Photo by Illiya Vjestica on Unsplash
School for Love
Proper 11 Year A
19 July 2026 10:30 a.m. Sung Mass
Mission Church of St. Paul the Apostle, Crescent City (California)
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19 ; Psa 86:11-17 Rom 8:12-25 Matt 13:24-30, 36-43
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
What is the Church? Is it a gathering of righteous people, screening out bad influences so the righteous can become even better, or is it a kind of hospital ward where all and sundry—the wicked, the mean, the lustful, the morally weak, the heretical, the just plain bizarre—come together to help heal each other? If the former, is it the ultimate exclusionary, elitist club? Is it the acme of hypocrisy: pretending to be better than we are while trying to remain the same or even sink lower? And if latter, is it merely the blind leading the blind? Or is it a bunch of imperfect people pretending to better than they are so that they can actually improve? So they can fake it till they make it?
Today’s Gospel, the parable of the wheat and the weeds, is about life in the church. It is simple enough: Jesus tells us “It’s a mixed field out there, so don’t be too quick to weed out the bad. You’ll end up killing the good plants too! Let them grow together. It will sort itself out at harvest.”
Jesus is arguing not for laziness of laxness, but for strategic inaction. He chooses a particularly deadly weed, sown maliciously by a nasty business competitor, to make his point. The Greek word for the weed is zizania, bearded darnel, which when it first begins to grow is almost indistinguishable from wheat. But later, it grows taller than the wheat and produces very little grain. It is usually infected with ergot fungus, the source of LSD-like hallucinations, convulsions, and death.
And still Jesus says, “Don’t weed. That will kill the good plants too. Let them grow together.” Wait until harvest time, when the good and poisonous plants can be distinguished: strategic inaction, intentionally doing nothing to let the course of events accomplish your goal for you. Taoism expresses the idea in the phrase, 無為而治 wu-wei er zhi “By doing nothing, accomplish everything.”
The tale ends with a promise that the weeds will be gathered together and burned. This may lead us to think, “We may not be able to weed as we’d like now, but in the end GOD AND THE ANGELS WILL PULL THE DAMN WEEDS AND BURN THEM UP.” This ignoble pettiness is like St. Paul saying that we should be kind to our enemies because by so doing “we will heap burning coals on their head” (Rom. 12:20). It misses the point of how the story ends: overwhelming joy at the harvest (rather than smug self-satisfaction that one’s enemies got their just deserts.)
In this, as in so many other parables, Jesus is taking apart our
preconceptions, reworking our definitions, deconstructing our world-view. Our rules for distinguishing between weeds
and wheat may be flawed. If we try to
root out the weeds, no matter how noxious, we will in the process kill good
plants too.
But why shouldn’t start weeding? We know
evil when we see it. We know who fits in
and who doesn’t!
But this is just because we have set up boundaries for our little gardens. We have established categories and demarcations that label some as good and some as bad.
In our nation, we have borders, and try, with varying degrees of success, to keep undesirable people from coming in. But look at the cost of labelling any human being an “illegal (!)” How many innocent people have been harmed and even killed by the current regime’s “get tough” approach on immigration, that more and more clearly looks like the hatred and racism that drives it.
In church, we divide people into categories: saints or sinners, orthodox or heretics, people who respect or flout tradition. And we vilify anyone who we think is on the other side of whatever group we identify with.
We Episcopalians have one particular
besetting sin: being snooty about “good taste” and “proper form.” We may not talk about righteousness vs
wickedness as much as evangelicals, but we turn up our noses up to those with what
we see as poor taste or maudlin sentimentality.
We distinguish between solid contributors to the community and ‘the
needy,’ between those who value ‘traditional and beautiful worship’ and those
who prefer the latest “flavor of the month” liturgy.
Human beings are tribal creatures, always wanting labels and markers: Outsider or insider. Citizen or alien. Posh or tawdry. Saint or sinner. Wheat or Weed.
But Jesus says: your definitions are
flawed. Your boundaries are wrong. You don’t know the garden’s plan well enough,
or the plants well enough. Let it
be. Let them grow together. Don’t try to sort this out, let God sort it
out.
Jesus calls us to live in peace, non-judgment, and mutual support. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want us to
confront and work against evil. No. He wants us to fight evil with good, not with
evil. Meet hatred with love. He sees tribal divisions, factions, dividing
God’s creatures into “us and them,” and violence, all as evil.
Jesus is teaching something very close to the idea of Satyagraha, the power of truth, l that was at the heart of the programs of action pursued by Mahatma Ghandi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King once said:
“Every time a riot breaks out it actually helps the cause of [racists] … [W]e must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.… [T]here is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies … We see [them] in a new light. We recognize that … hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched in [each human] being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love… [So] we must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win [their] friendship and understanding.”
Implied here is the idea that the division between good and evil is not between
different groups of people: it is
actually down the middle of each of our hearts. We do not know enough—either
about each other or about God’s plans—to judge.
Look at Jesus’ words. “Judge not so you yourself won’t be judged.” “Be perfectly compassionate like your Papa in heaven, who gives the blessing of rain and sunshine both on the good and the wicked.” “This man was born blind not because God was punishing him or his parents—this happened so we can help the poor fellow!” “Be salt, be light.” “Don’t be a judge. Don’t sit there criticizing others.” “A truly wicked person who goes to God in sorrow is healed by his prayers. The so-called righteous person who prays only to feel superior to others will never find that prayers help at all.”
Look at Jesus’ example. He didn’t weed
out Judas. He never rejected him, but loved him to the end. He also refused to weed out Peter, as
conflicted, impetuous, and changeable as he was. He counseled against violent resistance of
the Roman Imperium and its religious establishment toadies in Judea, yet
remained so constantly engaged with it, good and evil alike, and was so
effective challenging oppression and injustice that in the end the Roman
authorities finally felt they had to kill him as a political rebel.
When we see evil or malice in front of us, we go into fight or flight mode. In the Church, we often try to prettify flight as “finding a better match” or “not having time” for a person. We prettify fight by making it all beneath the surface: love the sinner hate the sin, appear to try to respect boundaries even as we wage decades-long skirmishes of passive aggression and subtle undermining. It’s still fight or flight, regardless of how it’s tarted up.
But Jesus’ advice is peaceful engagement, strategic inaction. Jesus teaches us, “Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you.” Wish well for those who spitefully use you (Matt. 5:44). Let God decide. Be a light, not a judge.
God knows it is all too easy to point fingers at weeds out there needing to be plucked up and burnt rather than looking at our own heart. It is hard not to want to fight fire with fire or pray that God fight fire with fire, or just totally give up on people when they push our buttons, pull our triggers.
We all have deep-seated emotional
triggers that can really set us off and make us want to go running and demand
that those weeds be plucked and thrust into the fire. But even the most sterling “righteous” anger
in most of us is mixed with self-interest and fear. Think about it carefully.
In this messed up world, why is it that only some bad things cause us to
lose our serenity and calm?
My spiritual directors have taught me over the years to identify things that throw me off as opportunities to learn about what is going on in my heart. I have found that at root of things that really throw me off kilter is fear: fear of loss of status or prosperity, fear of embarrassment or humiliation, and most importantly, fear of losing my own high opinion of myself.
We tend to want to avoid the ultimate questions by looking at side issues. We don’t look at the weeds in our own hearts, but want to label other people weeds. We prefer instead to be judges—partisans of tribalism, sectarianism, and faction—instead of looking at what in our own hearts keeps us from being lights.
I invite us all this week to identify or review our triggers, what really makes us lose it, what rmakes us blame and demonize others and want to weed them out. Let’s reflect on what it is about us not about them that causes this. There is little we can do about weeding out the evil in their hearts, but plenty we can do about what is in ours.
God loves us, each and every one. So we must learn to love each other. Not pretend to love each other. Not fight fire with fire, or practice passive aggression as we continue to despise and judge. But love. Despite faction, tribe, party, or sect, we must learn to focus on the weeds in our own heart, and not label others as weeds. We must learn to love as God loves, which almost always means challenging the beloved and being patient, very patient.
What is the Church? I believe it is the same thing that St. Augustine said that Marriage was: a school for love.
In the name of God, Amen.
