Readings of the day: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Psalm 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43
Who among us enjoys gardening or farming
knows someone who is a gardener or farmer? Who among us enjoys baking?
We have in our Gospel reading today from
Matthew a God of many interests. Our Gospel presents us in three parables with
God the farmer who sows wheat in a field, God the gardener whose crop of choice
is mustard, and God the baker who introduces yeast into a batch of bread to
leaven it.
The problem with these three activities,
farming, gardening, and baking, is that their finished products can be
unpredictable.
God the farmer sows wheat in a field.
Has anyone here who has gardened ever tried, seemingly in vain, to keep a
garden or a farm free of weeds? Each year, my parents grow a large vegetable
garden. This garden is surrounded by an open field that is mostly clover and
dandelions. The seeds of these weeds, along with those of even more infamous
chickweed and Canadian thistle, are constantly blown into the garden, and so
weeding the garden is a constant effort. At our house now, Fr. Joe is
the gardener extraordinaire.[1] I know from living with him how much effort Fr.
Joe puts into clearing weeds from his beautiful gardens.
I would enjoy gardening if it were not
for having to clear weeds. I would like to adopt God’s strategy: leave the
weeding to harvest time, pick the crop and the weeds together, and then sort
the crop from the weeds, keeping the crop and throwing away the weeds. And yet
this approach to gardening by me would be due to laziness; for God it is the
approach of patience and mercy.
The weeds among the wheat in Jesus’
parable are “the children of the evil one”; of “the enemy”; the devil who sows
weeds among “the children of the kingdom” so that the good crop and the weeds
become undistinguishable from each other until harvest time, the time of God’s
kingdom brought to its fullness. But we inhibit the final wheat crop, the
Kingdom of heaven, from coming to its fullness if we pull up the weeds too
early.
What will be of God’s wheat field, our
world, in the meantime is somewhat unpredictable. Will there be more wheat than
weeds; more good than evil or not? We cannot know this until harvest; until the
end of time. God, in his patience and mercy, invites us to live with and even
to nurture this unpredictability; to tend the field lovingly so that wheat and weeds
grow up together.
God is not the typical gardener or
farmer. And so would we not question God’s gardening techniques: God, why allow
the weeds to grow up alongside the wheat? Why allow evil in the world and here
in our nation and in our city? Why allow war, violence, poverty, and hunger to
persist? Why not uproot these weeds immediately? What kind of farmer is our God
anyway?
God is not much better as a gardener
than as a wheat farmer. God the gardener would plant a mustard seed in the
middle of his garden. If the seed grows, it will become a large bush and the
‘birds of the sky [will] come and dwell in its branches.’” This is great; just
what we need, God. The birds will come and dwell in the branches of this giant
bush that was once a tiny seed. Birds make a mess of gardens. They make noise.
They carry seeds that grow into more weeds…
God the gardener; God who is patient and
merciful; God who is “lenient” and whose might is justice as our first reading
from the Book of Wisdom says, invites us to live with the unpredictable. God
invites us to be confident that in the end, when the Kingdom of heaven reaches
its fullness, evil will be no more. The weeds will be destroyed. The good crop,
the Kingdom of heaven, that we pray to come in the Our Father during every Mass
will come to fruition and will thrive. We do not know exactly how this will
happen, but we are invited to live with this unpredictability; with the
unknown. We are invited to be confident that, with our co-operation in tending
and nourishing God’s garden; God’s growing Kingdom on earth, this garden will
produce a bumper crop of goodness; of patience; of mercy.
And if we have difficulty living with
the unpredictable; trusting that God will bring about the fullness of the
Kingdom of heaven in time, a kingdom free of evil; a garden free of weeds and
noisy, messy birds, we could always turn to God the baker. Wait, maybe this is
not such a great idea...
In his parable of the yeast that we hear
today, Jesus gives us a kind of recipe for the Kingdom of heaven: ““The kingdom
of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of
wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” The problem with this recipe
is that, while we know to add “three measures of wheat flour,” God does not say
how much yeast to add. To all among us who have ever baked: Do you not hate
incomplete recipes?
There is, without doubt, a danger in
adding too much yeast. I am reminded of my own experiments with my mother’s old
(and somewhat temperamental) bread machine growing up. If I added even slightly
too much yeast to the pot, the rising ingredients would overflow from the
inside of the machine and make a mess of the kitchen counter.
God the baker; God the farmer; God the
gardener invites us to live with this unpredictability in the process of
bringing about the fullness of the Kingdom of heaven. If we trust in God’s
patience and mercy, God the farmer will in time sort out good from evil; the wheat
from the weeds. God will overcome the weeds; the evil; the sin of the world,
once for all. God the gardener is, after all, a God who can transform a tiny
mustard seed into a magnificent bush that gives shade; gives life. And so maybe,
after a few spectacular messes in the kitchen, by the grace of God the baker we
will eventually find out the exact amount of yeast needed to bake the perfect
loaf of bread…
[1] Fr. Joseph Trovato, CSB, is a
priest of the Congregation of St. Basil living at St. Kateri Tekakwitha Parish,
Irondequoit, NY.
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