Homily for Sunday, 23 July 2017

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Psalm 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-30

This homily was given at St. Clare Church, Edmonton, AB, Canada

How would we describe God in no more than a few words or a short sentence? Is it possible to describe God in so brief a way? A good place to start, if we were to undertake the maybe barely possible task of describing God in a few words or a short sentence, might be our readings we have just heard. How do our readings today describe God?

I wonder if, within our culture here in Canada and even across cultures and around the world, there might be two major ways people tend to describe and understand God (or any divine being under whatever religion or belief system): God as good and kind, and God as great and powerful. Under the category of God as good, we speak of God’s kindness, mercy, or gentleness. When we think of God as great, we might speak of God as mighty, powerful; as the God who is capable of creating or destroying even the whole universe; the God who is able to conquer an enemy or punish evildoers.

We find both these images, ways of describing God in our Scriptures: God as good and kind and God as great and powerful. And we find these two ways of describing God in our readings today. In seminary, one of the most fascinating courses I took was on the Psalms. When I speak of the image or description of God as great and as good, I am remembering this way in which the priest who taught the course presented the Psalms. And in our responsorial Psalm today, we hear God presented both as “good and forgiving… merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (and so God as good) and as one before whom “all the nations [God has] made shall come and bow down” (and so God as great and powerful).

Our first reading today, drawn from the Book of Wisdom, like today’s Psalm plays on balance between God’s goodness and God’s greatness or power. Wisdom describes a God “whose care is for all people.” God is also clearly described in Wisdom as powerful: “Sovereign in strength,” rebuking “insolence,” showing his “strength when people doubt the completeness of [God’s] power,” and with “power to act whenever” God chooses. Yet God judges justly and “with mildness” and governs “with great forbearance.” God teaches through the gentle exercise of divine power “that the righteous” are those who are “kind.” God fills his “children with good hope” and offers “repentance for sins.” These are all hallmarks of God’s goodness and “loving kindness,” while not denying God’s greatness and power.

In Jesus’ parables of the weeds among the wheat, the mustard seed, and the yeast, the same balance is shown between images of God as good and those of God as great and powerful. God, as “the householder” in the parable of the weeds among the wheat, will, on a day and hour God chooses and only God knows, gather the weeds, separate them from the wheat, bundle them, and burn them. There are consequences for our sin, the weeds that “an enemy,” that is, the devil; Satan has sown in our hearts. And are we not all sinners? Between now and the last day, we will be held accountable for the good we have done as well as for our sin; the wheat as well as the weeds we have sown in the garden that is God’s earth; God’s creation and our relationships with one another and with this creation. God will eventually judge good and evil; “the living and the dead,” as we pray in our Creed.

The key word in all this is “eventually.” God is by no means short on power to judge and to punish sin. God’s final defeat of evil, sin, and Satan is promised us. Yet, even as a judge, God acts with great patience. For a time, God allows our weeds to grow up within the wheat crop. This is the same God who is gentle and patient enough to allow the tiny mustard seed, our tiny and often fragile faith, to grow into a magnificent plant that provides shelter and rest to “the birds of the air”; to all God’s creatures; to us. This is the same God who waits for the small amount of yeast to leaven the great batch of dough, again perhaps an image of our faith.

God’s great power is always balanced by God’s goodness; mercy; kindness; gentleness; patience. Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat in particular reminds me of a line from The Gulag Archipelago by the Russian author Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, commenting on the forced labour camps of the former Soviet Union. “If only it were all so simple,” 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. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart”?

If we were to look within our own hearts; if we were to look into the heart of our Church; of our world, we would see a beautiful garden, created, planted, and nurtured by God, no less. But, before long, we would notice that our garden— ourselves both as individuals and together as Church and as a world— is in desperate need of weeding. “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every” one of us. Our God could very well, with great power, uproot the weeds; destroy the evil and sin sown by Satan that has taken root in our hearts; in the heart of our Church and our world. But our God does not do this. To uproot the weeds too soon would destroy us; would destroy what God wants to save in us, in our Church, and in our world.

God delays weeding the garden, so to speak, not because he is weak or wants to procrastinate. God is not like me; I am not much of a gardener, and I especially dislike pulling weeds! No, God who is great and powerful enough to weed the garden, chooses in his goodness to allow the wheat crop, the good that is within our hearts; our Church; our world, to grow and mature. God chooses in his goodness to give the mustard seed time to grow into a magnificent tree that is shelter for everybody and all creatures. God chooses to allow the small amount of yeast to leaven the great batch of dough, because God is as good as he is great, and then some.

St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, from which we hear today, also speaks to this same overriding goodness and patience of God in light of our weakness and even our sin. God, in his goodness, has sent his Spirit to live within us. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know to pray as we ought,” St. Paul says. “That very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” How beautiful this image is of God’s goodness; mercy; kindness; gentleness; patience!

Yet I think God is inviting us through God’s Word we hear today first to hold God’s greatness and goodness together; not to separate them and, second, to act toward one another as God acts toward us, with power and strength that is conditioned by goodness and loving kindness. St. Francis de Sales once said, “There is nothing so strong as gentleness, and nothing so gentle as real strength.”

Imagine our relationships; our marriages; our families; our households; our communities; our workplaces; our Church if we were to live as God lives in us, with goodness; mercy; kindness; gentleness; patience in no way disconnected but conditioning our exercise of “real strength.” Imagine our Church and our world, the more we welcome the sinner (all of us, ultimately) and journey with one another toward God, free of the fear of losing a morally or otherwise pure or certain Church that is a myth anyway. Imagine what a means of God’s grace we could grow into then, if we act as God acts toward us: With gentleness and with real strength that are so interconnected that, for God, they are one movement.

God is gentle and God is strong. God is good and God is great and powerful because God is greatest in his goodness. God is strongest in his gentleness; mercy; kindness; patience. More and more, may the same be true of us.