Sunday of Week 16 of Ordinary Time (Year A)
24He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field, 25but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. 26So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29But he replied, ‘No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”
31He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
33He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
34Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. 35This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden since the foundation.”,
36Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” 37He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; 38the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, 39and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. 40Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. 41The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, 42and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. 43Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!
Commentary on Wisdom 12:13,16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43
Today sees a continuation of last Sunday’s Gospel reading from chapter 13 of Matthew on the parables of the Kingdom. Matthew in these parables speaks consistently of the “kingdom of heaven” and it could be, for some people, a misleading phrase because it seems to refer to the after-life, an other-world future existence.
In fact, as has been mentioned in a number of previous commentaries, Jesus and the Gospel are speaking very emphatically about the world in which are living now. The Kingdom represents the kind of world that God, through Jesus, wants to see realised among us here on earth. We pray for it daily in the Lord’s Prayer:
Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven…
And it will only come about in so far as we co-operate and work together with Jesus, here and now.
Why, then, does Matthew speak of the “kingdom of heaven”? We need to remember that this Gospel is written mainly for a Jewish readership. Out of respect, the Jews did not like to use the name of God directly. “Heaven”, then, is a euphemism for “God”. And Matthew uses other devices to avoid mentioning God’s name directly. For example he says:
…whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven [i.e. by God]…(Matt 16:19)
and
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy [i.e. from God]. (Matt 5:7)
Mark, on the other hand, writing for a different readership, has no problems speaking about the “kingdom of God”.
Nature of the ‘Kingdom’
“Kingdom” in the Gospel does not refer to a place, either here or hereafter. The Greek word, basileia, is better translated as ‘kingship’, or ‘reign’, or ‘rule’, so some translations speak of the ‘Reign of God’. The Kingdom is primarily an environment, a set of relationships and a situation where God’s values prevail. And what are God’s values? In practice, they are the deepest human values and aspirations as mirrored in the life of Jesus, who is himself the revelation of God to us in accessible human form. These values include truth, love, compassion, justice, a sense of solidarity with all other human beings, a sense of trust in others, a deep respect for the dignity of every other human person and a holistic concept of human growth and development. And of course, all these are seen in the light of God, who is their Ultimate Source. It is to be like him and with him that we live according to these values. They, with and through Jesus, are our link with him.
People who, individually and collectively, try to live these values belong, with Jesus, to the Kingdom of God. They are united with the rule of God in trying to build a world we would all like to see. It is very much something for the here and now. It is basically the vocation of the Church, and therefore the vocation of every parish community and of every member of that community. At the same time, we need to recognise that the Kingdom and the Church are not coterminous (see the parable below). The Kingdom extends beyond the Church. There certainly are people, who may not explicitly know Christ or express allegiance to Christ, who yet live the ideals and the values of the Kingdom in their lives. Individuals such as Mahatma Gandhi or the Dalai Lama are examples from the recent past. On the other hand, we cannot say we belong to the Kingdom simply because we are baptised Church members, but only in so far as the vision of the Kingdom is an effective factor of our daily living.
Weeds and wheat
In today’s Gospel reading we have three images or parables of the Kingdom at work among us. The first is the parable of the weeds among the wheat. The Kingdom of God clearly calls for people of the highest ideals and great generosity. It also calls for a great measure of tolerance, patience and understanding in seeing the Kingdom become a reality. The conversion of our societies into Kingdom-like communities is a very gradual process. There is always the danger that, when people try to take God or the good life seriously, they become elitist. We Christians, simply as Christians, can feel superior to people of other religions or none. As Catholics we can talk disparagingly of Anglicans, Protestants, Evangelicals. And even among Catholics, members of charismatic groups, Legionaries, Bible study groups and social action groups can see themselves as ‘superior’ to ‘ordinary’ Catholics who ‘only’ go to Mass on Sundays. And the Sunday Mass-goers are a cut above those who only appear at the Christmas midnight Mass or on Easter.
And in general, we ‘decently moral people’ are ahead of the ‘thugs’, ‘louts’ and other ‘undesirables’ in our society. ‘Thugs’ and ‘louts’ may be descriptive, but they are also words of intolerance. We sanctimoniously set ourselves up as judges of others. It is a trend which is increasingly being found in our daily media, presumably reflecting the interests and values of readers and viewers (among whom one can, alas, find ‘good’ Catholics).
Living side by side
Hence, today’s parable far from being remote, touches on deep areas in the lives of all of us. The parable is saying that people who are filled with the vision and values of God and Jesus must learn to live side by side with a whole spectrum of people who, in varying degrees, do not yet share or live this vision and these values. This applies to differences between Christians and non-Christians, but also within Christian communities themselves. We are—and always will be—a sinful Church. To pretend that we are anything else is a lie. It is not the healthy who need the physician Jesus, but rather the sinners and tax collectors—you and me.
We can go even further. Each one of us is a combination of wheat and weeds. In each one of us there are elements of the Kingdom and elements that are deeply opposed to it. Paul recognised that struggle within himself (see Romans 7:21-25). So we need to learn how to be tolerant with our own weaknesses. God told Paul that it was precisely through Paul’s weaknesses that God could reveal his glory:
My grace is sufficient for you, for [my] power is made perfect in [your] weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
The coming of the Kingdom then is not going to be a neat and tidy process. And experience again and again confirms that fact whenever we try to bring out change and reforms in any community.
Small beginnings
The next two parables point to two other characteristics of the Kingdom. The parable of the mustard seed shows that the work of the Kingdom has tiny beginnings, whether we are talking of the fledgling Church which Christ established or any newly established Kingdom-inspired movement today. And wherever the vision of the Kingdom becomes truly rooted, it will experience certain and inevitable growth.
Why? Because the vision of the Kingdom is not a narrow, religious one, but an expression of the deepest aspirations of all human beings. At its beginnings the Church, as the instrument for the building of the Kingdom, must have felt it faced a daunting task. Its tiny communities were scattered all over Asia Minor, Greece and Italy. Waves of persecution and hostility followed each other in a determined effort to wipe them out. But they prevailed—as Truth, Love and Justice must in the end always prevail. Even so, the “weeds” of opposition will always be present.
An element of growth
In the third parable, the Kingdom is compared to a small amount of yeast in a large batch of dough. Its presence cannot be easily detected—for it is totally blended with and part of its environment—as a good Kingdom community should be. At the same time, it has an energy of its own which produces a remarkable influence of growth in the whole. Perhaps part of our Christian problem is that we are too exclusively concerned with the growth (or even the survival) of the Church in general, or of our little corner of the Church, and not sufficiently with the growth and well-being of the whole community to which we belong.
God’s Kingship in the here and now
To sum up, each of the three parables is saying something specific about the development of God’s Kingdom among us:
- It is going to be, on the whole, a messy business in which the good and bad, the strong and the weak and the clean and the corrupt will rub shoulder to shoulder both inside the Church and its communities and outside it. To try to create islands of absolute integrity is not realistic and is even self-defeating.
- No matter how small the beginnings, if we are faithful to the spirit and values of the Kingdom, we can be sure that apparently difficult obstacles, threats and even dangers can be overcome.
- A Kingdom-community, even though very small, can exert a real influence on the growth of the environment of which it is fully a part and be instrumental in spreading Kingdom values as the accepted values.
