A handful of wheat, a fistful of mustard seeds, a pinch of yeast. Jesus uses these beautiful things to say something amazing about the Kingdom of God. He begins with the great reassurance that love is invincible. No matter how small the beginning, no matter how vulnerable or threatened the middle, the end is never in doubt. In life and in death, the Kingdom will come and Gods’ will, will be done.
Next. He will not allow us to take a simplistic, no grey in the middle, view of the world. We are all complicated. There is no neat division of people into the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. We are all a strange mixture of both. Take the first disciples as an example. One moment they are all over Jesus like a rash, then they are following at a distance or not following Him at all. And if we are honest, we don’t always go along with Holy things. We drift from time to time. The Great Reassurance of God walks with the Great Not-So-Sureness of the human heart.
And so the struggle goes on. Or the struggle goes well. It is a struggle for bread, for shelter and for Compassion. Only the Wisdom which allows the wheat and darnel to remain intertwined can make this happen. This Wisdom puts us in a place of unending repentance as we await the time of harvest.
This invitation to unending repentance is one of the big themes of Saint Matthews Gospel. It is an invitation to shake ourselves free of anything in us which causes hunger, homelessness and despair. And when we have completed this work, we start all over again. This labour goes on and on throughout our lives. This is why, when we leave the retreat centre, full of good intentions and two minutes into the journey home we are screaming at someone who cut us up on the road, we smile. Or we leave Holy Mass full of love, kindness and consideration which evaporates the minute someone presses the wrong buttons. We smile! How many
times have we witnessed Saint Peter proclaim his love unto death for Jesus being chastened and illuminated by his own betrayal? Perhaps we dream more than we can do. Perhaps not.
In the teaching of Jesus weeds and wheat grow together. Small seeds become huge trees. Leaven raises dead dough into bread. All are given the gift of time. Time to try again. Time to become repeat repenters and not just repeat offenders. But one day the time will run out and the urgency of the struggle is clear. We all fail and we are all ashamed of the failing within us. But we must not give upon ourselves. Out of our errors and frailty come some of life’s most important lessons. There is a freedom that awaits us. It can only be found by those who carry the light, of a certain kind of love, into darkened places.
