Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was a revered teacher and healer and mystic. But, in addition to being all that, Jesus was something of a jokester. If you don’t think so, consider the parable that likens the kingdom of heaven to a farmer who sowed good seed in a field. But then, the story goes, along came an enemy who sowed weeds among the wheat.
Hmmm. Where would you go to buy weed seeds? Have you ever planted weed seeds in your garden? But do weeds grow in your garden? No doubt they do. It’s the way of weeds to just pop up where we don’t want them to — nobody has to plant them.
I expect that Jesus’ listeners would have gotten that joke and were hooked into listening some more. Jesus went on to say that the farmer told his workers not to pull up the weeds, but to let them grow along with the wheat. Would you ever do that? When you see weeds growing among your flowers or tomatoes, you pull them out so they won’t take over, don’t you?
So Jesus is saying that the kingdom of heaven is different from our ways of being and doing. The kingdom of heaven isn’t subject to normal human assumptions and actions. On the contrary, somehow, in the kingdom of heaven, God freely allows wheat and weeds to coexist — for an entire growing season. What can we learn from that?
We can look at it this way. Think of each one of us as a field. Our fields are composed of good dirt, good ground in which seeds of good instruction and high ideals were planted by parents and teachers and books.
But in the field of me, and maybe in the field of you, there are both wheat and weeds growing. There are days when I’m patient, kind, loving and giving — much of the time. And there are days when I get angry, judgmental and impatient. I don’t consciously intend them — they just pop up. Like weeds.
Nobody purposely sowed seeds of meanness and impatience in us. But it seems to be part of being human is to act sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad ways. You could say that sometimes we’re like nutritious wheat and sometimes like noxious weeds. It’s just the way we are.
Somehow it’s comforting to know that God gives us freedom to act out of our flaws as well as out of our best intentions. It’s comforting to know that God doesn’t destroy us when we sin. And when we sin, it’s very comforting to know that God grants us repentance over and over and over — as many times as we ask for it.
Then there is the parable about the mustard plant. Again, Jesus is joshing with the crowd. The mustard plant is something like kudzu. If you traveled in the Southern states 20 to 30 years ago, you would have seen kudzu all over the place. Initially, a little of it was planted along the highway as a ground cover. But it turned out to spread so fast that it grew over fences and power lines and even over houses. There was real concern that it would eventually grow over everything.
The mustard plant is a lot like kudzu. It’s invasive and deadly to other plants in its vicinity. For sure, a mustard seed grows rapidly and prodigiously, but that isn’t a blessing — it’s a curse. A farmer would never intentionally plant a mustard seed in the middle of his field.
So, how is a mustard plant like the kingdom of heaven? One way to look at it is that God allows even a disagreeable plant to serve a good purpose. In the parable, the mustard plant gave a place of rest to the birds. Looking back on your life, can you remember anytime that something really disagreeable or awful happened to you? As you lived with that reality, is it possible that some new insights or awareness came to you? Might you have gained empathy for others who suffered? Has misfortune ever led to your softening and growth?
Another perspective on the mustard plant is that, what appears to us to be worthless actually has value in the kingdom. Think about how we might look upon someone as having little worth — for example, a loud, dirty man panhandling on State Street. How do we look at that person? And how you think that God looks at that person?
We say that “God’s ways are not our ways.” But Jesus says, “Be perfect as the One in heaven is perfect.” Do we really let that teaching sink in and let it guide our actions? Do we let it sink in so that we actually change our ways of relating to the least of our sisters and brothers?
— Mary Beacker is a member of and homilist for the Catholic Church of the Beatitudes, which celebrates Mass at 5:30 p.m. Saturdays at First Congregational Church of Santa Barbara, 2101 State St. Click here for more information, or call 805.252.4105. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are those of the author.