Displaying items by tag: Celebrating At Home

In the Gospel, Jesus compares the Kingdom to treasure hidden in a field, to a merchant on the lookout for fine pearls and to a fisherman’s dragnet which brings in a very mixed catch.

The point of the parables is the behaviour of the people in them.

In the first parable someone stumbles across the treasure by chance. Sometimes that can happen to us, too. We are happily living our lives when, by chance, something happens or we meet someone and our lives change for ever. On reflection we discern the presence of God in that encounter.
In the second parable the Kingdom is found after a long search. It is a reassurance that those who seek always find, and those who knock on the door will always have it opened.

The third parable introduces a note of reality: the Kingdom is a mixture of all kinds of things and some sorting out is needed.

In the first two parables the joy and delight of those who find (experience) the Kingdom is obvious. It is so strong that nothing is spared in order to posses the Kingdom.

The purpose of parables is not to provide answers to questions but to get us to think.

As we know, the Kingdom of God is not a ‘thing’ or a ‘place’. It is an experience or an encounter with the life of God.

In the life and ministry of Jesus many people experienced the Kingdom through their encounter with him which brought dignity, love, forgiveness, release from illness, disability, guilt, shame and even death. Jesus made present the reign of God’s grace for people in all kinds of need.

While we are sometimes overwhelmed by the experience of the presence of God within our hearts, more often we experience the reign of God’s grace through others. These people, like Jesus, somehow make present, make real the presence and action of God especially (but not only) in our moments of need.

Having experienced that, we too, want to possess, to find and hold onto, the Source which touched us so deeply and brought us hope, comfort and freedom.

The kingdom, as we are reminded in the third parable, is a mixed bag of good and rotten fish, saints and sinners. It is not the task of members of the kingdom to judge; the final sorting out belongs to God alone. In the meantime, patience and tolerance must guide the practice of those in the kingdom.

The people of the kingdom seek the things that are of real value in life. They are prepared to make great sacrifices in order to make them their own. They live their lives with virtue and wisdom and their lives are a blessing for others as they draw from their rich store of values and virtues, of wisdom and grace. They never stop seeking the things of real value, the riches of the kingdom and they never stop making God present for those around them.

The section of St Matthew’s Gospel from which we are now reading concerns the Kingdom of God. Jesus uses this expression frequently in his teaching. The Kingdom is not heaven, it is the life and heart of God.

We live in the Kingdom when we live according to the mind and heart of God. The Kingdom, or reign of God, breaks into human reality when human beings live, breathe and act out of the life of God; when the heart of God becomes ours; when we allow God to speak and act in and through us.

Jesus frequently uses parables in his teaching - stories drawn from real life, designed to get his listeners to think, ask questions and make decisions.
Today’s parable is a story about wheat and darnel growing together in a field. Apparently darnel, a weed, looks so similar to wheat that it is almost impossible to tell the two apart until the ears appear at harvest time.

Only then can you really tell the difference between the two plants. Before that, there may be some signs to do with the direction in which the spikelets grow.

Perhaps that is what the servants see and report it to the owner.

They ask if the owner wants them to remove the darnel. The owner says to leave both plants to grow together until harvest when the difference in the plants will be obvious. That will be the time to do the weeding.

So, what does it all mean?

No doubt, there were people in Matthew’s community who thought that the Reign of God would come swiftly and with vehemence and immediately crush what was contrary to it. Others had grown anxious about the fact that the coming of the Kingdom seemed much delayed and wanted to get on with the job of weeding out the ‘evil ones’ according to their own judgement.

The parable, however, urges patience and to leave final judgement to God. What appears to be darnel may yet turn out to be wheat. Only time will tell.
The parable is also a reflection on the mixture of good and evil in the world. But it calls us to reflect, too, on the mix of good and evil we find in our own hearts.

What will we turn out to be?

The parable also raises the question: can darnel turn into wheat given God’s patience and mercy?