Weeds? Why Wait?
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July 19, 2020“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?” (Mt 13:27)
The question we most like to ask in times of trial is: “Why?”
Why did this happen, God? Why do things not go the way they should? Why do I have to endure this? Why does she have to suffer that? Why is the world in such a state? Why do our best efforts amount to little and our selfish drives pollute everything? Were you the one caught sleeping while the enemy sowed destruction? Why don’t you get up and do something? How can you stand by idle and say, “Let them grow”? Why don’t you fix your creation, make it all new and better? Is there anyone there? Hello!?
The Psalms are full of such challenges to God:
“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Ps 10:1)
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.” (Ps 22:1-2)
“Rouse yourself! Why do you sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not cast us off for ever! Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?” (Ps 44:23-4)
“Why do you hold back your hand; why do you keep your hand in your bosom?” (Ps 74:11)
“Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants be known among the nations before our eyes.” (Ps 79:10)
This is also Job’s question:
“I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.” (Jb 10:2)
“Why do you hide your face, and count me as your enemy?” (Jb 13:24)
“Why do the wicked live on, reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” (Jb 21:7)
“Why are times not kept by the Almighty, and why do those who know him never see his days?” (Jb 24:1)
These wonderfully tough words of Sacred Scripture give us permission to shake our fist at God as we ask him our favorite question: “Why?” God, however, does not tend to answer this question in a way that satisfies us. God’s answer to Job is to blow his mind with a series of questions spanning time and space, which ultimately comes down to: “Do you know who I am?” God says to Job:
“Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?
Or who shut in the sea with doors
when it burst out from the womb?—
when I made the clouds its garment,
and thick darkness its swaddling band,
and prescribed bounds for it,
and set bars and doors, and said,
“Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
and here shall your proud waves be stopped”?’” (Jb 38:3-11)
The question God prefers to answer in this, and every other book of the Bible is not “Why?” but “Who?” Who are you, God, so great and mysterious and free that you wield all things, even pain and death and tragedy?
“Who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15).
God does not give the Psalmist an explanation either, but answers with breath-taking simplicity: “I have seen the trouble and sorrow, I note it, I take it in hand” (Cf. Ps 10:14).
The master of today’s parable is one who bears with equanimity the infiltration of his beautiful planting by trouble not of his making, by sin and all the pain and death which are its corollary. His servants, by contrast, want to rush in and pull out those weeds right away. It might help us to step into the parable a little more at this point. Imagine a bunch of guys tramping through a field of immature wheat, bent on pulling up the almost-but-not-quite-identical impostor plants, and that while fuming with rage against the enemies who have done this. Can you see what kind of carnage will result? Weeds pulled, yes, but also wheat pulled along with them, wheat pulled as weed, and good stalks to the left and the right trampled underfoot. A royal mess!
God can look on his weed-infested wheat field without any trace of puritanical fervor or utopian zeal. In this, we are not like him. We tend to have infinite forbearance toward our own faults, but zero tolerance for other people’s. We rush in, don’t we, the moment something goes amiss, to fix it. Our fixation with fixing frequently leads to putting our foot in it, squashing the tender shoots of other people’s sensibilities to the left and the right. This is my experience, at least. I am beginning to learn that problems are sometimes solvable, but people are not fixable. This leaves us standing between two words of advice given by St Benedict to the abbot, but applicable to any of us. From Chapter 2:
“He should not gloss over the sins of those who err, but cut them out while he can, as soon as they begin to sprout.” (RB 2.26)
And from Chapter 64, a further nuance:
“He is to distrust his own frailty and remember not to crush the bruised reed. By this we do not mean that he should allow faults to flourish, but rather, as we have already said, he should prune them away with prudence and love as he sees best for every individual.” (RB 64.13-14)
Each of us needs to learn to practice the kind of discretion that knows the time to pull a weed, or to let it grow. Each of us needs to make peace with imperfections in our own lives, in the lives of others and in life in general, waiting for a moment when things become clear, when wheat and weeds may safely be separated. Each of us needs to learn to trust that the farmer of our souls, the master of the harvest, knows what he is doing. God has all this in hand. And there is no violence in his hand. He will not tear up the weeds and risk the destruction of the wheat. He will see to it in good time. In the meantime: “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45). Of all the attributes of God revealed in the Scriptures, I think this may be the most challenging
I would like to close with a word from Julian of Norwich, who lived and wrote while the Black Death was wreaking havoc across Europe. She describes God as perpetually calm. But being calm is not at all the same as being indifferent. Julian says:
“For it is his will that we should know that all the power of our old enemy is shut in the hand of our Friend, and therefore the soul which knows this to be certain will fear nothing but him whom she loves, and will pass over lightly, and count as nothing, any suffering or distress that she may experience. And she can do this because God desires us to know him, and if we know him and love him, reverently fear him, we shall have patience and be in great rest. And all that he does will be a great delight to us, and we shall be taken from all our pain…. Glad and merry and sweet is the blessed and lovely demeanor of our Lord towards our souls, for he sees us always living in love-longing, and he wants our souls to be gladly disposed toward him. By his grace he lifts us up and will make us all at unity with him, and each of us with others in the true, lasting joy which is Jesus.”
