« Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Nature’s Signs | Main | Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - True Treasure »
July 19, 2008
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - A Weed by Any Other Name
I imagine most of us have heard or read the line, “A weed by any other name is a flower.” Actually it seems to be true. We give names to many things, some of which we feel are useful to us, others that are simply a nuisance. Of course, even nuisance items are useful for something if we care to look at life from the broader perspective. One person’s dessert may be another’s poison! Even poison oak and poison ivy must be good for something, although not for us humans.
So, I assume that many of our convictions about the natural world depend on our perspective, whether they benefit us or not. It would be wise, therefore, if we could develop a sense that not everything in the world is bad and not everything is good. There seems to be a mixture of goodness and badness in almost everything. The problem is that we cannot always tell the difference.
As we have mentioned in earlier homilies, Jesus of Nazareth was a keen observer of nature, not as a biologist or a botanist, but simply as a normal citizen walking along the roads of Palestine.
The difference between Jesus and other travelers, of course, was that he saw meanings in nature that no one else saw. Of course, being a spiritual teacher, a rabbi, he would also be looking for the spiritual meaning of common things. I imagine, when his followers heard these spiritual interpretations, they might have said to themselves: “Hey, I never thought of life like that.”
So, when we hear Jesus speaking to the folks about the implications of wheat and weeds, they must immediately have asked themselves, “I wonder where I fit into this picture?”
Actually, Jesus was thinking beyond the individual person. He was more interested in the human condition at large: He would ask, “What are the world’s weed issues and what are the wheat issues? The answer, of course, is that it’s pretty hard to tell. Life is such a mixture of good and bad. Besides, who really knows who is bad and who is good? Sometimes it is fairly clear but at other times its rather foggy.
The point Jesus seems to be making is this: Generally speaking we do not know what is in the mind of another or what their motivation is. Besides, it is really none of our business. We should have enough to worry about in our own regard.
It seems true to me, therefore, that it is difficult to judge the lives and motivations of other people. Perhaps they could be blamed for a bad attitude on one issue, but praised for their position on another. No one, it seems to me, fits solidly into a single category.
An individual, for instance, may be “Pro Choice” (sadly, I think) but may also be deeply concerned about other social and religious issues: World poverty, for instance, or immigration problems, the plight of people suffering with AIDS. Others may decide to travel overseas to work with Catholic Relief Services in devastated areas of the world.
So, the point seems to be that it is not wise to be a “One Issue Person” or to accuse others of being “One Issue Persons.” Goodness and evil seem to exist alongside of one another and we are not always capable of discerning the wheat from the weeds. Perhaps we should say again that the discernment is not our responsibility; it’s God’s business. Just think, for instance, how peaceful the world would be if we allowed God to do what God does best.
By the way, I still keep a healthy distance from poison ivy. Tangy stalks of rhubarb, on the other hand, are another matter. Strawberry rhubarb pie is still my favorite dessert!
The scriptures: Wisdom 12: 13, 16-19; Romans 8: 26-27; Matthew 13: 24-43
Posted by Cindy Lentine on July 19, 2008 10:21 AM.
