The Sánchez Archives SIXTEENTH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR Year A

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Wheat and Weeds

WISDOM 12:13, 16-19
ROMANS 8:26-27
MATTHEW 13:24-43

In marked contrast to the forbearance and patience of God, there is a tendency among his creatures to distinguish, discriminate and, all too often, to disparage and even to dispose of one another. Differences which are perceived as a measure of weakness or a diminishment of personal worth have unfortunately proven to be sufficient impetus for provoking some of the darkest periods in the history of humankind.

In an effort to separate “good” from “bad”, or the law-abiding from the insurgents, Claudius forced a separation and commanded all Jews to leave Rome (ca. 49-50 C.E.). Centuries later, Jews would be similarly expelled from Spain (1492). Later yet, and in an act of unique horror, Adolf Hitler attempted to definitively separate and annihilate every Jewish person in order to construct what he perceived to be a superior race. When he was finally stopped in 1945, only 3,000,000 out of a population of 9,000,000 Jews in Europe remained alive. Millions of non-Jews were also killed during the third Reich, their only crime being the fact that they were judged as different and therefore lesser than their persecutors.

During the Middle Ages (ca. 1150 C.E.), formal investigative tribunals were established with an eye to safeguarding the integrity and authenticity of the faith. But when Pope Innocent III declared heresy a capital time in 1199 C.E. and when the Fourth Lateran Council (1215 C.E.) provided secular punishment for heretics, all manner of cruelty and injustice ensued. Inquisitors were ruthless in their prosecution of those whose ideas ranged anywhere from the truly heretical to the merely diverse. Those alleged to be heretics had no rights; they were forced to prove their own innocence without benefit of counsel.

Similar attempts at separating those judged to be orthodox from those who were not resulted in the infamous witch trials which swept Europe from the thirteenth to the early eighteenth century and crossed the Atlantic to take hold in the Americas in the seventeenth century. Religious intolerance perpetrated the torture and deaths of actual practitioners of black magic, necromancy, etc. as well as others who were accused simply because they happened to have red hair, or who, because of nervousness may have stumbled through the Lord’s Prayer.

Segregation and separation of peoples because of their different ideas, or social mores, has been a blight on the visage of humanity for centuries. The readings for today’s liturgy proffer a challenge to this gathered assembly that this blight should be eradicated.

Perceived differences, as innocent as gender, creed, age, race or social class, or even as serious as human weakness and sin, offer no valid reason for segregation or persecution. God alone has the prerogative of judging and distinguishing among his people, and as the parable of the wheat and weeds (gospel) attest, he is not quick to condemn. Neither, therefore, may those who profess to believe in him, condemn one another. Like the farmer who allowed the wheat and weeds to grow together, God reaches out with understanding leniency to all, encouraging the good to persevere and the sinful to make a new start. The forgiveness and mercy provide the good ground where hope can grow and new beginnings can take root (first reading).

As further assurance of his love, God has offered to believers the gift of his abiding Spirit (second reading) to help, to guide, to support, and to sustain that prayerful communion which prevents our separation from Him and our discrimination against one another.

WISDOM 12:13, 16-17

Written within decades of the Christian era (ca. 60 B.C.E.) The book of Wisdom was purported, by means of a conventional literary device, to be the work of Solomon, David’s son and Israel’s third king. But the fact that the book was authored in Greek as a defense of Judaism against the pervasive influence of Hellenization would suggest that the author was a well educated Greek-speaking Jew living in an urban area of the diaspora; most scholars cite Alexandria in Egypt as the probable location. This suggestion finds support in the book’s “emphasis on Egypt and its relationship to Israel in chapters 11-19 and the polemic against animal worship (chaps. 13-15), so prevalent then in Egypt” (Addison G. Wright, “Wisdom,” The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs: 1990).

Drawing on a genre popular in Hellenistic literature, viz., the protreptic discourse or didactic exhortation, Wisdom’s pseudonymous author offered practical pastoral counsel to his readers. His intent was to help his contemporaries to remain faithful to their Jewish faith and heritage despite the allure of foreign philosophies and sciences. Part of the way in which the diaspora Jews preserved their traditions intact was to keep themselves separate from anything and anyone which threatened to defile or dilute them. Hence the emergence of the Jewish quarter or ghetto as a haven of safety and sanctity in what was often a hostile and secular environment. But, to keep their efforts at remaining faithful to Judaism from deteriorating into open antagonism against those of other persuasions, the author recalled for his readers an earlier period in their history as a people, the time of their enslavement in Egypt.

Today’s first reading is part of the second half of Wisdom (11:2-19:22) wherein the author styled a synkrisis (Greek) or comparison of the key features of the exodus events. He invited his readers to recognize a pattern in the unfolding of these events, viz., Israel appeared to be blessed by the very factors which deterred and punished the Egyptians.

This excerpted pericope, however, represents a departure from his lengthy comparison; herein the author digresses to remind his readers of God’s tolerance and merciful patience. God is forbearing because he loves all that he has made (11:17-12:8) and because he is the sovereign master of his great power (12:9-22). As Addison Wright pointed out (op. cit.), God did not lack the means to deal harshly with the Egyptians because he is all powerful and none can oppose him. But he has mercy on all his creatures and gives them an opportunity to repent. By the way he treats their enemies, God teaches his children to temper justice with mercy and to hope for mercy from him. Therefore the lesson for the Wisdom author’s contemporaries was to learn to live in the diaspora, not according to the inbred suspicion and hostility of a ghetto mentality which wished the doom of the enemy but according to the clemency and kindness they had learned from God.

Applying this insight to the present day Christian community, the Wisdom author reminds modern readers that the church can never afford to be separated or isolated from the world. Because it is through the church that the mercy and love of God is to be communicated to humankind, the church “can never thus become a ghetto, or a Noah’s ark from which to issue proclamations of destruction.” (Thierry Maertens and Jean Frisque, Guide for the Christian Assembly, Fides Pub. Inc., Notre Dame: 1972). Tolerant of all (of weeds and wheat) the church should be the proving ground of God-like patience, mutual respect and forgiveness.

ROMANS 8:26-27

During his earthly ministry, the disciples of Jesus requested that he teach them to pray. Responding to their desire for communion with God, he taught them the “Our Father”. In confident hope and love, they were instructed to call upon the Creator of the universe as Abba (which means Papa or Daddy) and to rely on him for their daily needs, for protection from evil and for his healing forgiveness (Matthew 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4). Jesus also promised that upon his return to the Father, he would send his disciples a helper and a teacher like himself to dwell within them reminding them of all that he had told them (John 14:25-26). In this short pericope from his letter to the Romans, Paul revels in the presence of Jesus’ promised Spirit, with particular attention given to the role of the Spirit in the prayer life of the believer. Not only does the abiding presence of the spirit enable Christians to give expression to their relation with the Father, viz. that of adopted sons and daughters (see Romans 8:15-16) but the Spirit empowers believers to maintain that communion with God without which life would have no meaning or purpose.

In describing the way in which the Spirit aids the process of prayer, C.H. Dodd (“The Epistle of Paul to the Romans”, Moffat Commentary), once said, “Prayer is the divine in us, appealing to the divine above us.” Similarly, Reginald Fuller (Preaching the New Lectionary, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville: 1976) explained, “We habitually think of prayer in terms of ‘me down here’ speaking to ‘God up there’. It is the Spirit of God within me praying to ‘God up there’. Thus immanence and transcendence are both acted out in the activity of prayer. Thus too, prayer is an activity in which the believer participates in the mystery of the Trinity.”

Even when human attempts at prayer prove weak and ineffective, the Spirit hyperentynchanei, i.e. transcends that weakness by interceding over and above with groanings or, as the NRSV renders it, “with sighs too deep for words.” Early in Romans 8, Paul had used the same term (groaning) to describe creation’s longing for freedom from corruption and for fulfillment (vs. 22). In this pericope, he applies the term to the Spirit-aided prayer of the believer, who eagerly yearns to become all that he/she has been intended to be by God.

Happily, Paul reminds us today, that even in our weakest moments of inarticulate struggle in prayer, . . . even in the rut of the banal and routine. . . Even in the throes of seething resentment, or in the tears of burdensome sadness, the presence of the Spirit guarantees that our wordlessness be translated into a prayer which centers us once again and renews the communion which sustains us. . .

Abba! Papa! Daddy!

MATTHEW 13:24-43

At the structural or literary center of his gospel, Matthew has presented his readers with his third discourse, comprised of a collection of seven parables about the kingdom. Today’s pericope includes three of those parables, an extended explanation of one of them, and Jesus’ rationale for using parables as a method of alerting people to the coming of God’s reign among them.

In an article on the nature of Jesus’ parables, the Lutheran theologian and scripture scholar William Barclay, explained that: (1) Parables make the truth concrete by a turning it into a picture which people can envision and understand. (2) Parables begin from the here and now in order to lead to the there and then. In other words parables begin with the familiar in order to teach something new. (3) Parables, like most story-telling techniques compel interest. (4) Parables enable a person to discover a truth or an idea for himself/herself. Because they were spoken and not read, the impact of the parable had to be immediate, making the truth flash upon a person as lightning suddenly illumines a pitch-dark night. (5) For those unwilling to accept its message, the parable reminds a mystery. Placing the responsibility squarely on the shoulders and within the listening heart of the individual, parables reveal the truth to those who seek it and conceal the truth from those who reject it (vv. 34-35).

A key to understanding the thrust of the parable is often found by noticing those to whom the parable is addressed or the situation which occasioned it. The parable of the wheat and weeds (vv 24-30) was prompted by criticism leveled at Jesus because of his association with sinners. Whereas the religious teachers and leaders of his day would have separated themselves from the tax-collectors and sinners whom they regarded as unclean and outside the God’s salvific concerns, Jesus made a point of searching them out to minister and teach them of the Father’s loving reign. Jesus’ parable: (1) repudiates elitism; (2) underscores the fact that the human community is a “mixed bag” of wheat and weeds, of good and bad; (3) that judgment is God’s sole prerogative and (4) that judgment will be rendered only at the harvest, or end time; until then there is ample opportunity for change and growth. Weeds can be transformed into wheat; the bad can respond to God’s invitation and turn to goodness. For Jesus’ self-righteous contemporaries, the parable warned against judging, labeling and therefore segregating others by virtue of that judgment.

The explanation of the parable (vv. 36-43) represents a secondary level of interpretation and development of Jesus’ teaching and is the product of the Matthean community of the eighties C.E. As such it constitutes a lesson that the church which professes to follow Jesus “should not play God by trying to purify itself completely through purges and inquisitions. The definitive separation must be left to the last judgment; it is the church’s part to preach repentance and practice patience.” (John P. Meier, Matthew, Michael Glazier, Inc. Wilmington: 1980).

By means of the twin parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, Jesus taught that even seemingly insignificant beginnings (a small seed, a little yeast, a group of twelve followers), can issue forth in great, even wondrous results. For those who accepted the reign of God in Jesus, during his ministry, for the early church which preached of the kingdom after his death and resurrection, and for the church of today which continues Jesus’ mission of undiscriminating, patient service, these parables offer hope and encouragement.

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