God does not endlessly tolerate unholiness, God will judge the world someday. An important implication of the parable is the hope of ultimate victory over evil. This is presented along with the glorious future of the children of God and the church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in paragraph 678,

Then will the conduct of each one and the secrets of hearts be brought to light. Then will the culpable unbelief that counted the offer of God’s grace as nothing be condemned. Our attitude about our neighbor will disclose acceptance or refusal of grace and divine love.

Peter van Inwagen writes on the problem of suffering and the evil in the world saying, "I have never had the least tendency to react to the evils of the world by saying, “How could there be a loving God who allows such things?” My immediate emotional reaction has rather been: “There must be a God who will wipe away every tear; there must be a God who will repay.”

Yet, regarding the Good News that Jesus saves, the parable teaches us that people ought to receive the opportunity to change for the better. Athanasius, for example, says: “If you wish, you can change and become wheat.” And in a poem, Isaac of Antioch begs death to give him a postponement “until I have become a good seed of wheat.”5

The German word for “heretic” is Ketzer, from the Greek word for clean and refers to those who wanted to remain pure. In the early Church, St. Cyprian of Carthage warned critical Christians to stay in the Church: “Although there are obviously weeds in the Church, neither our faith nor our love should take offense to the point of leaving the Church, just because we notice the presence of weeds.” 6