Homily Sunday 16 in Ordinary Time Year A

Homily： Sunday 16 in Ordinary Time Year A

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to the 16th Sunday of ordinary time. Today we have a lot to get through, so I'll go fast. Last week, you remember, Jesus was teaching in parables, and in fact he was explaining the parabolic method: why it was important that people should learn who they are from within, being plowed over. That's how we work out how we are going to become changed into signs of the kingdom and bear fruit. But it's — first of all he was teaching about the method there. Here, this week, he's actually teaching parables of the kingdom. They're actually examples of how the kingdom of God comes amongst us. In other words, with the knowledge we acquired last week, we have to find ourselves on the inside of the act of imagination which he's setting forth here. So the first one: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in the field, but while everybody was asleep an enemy came and sowed" — it just says weeds, but the actual, the closest translation is darnel in Greek. And please notice, this is a special sort of weed. It's actually something that looks terribly like the real thing until far too late. I saw this myself in Mexico once, when I had to help harvest a maize field in which there was also fake maize — in that part of Mexico called acece — and you can't tell whether it's going to be real maize or fake maize until the time comes for the actual cob, the corn on the cob, to appear. Either it does, in which case it's the real thing, or the equivalent of a little corn fart takes place: something that's just small and husky and useless. A weed. But a weed that looks like the real thing until far too late to be able to get rid of it beforehand. So that's the kind of seed that's been talked about here. "The slaves of the household came and said, 'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where did these weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves then said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers: collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" Okay. So for me, this is one of the wonderful parables where Jesus shows that he has what I call the intelligence of the victim — that's to say, he knows exactly how victim-thinking works, how it traps us, and how the kingdom is getting us out of victimization and victim-thinking. First of all, as the tale is told, it describes an enemy who comes and sows these things which look just like the real thing. Now, first people's reaction is, "Oh, I wonder who the enemy is. How should we deal with the enemy?" But the parable pays no attention to that at all. The slaves come along and say, "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?" "Where did these weeds come from?" And he answered, "An enemy has done this." Now what is it that the enemy has done? The enemy has created a place where things that look like each other are potentially dangerous to each other. In other words, if you can create a situation where each of us thinks of ourselves as different from the other, and is on the watch out for how bad that other is, we will constantly be struggling with them. We will know that we are the good and they are the bad, and we'll be out to fight them. And guess what? We'll never realize our similarity with them. The more similar we are, the more we'll be inclined to be very careful, lest we are destroying ourselves, destroying the others. In other words, Jesus is saying, "Yep, I can see exactly how struggles work, fights work, and quickly build up rivalry over against each other. This always leads to good versus bad, and you always preempt the real thing." The real thing is: be aware that you're all very, very similar to each other. You have much, much more in common than seems to be the case. Any clever enemy can cause you to fight amongst yourselves, and therefore destroy all of you. But what it will look like to be the good fruit will be the people who didn't judge the difference of the others, but saw themselves as the same as the others, will take time to work out what's going on. They'll start to bear good fruit over time, and they'll be quite content for any verdict that needs to be made to be left in the hands of someone else. This is the reverse of victimry thinking. It takes a long time for us to stop being worried about who is casting the rivalry amongst us and actually to get out of being rivals. "He put before them another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed someone took and sowed in his field. It's the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it's the greatest of the shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches." Well, one of the fun things about this is that there's a backdrop in the book of Ezekiel. In the book of Ezekiel chapter 17: "The word of the Lord came to me: O mortal, propound a riddle and speak an allegory to the house of Israel" — that's the Old Testament words for a parable — "thus says the Lord God: a great eagle with great wings and long pinions, rich in plumage of many colors, came to the Lebanon. He took the top of the cedar, broke off its topmost shoot, he carried it to a land of trade, set it in the city of merchants. Then he took a seed from the land, placed it in fertile soil, a plant by abundant waters." Now please notice, in all that imagery, it's a great bird taking a graft, if you like, from an enormously noble plant and then planting it so that it starts to give fruit in Israel. And please notice how completely pathetic Jesus is by comparison to this. His all is a complete underwhelming understatement. What are the kinds of birds of the air that are going to be involved in sitting on what is essentially a large shrub? Well, the answer is: not very big birds. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed it in a field." Okay, mustard is a herb essentially, and Jesus compares it to the other herbs. "It's the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is greater than all the other herbs" — that's actually what the text says. And that's true, of course. Herbs don't grow into great big shrubs, but the mustard seed, as it happens being very small, does grow into a shrub. It's the kind of seed that, supposing that birds were to come across it in a field, they would try to eat it — of course, sensible birds. But amazingly, if it's lucky enough to turn into a shrub, then yes, the more modest kind of birds will be able to come and sit on it. And guess what? Something that they would have devoured will actually become a source of shelter and life for them. But again, Jesus is saying: don't look for the big trees and the big bushes. Look for the small things. And when you find yourself on the inside of the small things, then you'll start to see how it is that your overcoming the victory mechanism will actually allow even a number of your former enemies to come and sit on your branches and take advantage of the fact that you have been prepared to go through — what you have gone through — in order to give them shelter. Very remarkable. And then again: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." Again, nothing big in the signs here. It's something tiny which a woman mixes into a huge quantity of flour. Three measures of flour is not simply a general thing. The text was quite clear: it was 14 kilos — that is to say, three measures is 42 kilos of flour. To take a small amount of yeast and mix it with 42 kilos of flour — this is making a staggering quantity of bread. Why would a woman be making such a staggering quantity of bread? Well, the answer is she must have been going to be feeding lots of people. In other words, from something completely invisible — she's working with something invisible — but something invisible will itself be changed by its interaction with the flour, and then when baked will actually die during the baking. This is the role of yeast. It's again a wonderful sign of the invisible self-giving against the sacrificial system, but in a way that is self-giving up to death, that in fact alters the structure of everything from within, and makes possible an unprecedented and unheard-of generosity. So Jesus then repeats that he's telling all these parables. The disciples ask him about everything, and he then gives St. Matthew's account — the easy account, if you like — of the parable of the darnel, without showing the actual structure of the thing, which is what matters: which is that every single one of the points is a way of distracting us from seeking resolution, meaning who's good and who's bad now. leaving it into the hands of another who will do things in his own time, in his own way. Which is exactly what our first reading today tells us. At the very end of Jesus' rather beautiful words, it says: "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin" — that's all scandala, all stumbling blocks — "and all evildoers." In other words, we have to watch out for scandala: the ways in which we obsessively depend on enemies, obstacles, in order to give ourselves identity. It's scandala which turn us into evildoers. And as we watch out for those, let our Lord weed out, as it were, the scandala at the end — you know, throwing them into the furnace of fire. "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." That's all that a scandalon is: it's locking yourself constantly into weeping and gnashing of teeth. It's something that goes on and on and on. That's what's terrible about obsessive things — you can't get rid of it. "But the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their fathers." This is a quote from the prophet Daniel. These are people who will have been through the grind, who have allowed themselves to have their scandals undone. And, as I hope and pray, all of us are learning to become sons and daughters, seeing our similarity in our sisters and brothers, who apparently are so unlike us, but who share with us all the senses of shame and flight from which our Lord came to set us free. And the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.