WHEN we walk, cycle, or drive around the countryside, from time to time our eyes are met by fields of vivid yellow flowers. Rapeseed is a member of a family of plants that includes both cabbage and mustard, which we grow to produce oil. The wild mustard envisaged in today’s Gospel is a plant that can grow from a tiny seed, just 1mm in diameter, into a plant 9ft high. Most of us think about mustard solely as something to accompany our Sunday lunch, but Our Lord uses it as an image to describe the Kingdom, for its vigorous growth, and as a place of shade, safety and security.

Following on from last week’s parable of the Sower, Jesus continues to teach people using parables filled with agricultural imagery. In the first the Kingdom of Heaven is compared to a field containing both wheat and weeds. 

Our Lord then uses another parable to describe the Kingdom:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” (Mt 13:31-32)

Mustard seeds may be small, but can grow into a large plant, in only a year. The parable is about something small becoming something large, a story of the growth of the Church. Indeed, what started two thousand years ago as a handful of people, has grown into the world’s largest religion, counting billions of people among its members. Likewise, the parable of the leaven is about how bread dough increases in size and volume when yeast is added to it. It is encouraging and positive.

The parable of the wheat and the weeds is more complex. The weeds of the parable are what is known as darnel or cockle, which is hard to distinguish from wheat, but is potentially poisonous if eaten, even causing death. They were a serious problem. Indeed to plant darnel in a wheat-field was a crime under Roman law.

Rather than getting rid of the weeds and damaging the crop, both are left until the harvest. It is very tempting to want God to act immediately, and especially when we want God to act. Thankfully God’s plan is a bit more long-term. Which means that we need to wait. Waiting isn’t much fun. The world around us tells that we can have anything we want, when we want it. Thankfully, our experiences over the last few years have shown us that this is not always the case, and that is a good thing. As the old maxim states, ‘Patience is a virtue’. In the parable we see that God is patient and compassionate. God loves us, and His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts like ours. Rather than making God be more like us, we have to try to be more like God: loving and patient. As humans we will make mistakes, which call us to seek forgiveness and reconciliation, so that we can continue to grow in holiness. It takes time. There isn’t a magic wand which can be waved to make instant holy Christians. By God’s grace it is the work of a lifetime. I know that I’m not there yet. I’m still very much a work in progress. And that is ok. The message of the parable is that God is patient, and that we need to be so as well. It is difficult, but our experience has taught us that patience is a good thing, and that we will need to continue to be patient, with each other and ourselves, as we try to live our lives and to continue to make the kingdom a reality here and now.

We help to make God’s kingdom a reality by proclaiming that Jesus comes to save us from Sin, Death, and Hell. He does this first by telling the Good News of the Kingdom, and secondly by dying for us on the Cross, bearing the burden of our sins, and overcoming the power of death and Hell, and rising again to New Life. The Church preaches Christ Crucified, and offers salvation in and through Christ alone. Sins can be forgiven, and new life is offered to all.

Let us pause for a moment to consider something important. In the Gospel, the time for the separation of wheat and weeds is not yet. There is still time: time for repentance, time to turn away from Sin, and time to turn to Christ. The proclamation of the Kingdom is one which calls people to repent, and to believe. We are called to have a change of heart, and to turn away from the ways of the world, the ways of selfishness, which alienate us from God and each other. This is not merely an event, but rather a process, a continual turning towards Christ, and reliance upon His love and mercy, a turning to Him in prayer, being nourished and transformed by our reading of the Bible, and being nourished with the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.

The Good News is that all of us have time to make sure that we are wheat and not weeds. Ours is a generous and a loving God, who longs to see His people reconciled, healed, and redeemed. The fact that the wheat and the weeds can grow together until the harvest collected is done for the sake of the wheat, lest it be pulled up by accident. Ours then is a patient God, who provides us with the multiple opportunities for repentance, time to turn our lives around and follow him. And the Church, just like the world is made up of people good and bad. We are all on various stages of a journey, and we are given all the chances possible to rely on God’s transforming grace in our lives.

Today’s parables provide a hopeful message, a message of healing and reconciliation. God does not simply give up on us, but rather does all He can to make sure that we are wheat and not weeds. It is the wonder of the Cross, that God sends His Son out of love for humanity, love of you and me, to suffer and die for us, to show us the depth of His love. Jesus rises from the tomb so show us that death is not the end, to give us hope. It is the best news there is. And we are told about it now, so that we can do something about it, and we can share the message so that others can hear, and repent, and believe, and live new lives in Christ.

So, my brothers and sisters in Christ, let us be the wheat that enables those around us to know and love our Lord. So that they too may come to sing the praises of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. To whom be ascribed all, glory, dominion, and power, now and forever. Amen.

/