The story is told of a man driving a winding country road. He is almost run off it by a woman who rounds a curve too wide. As she gets back onto her side she yells at him, “Pig!” He promptly responds, “Idiot!” only to round the bend and crash into a pig. We don’t always know the circumstances from which a person is relating with us. We don’t know the hardships they’ve endured nor the blessings. We do know, from Jesus’ parable on weeds and wheat, that whatever or whoever we think are weeds it is best not to respond by harming them but rather by tending to them, healing them.
Some self titled Christians are certain they are wheat and are certain others are weeds. As such they sometimes respond to harm, or its believed existence, by being themselves harmful. What precipitates 57,000 children, on their own, crossing the U.S. border from the south? Could it be Bill Clinton’s 1994 NAFTA trade agreement? It destroyed Mexican and Central American economies. It gutted unions so as to provide capitalist drug dealers legal cover to run corporate sweatshops and kill any workers, for example, mothers and fathers who oppose them. NAFTA’s 20 year reign of terror and the capitalist values that enacted that reign and maintain it have yet to be brought into a conversation on immigration from the south. Such conversations are more and more dominated by militant self-titled christians who are so very sure instead of the harm done by children crossing a border. The children are like the woman driving around the curve obstructed by the pig in the opening story. The children are experiencing danger and act as a warning for others that danger is ahead. But the message is heard only if we are willing to listen. Self-titled christians are among those who are not listening to the danger warning. They are instead calling the rest of us ‘Idiots’ while they are on a perpetual collision course with the pig – a gluttonous capitalism. As with previous collisions, likely with future ones, in this particular Southern border collision, self titled christians are blaming those put in harm’s way by capitalism but not blaming capitalism itself, the pig. Self titled christians lamenting the Southern border are not tending to nor healing the children but rather perpetuating the harm.
The capitalist financial system and its self-titled christian supporters are similar to the weeds in Jesus’ parable. Clearly they are a problem. The basic problem with weeds is that they don’t know how to get along. They’re aggressive. They dominate nutrients and control conditions for their own benefit so that survival is difficult for other, fruitful life. It is an apt description of capitalism and its supporters. Both need the attention of people nurtured in love and healing.
Prayer: Dear Creator, help us relinquish any characteristics of a weed and be fruitful instead.
Question: What are the weeds I can transform?
July 20, 2014 Gospel Matthew 13:24-30 Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time