One of my favorite parables from Jesus is the parable of the wheat and the weeds. As an aside, if you told me maybe 15 years ago that I would have a favorite parable…well…let’s just say you would likely be someone who obviously didn’t know me very well. Now, back to our regularly scheduled reflection. The wheat and the weeds. In the story the Master…there seems to always be a Master in these stories. Could it be that Jesus might think that God is at the center of all of this…has planted his fields in wheat. But his servants inform him that weeds are growing up amongst the weeds. They conclude that the Master must have purchased inferior seed with weeds mixed in. Well, we know that God does not create junk so there has to be another reason for the weeds. The Master concludes that an enemy, hmmm wonder who that could be, has come during the night, in the darkness, to sew the weeds to destroy his crop. The servants ask him if he wants them to pull out the weeds. He says no because the weeds at this early stage look very much like the wheat and pulling out the weeds now could result in pulling up much of the desired crop. He tells them to wait until the wheat is ready to be harvested and it will be easier to tell them apart. Then the wheat can go into the barns and the weeds bundled up and burned. In other words, give the crop time to be better differentiated.
Today’s Gospel may seem at odds with the parable of the wheat and the weeds. In it, Jesus tells us that we can tell a good tree from a bad tree by its fruit. Good trees do not produce bad fruit and bad trees do not bear good fruit. Evil comes out of the heart of an evil person and good comes forth from a good person. So we are to avoid those persons showing bad fruit? They are obviously evil and do not deserve our attention? Well, if that was our stance then Saul would not have become Paul. Saul’s fruit was of the aforementioned evil variety. He persecuted…killed…many Christians in the early Church. He was on his way to round up more and bring them back to Jerusalem for punishment. Men, women and children. He was doing “God’s work”. Until God knocked him off his high horse. Literally and figuratively. Saul went on to become Paul and probably the greatest Apostle to have ever lived. Most of us would likely not be Christian today if it were not for Paul back then.
God gives us time to come to Him. We are not to judge others prematurely, or actually not at all. We are to make the Gospel known to others but it is God’s job to judge when the time is right. Not all is what it seems to us when looking at a person. They may look like weeds to us now but may actually be wheat at the time of the harvest. Leave the harvesting and the judging to God and His angels. Yes, don’t take a bite out of evil fruit. Our first parents certainly could have learned that lesson. But cutting down the tree that it came from? Nope. Not for us to do. God can take that tree and use it to produce the sweetest fruit imaginable. He did it with Saul and he does it with us…every day.
