Today’s readings invite us to focus on God’s providential care for us and all creation. Isaiah reminds us that there is no other God like ours. Paul tells the Romans that all God’s people and all God’s creation await the age to come with great eagerness. Jesus teaches that the weeds and the wheat live side by side until the harvest.
The Isaiah reading in the time of exile in Babylon was a period of intense theological reflection in which the Jews grew in their understanding of what their belief in Yahweh required. During this period, they came to express their belief in one God in a new way, as is evident from today’s reading. Yahweh is now not just one God among other gods to whom complete loyalty is demanded. Yahweh is the only real God that there is. Every other claimant for the title of god is nothing more than an idol.
In today’s Epistle, Paul continues his discussion of the contrast between life in the flesh and life in the Spirit. The indwelling of Christ fills the Christian with a new quality of life that will triumph over death. Christ’s resurrection marked the beginning of the “age to come.” At the culmination of that age, death itself will be destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). Until then, through the Spirit, God brings that future into the present and Christians begin to live in their new life. Thus Christians are “debtors,” under obligation to kill “the deeds of the body” (8:13). These include all acts directed only to the self.
Having introduced the thought of inheritance (8:17), Paul turns his gaze to the future of humanity and of the entire material universe, to the destiny that awaits them both in Christ. The fate of humanity and the cosmos are inextricably linked (Genesis 3:17-19). Paul, like many in the Hellenistic culture, sees the world about him as enslaved by spiritual forces of evil, yet he knew that God’s will was supreme. Creation was given into the hands of the first man and woman as God’s representatives and through their sin it was “subjected to futility” (v. 20).
At the “revealing of the children of God” (v. 19) at the second coming, creation itself will be liberated. Not only humankind but all the material universe will be redeemed, sharing in the glory of God. Until that time, both nature and Christians are “in labor pains,” which mingle pain, hope and expectation. Salvation is not merely for individual human beings; it is cosmic in dimension. Until that time, hope stretches across and sustains Christians in the tension between present and future, between the first fruits and the final harvest of fulfillment.
The Gospel is the parable of the weeds (13:24-30) and its interpretation (13:36-43) are found only in Matthew. The parable itself compares the kingdom of heaven to the harvest of a field of wheat mixed with weeds. The weeds are commonly identified as darnel, a poisonous weed with strong roots that looks like wheat (13:29). Because trees were scarce, weeds were usually gathered and burned for fuel (13:30).
This is the second agricultural Gospel passage after last week’s sower. The passage this week the "Wheat and the Weeds" contemplates a dichotomy where Jesus sows the good seed (children of the kingdom) but then the devil or enemy plants weeds or the devil’s children. What do we do asks the disciples ? Remove them ? Jesus says to keep them in the world until the angels or reapers sort it out at the end time. The higher force actually judges.
This passage resonates with us since we are living in divided time when considering the economy, religion politics and race. We may be reconciled but we don’t understand each other.
The passage has labels of good and bad, wheat and weeds. However, it is not that simple in our time. We have to develop standards in our civilized world but our mission shouldn’t be that of dividing people into rigid categories.
We think of ourselves as the wheat but if we dig down further we may be a mixture of wheat and weeds.
One virtue lacking in society is humility. We are a spirited journey through life. As Bishop Shannon said in the past “agreement is overrated.” We learn about each other through disagreement. But disagreement should not be accompanied by disrespect, labeling each other as “good” or “bad. ” In the end we may make the wrong call.
We need to recognize the wheat in each one of us. We are called to love God and one another. The power of love is powerful but it is counterculture in our time.
With conflict abounding, the world needs this message of love As Bishop Michael Curry has written “God came to show us the Way beyond what often can be the nightmares of our own devisings and into the dream of God’s intending.”Bishop Curry wrote in one of books we need more “Crazy Christians.”