We Are Not OK
16th Sunday of the Year
I had a meeting a couple of months back at the Catholic Center, the central office building for the Archdiocese, and we were delayed in getting started because one of the key players was apparently running late. One of the guys sitting around the table speculated where he was and said, "I think he's out in the field." By that he meant out of the building, perhaps somewhere in one of the parishes or schools of the Archdiocese rather than at the Catholic Center. I found that expression — "out in the field" — endearing, and it brought a smile to my face. I imagined that we were cops sitting around the station talking about our partner out walking the beat, or reporters waiting for our man on the ground to feed us a breaking story to run. This individual's intention, however, was not to make me feel like either; rather, he was using the language Christ himself gave us in his many parables in which the world is likened to a field, including today's.
Sometimes in these parables Jesus calls us laborers, sent into the field to work and to till, to labor in the world and be God's servants in making of the world a rich harvest. But today's parable has a different meaning and, importantly, a different command. Today, Christ does not want us to work. Rather, he wants us to let things be. When the master's slaves raise the alarm that weeds have grown up alongside the wheat, the master insists that they do not try to uproot them. The reason is this: the weeds mentioned in the parable are virtually indistinguishable from the wheat. The Greek text indicates a very specific kind of weed, and its chief characteristic is just that: it looks exactly like wheat. The laborers lack the discretion to identify one from the other, and at the risk of weeding out the wheat, are told to let them grow together until the harvest, when God will send his angels to do the final sorting.
When we leave these doors, we are again "out in the field," sent from this Mass to proclaim to the world the saving work of God. Our instinct, if we take that mission seriously, will be to put people in the categories of wheat and weeds. Those who we might have a shot at evangelizing, wheat; those who don't stand a chance, weeds. Those who we like and who basically agree with us, wheat; those who make our skin crawl, weeds. Those who belong to my political party, wheat; those who voted for the other guy, weeds. Those who embrace my ideology, wheat; those who have sold out to the culture, weeds. Those who hold traditional morals, wheat; those who eschew them, weeds. And so on, and so on.
But when we leave this church and go out into the world dividing folks into the chosen and the reprobate, we carry within ourselves an implicit bias: the presumption that we are among the wheat. But is that so clearly the case? If we look within, don't we find that both wheat and weeds grow inside us? Are our good intentions entirely without self-interest? Are not our bad choices also, at least sometimes, motivated by the pursuit of a good? If we are honest, practically all our actions are a confused and complicated mess of good and bad, of the noble and the self-serving. The field Jesus uses to describe the world might just as readily describe ourselves: weeds grow within us alongside the wheat, and we lack the discretion to know the difference. If we are so poorly judges of ourselves, on what grounds can we judge anyone else?
That is why for the entire length of his pontificate Pope Francis has spoken of nearness, accompaniment, and mercy, and these have been the foundation of the method he has given us for evangelization. Bringing another person to Christ begins with the humble admission that I, too, am on a path of conversion. Encountering the other person in their situation and allowing them to see that theirs is not all that different from ours allows us to walk together toward a deeper knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this past week, Archbishop Lori has employed this exact method in offering pastoral guidance to the Archdiocese of Baltimore on the accompaniment of those who identify as "LGBT". We must begin with the humble and honest admission that we all fall short of the lives the Lord desires for us, and that we are all on a lifelong journey of conversion to him. In that context, in which we truly stand with them, we can begin to listen and understand their experience and walk with them toward the Lord who calls us all to himself. In the Archbishop's words, recognizing our need means saying, "I'm not OK, you're not OK, and that's OK." When we start there, in what is common to us all and not from the contrived categories into which we box ourselves and others, then we are on the path of faith, hope, and love that leads to Christ. How different would our Church be — how much better would we carry out our mission in God's field — if in all our engagements with the world we adopted that as our method and left aside the presumption that it's us versus them. No, like every disciple, we are all on the same journey toward Christ and are called to pursue holiness ourselves and lead others to it by walking in step with each other.
What we must come to terms with is that the world that is God's field is filled with both weeds and wheat that grow alongside each other, that twist around each other, and that it is not for us to know the difference. Our preference to reduce people down to convenient categories will make accepting this reality a frustrating endeavor. Still, it is for "the one who searches hearts and knows what is the intention of the Spirit" to scrutinize, not us. Wisdom consoles us that God alone has "the care of all" and is "lenient to all" and "judge[s] with clemency". This is good news, for our heart is a microcosm of the world and just as much needs sorting out.
The challenge of today's parable is to persevere through our laboring in the field without making hasty judgements or despairing. We do great damage and abandon our Christian convictions when we do either. In the midst of the world, we as Christians must live as people who operate according to a different set of principles, those given by Christ himself, that resist every temptation to see people and ourselves in any other light than how God sees us: as beloved daughters and sons of the Father, members of the Body of Christ, and dwelling places of the Holy Spirit. God desires and is constantly at work to bring about our salvation, our sharing of eternal life with him in the company of all his holy ones. That is the perspective we are to carry forth from this Mass, when we encounter those who seem at first glance different from us and as we live out our Christian vocation.
In the end, we would do well to remember that parables explain one reality in light of another. The world is a field, but it is God's field, destined to become his kingdom. That will happen in his time, not ours. God always prefers the long play and, as frustrating to us as it may be, he expects us to embark upon the long journey, one in which we are patient with ourselves, with each other, and, yes, also with God.
Homily preached July 22/23, 2023 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen
This is so good. Thanks, Fr.