Gargamel?

I think we sometimes read these gospel stories and think, well, we’re the good ones.

These are cautionary tales, stories about why we shouldn’t sin.

Why we shouldn’t do bad things to each other.

Why we should love each other.

When reading the bible, I know, I know in my heart of hearts that I would help the man on the side of the road like the Samaritan did.

I would make sure he had a place to stay.

I would stay with him to bind his wounds.

I would give the innkeeper enough money for that man to stay in his room for a little while longer so that he might heal and heal well.

I most certainly would not, most definitely not, walk by that man like others did.

He was injured rather badly and he is now my responsibility to offer him care.

Or, I would welcome my son home just like the Prodigal Son’s father did.

I mean, which child does not wish to be free, to experience new things and go new places.

In fact, my son Liam is in France right now as I speak and when he returns I will be glad to greet him home.

Just like the father did when the prodigal returned.

And yet, well, maybe sometimes I do not fully act as God wishes us to act.

Maybe, well, not maybe, there are.

There are times when I very much do not act like God wishes us to act.

Because I do not always stop to help when I see someone struggling on the streets.

I do not always bind their wounds or take them down to the Hilton and pay for them a place to stay overnight.

And frankly, there are days when I can read the story of the Prodigal Son and read about the brother’s anger over his father’s wasted inheritance and I can kinda see the brother’s point.

The Prodigal Son went out and wasted everything, every penny, and still the father welcomes him home?

Well, sometimes.

Sometimes, I guess, I don’t really know how God wants us to respond to bad behavior.

And of course, we are no pharisee or Sadducee or Herodian.

And yet, sometimes we are and that is not a bad thing.

Some day long ago or maybe it was just recently or perhaps it hasn’t happened yet, an evildoer, a bad person, went into his neighbor’s field and planted rye grass amongst the good wheat already planted.

Now, we can speculate on who the bad actor was, but that’s not really important to this story although I’m pretty sure, both in a biblically canonical and theological sense, it was Gargamel from the Smurfs.

But that’s neither here nor there.

What’s important to the story is that the bad seed has been mixed with the good.

And folks were relying on that seed.

Because it was wheat and wheat is an important crop.

It would go into breadmaking and bread is rather important in the bible.

People would be waiting on that seed and they would want the yield to be great, greater than last year, greater than years before.

So it is not how the weed got into the field but that the weed was present at all.

And all of the workers who would rely on the wheat to be fed wanted to act.

They knew the bad plant would impact the yield of the crop, that maybe some of the weeds would choke off the roots of the good plants, so they wanted to act and act quickly.

Let’s cut out the rye grass before it chokes away any good in the field.

And the landowner steps in.

“No, let’s not do that. The rye grass looks too much like wheat. If we remove the bad grass then there is a danger we will remove with it the good wheat.”

“Wait. Wait until the harvest and then we can separate the good from the bad. And then we won’t be in too much danger of removing the good with the bad.”

Because the landowner will be sure to remove the bad from the good.

Just as God, when it comes time for judgement will remove the bad from the good.

But think too.

We sometimes imagine ourselves as wheat.

We are the good ones, we are the ones who will welcome the prodigal and act as the Samaritan did by saving the man on the side of the road.

So, it makes sense for us to want to clear out all the bad eggs now, those folks we see as less than, as those who might harm us.

Yet sometimes, we are the bad egg; sometimes in our hastefulness or wastefulness, we do harm.

If we were to clear everyone who was imperfect, everyone who committed a sin, we would be clearing ourselves from the field.

So, through this parable Christ is saying let those things lay that belong to God.

True evil will be dealt with but in the meantime, between now and when the kingdom arrives, we need to live within the confines of an imperfect field.

That does not mean we shall be victims to the violent and slaves to the sinner, but it does mean that we need to love the entire crop and let God sort out who will experience an eternity different from those who will realize salvation in Christ.

And frankly, at certain points in our lives we can look exactly like the rye grass and be mistaken for never having been the wheat at all.

When we condemn others, when we banish them from the fields, we are in danger of bringing such practices upon ourselves, reaping an early harvest sown in good earth when God asks us to wait and to trust God for God’s peace to arrive.

Find the peace, that furious, soul changing peace it takes to love and to love well and the fields will thrive and God’s kingdom will arrive.

Amen.