Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 23 July 2017

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The parables of Jesus are not too remote from our own daily experience; at least it’s not difficult to understand them. Many are about household activities, the woman putting yeast into the flour, planting of seeds, harvesting weeds and wheat, being at a banquet. All these images can resonate either directly or indirectly with our own lives, and that’s the point of them, they are messages for us too!

In Matthew’s Gospel the parable about the weeds sown amongst the wheat harvest allows us a glimpse of Jesus’ own understanding of the justice of God, letting things grow so that they can be seen for what they really are.

Perhaps we can push this image of wheat and weeds much further. It’s often said that weeds are somebody else’s flowers and certainly there is truth in that comment. Those who are lovers of green spaces and have their own gardens will have quite strong views about the value of certain plants. Some of our weeds smother other plant forms, others can exist beside them, but we rarely take time to think of them as beneficial in some way, and yet they often are, although we may not have a use for them at the moment.

That’s what I think is hidden in Jesus parable about the wheat and the weeds growing together, Matthew pictures the harvest as something in which weeds are uprooted and burnt, the wheat gathered and taken away, but I believe there is a pause for thought here.

The Book of Wisdom says of God something important:

“you taught your people, by these deeds,
that those who are righteous must be kind.’ (Wis 12:19)

The kindness and gentleness of God is something that challenges the hell fire image of this end of harvest, if God is supreme righteousness, then God’s kindness knows no end, so maybe, just maybe, the weeds have a place in God’s plan and heart? Something that the Spirit of God acts upon:

“The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness;
for we do not know how to pray as we ought,
but the Spirit himself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.” (Rm 8:26)

Think that statement through; it gives us all unending hope. The Spirit, who intercedes for us in the harvest of God’s life, so that we are transfigured, changed and redeemed, may transform what we see as ‘weeds’. So perhaps for God the true harvest is the forgiving harvest of absolute love and mercy, wheat and weeds are both valuable!