“Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.” He told one of “a man who sowed good seeds in his field.” But “while everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds through the wheat.” Listeners are like the characters in the parable, uncertain of what to do with people who cause problems, “’Do you want us to go and pull the weeds up?’” Jesus says “No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest.”
The listeners, like most of us, want to get rid of people we judge “bad.” We want to treat them as plants we judge bad – weeds. It seems a reasonable analogy. “Bad” people, like bad plants, cause harm. They are a problem because the they absorb energy and offer little if any healthiness or flowering in return. They need to be gotten rid of. Certainly people who are gay must be bad and must be gotten rid of. Certainly, their drag shows and their books must be bad and gotten rid of. So too Blacks and their claims about slavery, also migrant workers and refugees at the Southern border. MAGA members in Florida and too many other states ‘want to go and pull the weeds up’ but Jesus says, “No.” The analogy justifying ridding ourselves of certain people is ultimately superficial in its understanding of humanity. We would not be living from the core of ourselves, the depth of our humanity. At our depth is a willingness to love. We are not inclined to destroy. It is one thing to kill a weed. It is quite another to kill a person. We simply cannot do it. We must be trained and warped and trained some more and warped some more to intentionally harm life, like soldiers. Even then most people cannot do it, only a very few. Most of us want to love, even “bad” people. We are, at our core, seeds. Being a seed is being a power for love. Being a seed is living a loving energy that grows between us and beyond us seeding more love. Being a seed also means being open to change, growth; becoming someone more, perhaps someone different, more giving. It requires we be vulnerable and courageous, especially with people who diminish or reject their loving energy. For example, with people who want to pull up the weeds they call gay, black, illegal, and so forth but don’t realize that in doing so they act as weeds. They act as weeds because in their intent and actions to harm, they are absorbing our energy, our healthiness, and offering little if any healthiness or flowering in return. Being creative, fertile, fruitful, generative, as seeds, pregnant with life among people who do not know how to be or are afraid to be, is our world’s greatest need and our greatest strength.
“How love burns through the putting in the seed On through the watching for that early birth When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed, the sturdy seedling with arched body comes Shouldering its way.” (Putting in the Seed – Robert Frost )
Prayer: Seed of Love, guide us to flower during the dark of hatred and hostility.
Question: How am I nurturing my seed power?
Jul 23, 2023 Gospel Matthew 13:24-33 Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time