As promised we have more parables this week, three more focused on the Kingdom of Heaven, and as I said last week, by looking for the twist, or the unexpected part of the parable, we can come to better understand the point that Jesus is trying to make.

 

For the first one, the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat, it is helpful to think of normal gardening practices.  We know that if a garden is neglected, weeds will grow.  That’s one of the big time consuming parts of having a garden is weeding it.  One twist in this parable is just that the man who sowed good seed is insistent that the weeds were sown by an enemy, and later with the explanation we find out the enemy is the devil, it is not due to his negligence in planting as the workers expect.  But the bigger twist is that the farmer just wants to leave the weeds alone, growing right with the wheat until harvest. 

 

This rarely if ever happens in normal gardening practice, so now he will have a field that just doesn’t look good, like when sometimes we see a soybean field full of rogue corn or weeds, it just doesn’t look good.  The point here is that the Kingdom doesn’t always look good on earth.  

 

And this is true in the Church, unlike other organizations, since the Church is given to us by God we expect it to be perfect - we expect the priest to be Holy, we expect the people who go to Mass and pray and such to be kind and loving and never make a mistake, but we do, we fall into sin, we just aren’t perfect, and some days we might even look more like weeds than wheat.  But God doesn’t tear the weeds out, He waits patiently, He gives us time to grow, especially growing in forgiveness.  So when we look around the Church and feel disappointed by the weeds, it's a reminder to us to stand firm, grow in holiness ourselves, resisting worldly things and not letting the weeds choke us out.  We must not leave Peter because of Judas.

 

With the second one, the Parable of the Mustard Seed, the twist is in the first line, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field.”  The twist is that mustard seeds were basically weeds, they were not desirable plants, nobody would plant a full field of them. The seeds are super tiny, but they grow really big, as much as 10 feet tall, they are ugly and invasive, and Jesus is comparing the Kingdom to this. 

 

This is shocking to their ears because they would be expecting the Kingdom to be compared to a glorious tree, like the “Cedars of Lebanon” or some huge Oak, not a small shrub. The point here is that the Kingdom starts out really small and it ends great, but it doesn't look like what we expect it to look like, it is kind of ugly, it is kind of like a field with weeds in it.  

Which is kind of like our Church today, it started small.  Jesus started with 12 guys who failed Rabbi school as His first disciples, and unexpectedly they went out and did amazing things, sowing the seeds of faith so now we have a billion Catholics spread all over the earth.

 

Finally, we have the Parable of the Leaven, and the twist here is that leaven was thought to be unclean.  Leaven, or yeast, is a bacteria which eats the sugars in the bread dough and produces gas which makes the bread dough rise, and it smells bad.  So for the Jews who were so worried about staying clean, for the Kingdom to be compared to something unclean would be shocking.

 

So now consider that just a little bit of leaven, a tiny pinch, would be able to make 50 pounds of bread rise, that’s pretty amazing, three measures equalled about 50 pounds.  The point of this is that the kingdom starts out really small, like a little bit of leaven, but it is powerful and transformative, and also a little mysterious.

 

These parables are all related in that sense - the Kingdom is not what we expect, it starts out small, and looks bad at times, but it ends great, it is mysterious in how it grows, rather unexpectedly.

 

So what I believe is the point of these readings is really expressed by pairing the gospel with our first reading, let me read that last part of it again, it describes God saying: “though you are master of might, you judge with clemency, and with much lenience you govern us; for power, whenever you will, attends you. And you taught your people, by these deeds, that those who are just must be kind; and you gave your children good ground for hope that you would permit repentance for their sins.”

 

This is also so unexpected, the God of the Universe, the master of might, full of power, His biggest concern is permitting us repentance for our sins. Our almighty God’s biggest concern is that we would go from weeds to wheat, that we would ask for forgiveness.  The Lord truly is “good and forgiving” just like the psalm (86:5a) said, He just wants to free us from our sins.

 

And this is also unexpected.  People at this time expected a military kingdom, a Kingdom of Power which would free them from the Romans, but unexpectedly, Jesus came to free them from their sins. He came to forgive our sins. Do we accept His forgiveness? Do we forgive each other and ourselves? Do we make use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation? God is patient with us, just like He is patient with the weeds, and because of that sometimes things look ugly, but there is always hope.  Always hope.  Every Saint has a past, every sinner has a future.