Readings for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19
Psalm 86:5-6, 9-10, 15-16
Romans 8:26-27
 Matthew 13:24-43
 

As a city dweller who is more familiar with steel and cement than weeds and wheat, I never really connected with this Sunday’s Gospel.

I’m sure the people of Jesus’s time got his point. If they were a little surprised that the kingdom of heaven could be compared to something like seeds and yeast, they eventually understood the larger point he was making.

It took me a while to realize that this passage is about so much more than agriculture. It isn’t just about the Kingdom of Heaven, either. It can be understood in many ways.

I see it as an important (and hope-filled!) description of the human heart, and one aspect in particular: the idea of change. Of conversion. Of growth.

The three examples Jesus shares in this parable describing the kingdom are all about God’s extraordinary patience with his creation – how he gives it time to become something more.

Yeast, mixed with wheat, can become bread to feed the hungry. A seed that might seem to be worthless, incapable of doing much good, can grow to contain a multitude.

And, in God’s plan, weeds can even become wheat.

That’s not as farfetched as it may sound. There is a scientific principle in agriculture known as Vavilovian mimicry. It was first discovered by a Russian plant geneticist by the name of Nikolai Vavilov. He found, to his amazement, that a weed can often take on the characteristics of surrounding plants. Vavilov discovered that rye, a basic grass, when growing among wheat can start bearing seeds like wheat, and even adjust its growing pattern to follow the same annual schedule as wheat.

It can change.

That may be one reason why the landowner in the parable doesn’t destroy the weeds right away. He wants to give them time. Time to evolve. To change. To become something greater.

That’s how it is with God. He sees what we are. But he sees, too, what we can become.

 One of my teachers in high school used to wear a pin: “Please be patient. God isn’t finished with me yet.” The reading from Wisdom evokes a merciful God. “You judge with clemency,” we hear. “You gave your children good ground for hope, that you would permit repentance for their sins.”

He isn’t finished with any of us. We have good ground for hope – for ourselves and for those around us.

At a moment in history when we are increasingly suspicious and intolerant of the “other” – whether because of nationality or religion or race or political persuasion – I think that message is one the world needs to hear. We are too quick to mock or dismiss, to judge or condemn. We are so polarized, we want to uproot the weeds in our world.

But sometimes, we fail to realize that the weeds are us – all of us. And we also fail to accept the possibility that weeds can, incredibly, change.

God gives us time. He gives us opportunities to learn, to grow, to convert, to repent. We can become more than what we are.

St. Augustine once put it this way: “Consider what we choose to be in God’s field; consider what sort of people we are found to be at the harvest. Nobody knows what is going to happen tomorrow.”

What do we choose to be, in God’s field?

The abiding message of this week’s Gospel reading, with its colorful parables about growing, harvesting, and planting, is so simple: We don’t have to settle for what we are. We don’t have to be weeds. By God’s grace, we can become wheat.

Deacon Greg Kandra is an award-winning author and journalist, and creator of the blog, “The Deacon’s Bench.”