“If God exists then why is there evil in the world?”  I am sure that we have all run up against this argument at one time or another.  When we are trying to share the beauty of the spiritual life and the tender mercies of God who cares for all his creation the skeptic invariably pulls out the old negative argument:  “What is with all of the weeds?”  The argument proceeds along the lines that if God is such a masterful gardener tending the beautiful garden in Eden, then why are there so many weeds in that garden.  Today Jesus takes up this challenge to God’s goodness and wisdom.  Jesus tells us very clearly that the weeds are not the fault of the master of the garden.  The seed that the master gardener sows is good seed and will yield only good fruit.  The seed is the Word of God and the Word of God can only produce good and can never result in evil.  If there are weeds among the wheat then there must be an enemy who sows the bad seed, the weeds, at night in secret and in darkness. 

     Often God takes the blame for the evil in the world because he is kind and gentle with his creatures.  God loves the wheat in his field and has great affection for all those plants that bear fruit in his name.  He is proud of the beautiful and well-formed harvest but he also has love and affection for the weeds and those plants that are not well-formed and bearing fruit.  God is hoping beyond hope that some of the weeds may prove to be wheat when the final gathering is done.  At the time Jesus told this parable the weed darnel, looked an awful lot like wheat in its earliest stages of growth and only in the end is its noxious nature apparent.  God is patient with the weeds that are growing in his beautiful garden because he doesn’t want to lose any of the good wheat.  The Wisdom writer tells us today of God’s clemency and leniency and that this teaches us that those who are just must also be kind.  Exercising justice does not just mean destroying evil with a heavy hand.  God lets the weeds know that they can repent of their “weediness” and be transformed by his creative Spirit of love into wheat.  Many of us are grateful that God has patience with us because we spent a good deal of time looking more like weeds than wheat.  Only the practiced eye of our Creator could see the potential for good in us.

     In the end God will appoint his angels to gather in the harvest and separate the weeds from the wheat.  It will take a special eye to be able to tell whether an individual plant is a weed or is wheat.  As human beings we do not have the right or perspective to determine what is wheat and what is weed.  God asks us to show compassion and kindness like himself and to be patient with the weeds that we see in the world.  If we treat a weed with compassion and kindness and look at it like it was wheat perhaps it will be transformed in the end.

     If the judgment was left up to human beings we would all be in trouble.  There are some people who see weeds everywhere.  Everything to them seems to be a weed.  When we start pulling weeds with our own faulty and sinful eye of judgment how often do we destroy good wheat?  Many of the DYI landscapers would see a dandelion as a weed that needs to be eliminated from his beautiful lawn.  A small child comes along and sees the beautiful flower and picks it so that it can be presented to his mother or he sees the fluffy ball of seeds as something  amazing that needs to be blown to the winds.  God teaches us kindness and patience, hope and optimism.  We are called to work to grow wheat and not to worry so much about the weeds.  In the end it will all be sorted out in the final judgment, until then let us stand together on the good ground of hope.