“Please Be Patient with
Me” by Rev. Paul Berghout
Piety
You have been told, O
man, what is good, and what the LORD requires of you: Only to do the right and
to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:6-8
“An evil and
unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it
except the sign of Jonah,
the prophet. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three
nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and
three nights. At the judgment, the men of Nineveh will arise with this
generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and
there is something greater than Jonah here. At the judgment the queen of the
south will arise with this generation and condemn it because she came from the
ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; there is something greater
than Solomon here.” Matthew 12:38-41
Study
If we ask, “Why is there
evil in the world?” then we also must ask, “Why is there good in the world?” We
get our answers this Sunday: Beginning with pre-history “while everybody was
asleep” (Matthew 13:24-30), the weeds represent the enemies of God, who are:
Satan, demons, and humans who choose self-exclusion from God, and the wheat are
those who cooperate with or are open to God.
This parable doesn’t
mean that we tolerate all sorts of bad behavior. Jesus doesn’t condone weed
(pun intended). The weeds are toxic. The type of weed in the parable is called
darnel, and it is a poisonous weed. The name comes from the French word, Darne,
which means, stupefied. The symptoms of eating darnel grain were dizziness,
slurred speech, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Nevertheless, this is a parable of hope that
weedy tendencies can decrease or be weeded-out.
Yesterday, on the
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the readings reminded us that God had sown
good seed, but, of course, an enemy has sown weeds in the same field. We are
not supposed to go out there judgmentally pulling up weeds, but to leave
judgment to God. The way the Kingdom of God grows is the way tiny seeds grow,
and the way yeast makes dough rise: it is surprising and slow and almost
imperceptible. If we have ears, we ought to hear.
The first readings this
week, except for the feasts, are from the Book of the Prophet Micah. In the Gospel, we’ll continue to read from
Matthew. Today, the “weedy” scribes and Pharisee demand that Jesus provide a
sign to prove his credentials. He says that the only sign will be the wheat of his
death and resurrection. Then, Jesus goes on to tell his disciples the parable
of the sower, reminding us of the Sunday reading.
For example, I recall
the life of a teenager who was smart but very rebellious. He didn’t listen to
his mother and made fun of her. He moved in with a girl as a teenager and got
her pregnant as he sought popularity and recognition. After living with her
girl for 15 years, he dumped her and moved in with another. He became engaged
to this second woman, thinking it would advance his career. The engagement was
a long one, two years, and during the engagement, he hooked up with a 3rd
woman. In the midst of all this licentiousness, he left the church he was
brought up in by his mother and joined a cult. Eventually, he became bored with
the cult, and he became a skeptic.
Is he wheat or weed?
He was a significant weed, but is there any hope for someone like that? Well,
his name was Augustine of Hippo, named after a place in North Africa, which was
a Roman colony. Augustine of Hippo would later be called St. Augustine, one of
the most influential theologians and church leaders of the first 500 years of
church history. His mother is St. Monica, and St. Augustine wrote a tell-all
autobiography called “Confessions,” which is widely seen as the first Western
Christian autobiography ever written and is the most complete record of any
single person from the 4th and 5th centuries.
God is giving us time
now to change from weeds to wheat, or weed-out sinful tendencies as wheat along
the lines of the famous slogan, “Please Be Patient with Me, God Isn’t Finished with
Me Yet.”
To illustrate, the
Indian poet Tagore, who was from the upper class, told of the day his servant
arrived at work late. Like so many of his upper-class friends, Tagore was
helpless when it came to menial things because servants did all the household
tasks for him.
An hour went by, and the
servant hadn’t arrived. Tagore was
getting angrier by the minute. He
thought of all the punishments he was going to inflict upon his servant when he
finally came. Three hours passed. Now he no longer thought of penalties, Tagore
knew that he would fire him the servant when he got there.
Finally, noon
arrived. The servant came to work and,
without a word, proceeded to do his work.
He picked up his master’s clothes, began to make a meal, and do other
chores around the house. Tagore watched
all of this in silent rage. Finally, he
said, “Drop everything and get out of here. You’re fired.” The man kept
working, quietly, diligently. Tagore said, “Get out of here.” The man said, “My
little girl died this morning.”
We often don’t know what
goes on in other people’s lives. We do
not know the burdens other people carry around with them. Yet we think we know
enough to make snap judgments that someone is a permanent weed.
Another man wrote about
someone he had viewed as a Weed. He
said: One of the best Christians I’ve ever known was a Roman Catholic who
cursed and smoked and had a heart as big as the Gulf of Mexico. She was not the kind of person you would find
serving at the parish breakfast in the church fellowship hall, but she started
the shelter movement for homeless people in Atlanta, Georgia.
I remember when she
stopped a knife fight at our night shelter by walking calmly between two
combatants and saying, “You guys know better than this.” And that was the end
of that.
When one of our homeless
friends died on the street, she claimed his body, paid for the cremation, and
waited for someone - either a friend or a family member - to come.
No one ever came. She
drove around for weeks with his ashes in the backseat of her car. Finally, she
asked the rector of a downtown Episcopal church if he would place the ashes in
the church’s memorial garden.
He said: “Our policies
will allow us to place the remains of relatives here.” “Perfect,” she said.
“Jesse was my brother.”
Action
When someone is rough
around the edges with some weedy tendencies, it’s hard sometimes to tell who is
wheat and who is weed until you observe whether the fruits are from God or not.
The Saints are those who
are most aware of their weedy tendencies which they have overcome, and are,
thus, more ready to have compassion for the “weediness” of others.
In the end, evil will be
removed and eliminated: at the time of the harvest, that is, of judgment. The
harvesters will follow the orders of the field owner, separating the weeds to
burn and gather the wheat into the barn. Evil is a privation of good; it’s
parasitic. When we correctly understand sin as an absence, it’s interesting
that the researcher Howard Thomas notes the Graeco‐Roman belief that stress was able to
transform wheat or barley into the weed called darnel.
Since the weeds and
wheat have an intertwined root system, and since darnel and wheat are
botanically related to each other, like it or not, we live our lives with
people with whom we may often have profound disagreements, which can be
stressful.
Meditation, which can
bring peace of mind, is said to be the art of removing the weeds from the
garden of your mind.
Start by feeling any
tension in your stomach, mouth, or jaw. In your mind’s eye, be aware of any
images on your mental screen when your eyes are closed. Then, hear any mental
chatter or conversation in your mind, but don’t go into any story or narrative
associated with that.
The key is, by your
sensory clarity, to give attention and awareness to only one of those things at
a time, for that is the way to untangle them. If there is no activity such as
tension in your body, or an image or chatter in your mental space, it’s because
you have rest.
Now, you are ready to read
the Bible and meditate on its words peacefully. Then pray the rosary to reap
much fruit.
And ask God, in Jesus’
name, to remove weedy tendencies. Amen.
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