MT 13: 24-30 (31-33) 36-43

Matthew in the Margins…7th S. after Pentecost…Revised 2017 

I’ve just come in from a spell of gardening. After showery weather that’s kept all but the hardiest gardeners inside. How the weeds have grown! The wet spell was all they needed for their tasks-over bid! Before I go out a-weeding I make a batch of quick-rising Irish Soda Bread for lunch & leave that rising as it bakes while I garden. Weeds need time to take over. So do good things, like grain, mustard, leaven; even the baking soda working to raise our lunch, needs time to do its job. 

Jesus isn’t talking of wheat, mustard, leaven, even soda,  but life itself. About the ‘very grain of being’ as Christian Wiman puts it in his poem, ‘Prayer’, that introduces his ‘Once in the West’ collection’.¹  A Preacher's reaction to evil in the world may be to theologise, or worse, rant about up-rooting it. But out in our margins we have to live in real time among weeds of various kinds - & beware lest we become one! A threat to our own or someone else’s being! As we wait & work for God’s will to be done ‘on earth as it is…’  

What are we to do about the problem of evil? 'Live with it' is the realistic answer in both spiritual & worldly senses. As Jesus Himself demonstrates. Beware lest we add loosing the dogs of our own fears & insecurity, aggression, etc. to ‘the whole armour of God’! Which would just sow more weeds, not better ways of living for God & with God.When Evil self-sows, taking on new life of its own, let’s not blame some scapegoat 'Devil'! 

Jesus’ grain, mustard seed, & leaven, can all be taken, too, as metaphors for God's little ones. God can make a little go a long way! God can build, too, with all that the 'birds' of the story, (us?) can gather for God. On another tack, grind mustard seed, mix it with what you fancy, & it packs a wallop! God’s little ones can pack a mustard wallop for God, too! As yeast packs a punch for its size, raising milled grain into bread; as even baking soda can do!

The last section may sound to some more like John the Baptiser than Jesus. Hard to deal with, except for ‘hard-liners’; sign of Jesus’ growing frustration with responses He’s receiving or not receiving. Frustration comes built-in with human-ness. We need to let God control it in us, & our preaching, as well as discourage it in others. 

¹ Once in the West, FSG, NY, 2014