The Weeds Appeared As Well

Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

When Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all answered with one voice, “We will do everything that the LORD has told us.”  Exodus 24:3

Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds. “The Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field.  While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.  When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.  Matthew 13:24-26

Piety

Our piety is the sowing of the wheat. 

Our sin is the sowing of the weeds.

Our reconciliation is our separating the wheat from the weeds.

Our redemption is Jesus burning our weeds on the cross.

Study

If Jesus were around today, he would probably fashion a parable of the dandelion or kudzu.

Not being a gardener nor a landscaper, nonetheless, many people in my family have raised vegetable gardens, planted shrubbery or decorated with trees and flowers.  The weeks are persistent.  Even just in the front yard, crabgrass, dandelions, clover and the “Virginia creeper” vines grown in abundance.  They are pesky and persistent.  Why can’t the good stuff grow as easily? 

When I first moved to the South, I was introduced to the abundance of kudzu which blankets the trees along Interstate 85 with green leaves.  Evidently, someone had visited Japan or China and brought some back not knowing how it would spread.  Kudzu grows so fast that it kills trees and shrubs by the heavy shading that results – blocking out the light of the sun needed to grow and live.

One of the only ways to get rid of kudzu is to remove the root crown. For successful long-term control of kudzu, it is not necessary to destroy the entire root system, which can be extremely large and deep. It is only necessary to use some method to kill or remove the kudzu root crown and all rooting runners – thus cutting off the supply of nutrients to the root system. Easier said than done. 

The proclamation of Moses in today’s first reading was also easier said than done.  “We will do everything that the LORD has told us.”  Yeah…Right!  People have been picking off the buffet line of the Bible as long as there has been a Bible.  We find a passage we like and cling to it alone – ignoring the harder messages that appear elsewhere.

Action

What are some of the weeds in the garden of your life? 

Instead of whacking at the entire length of the kudzu in your life, how can you attack the root crown of these behaviors to change them before they cast too heavy a shadow on the light of the Son needed to grow and live?

Easier said than done?  Not if you attack them ONE ROOT CROWN at a time.