Today's readings begin with God's mercy; the Book of Wisdom and the Psalm describing and praising his mercy. Jesus explains how God is merciful - giving us the chance to grow, and change, and mature and only judging us when our lives have run their course. It is a stark reminder to us that Jesus' mission is a call to repentance and that the choices made throughout our lives matter! We can be virtuous and be wheat, or we can be wicked and be darnel. It's up to us!
To this day, one of the most heartbreaking films I’ve ever watched is Schindler’s list – the story of a Nazi war profiteer who used his position to save almost 1,200 Jews from being sent to death camps or being worked to death in prison camps. It’s a masterpiece; I don’t think there is another film quite like it.
There is a striking scene in the middle of the film, a discussion between Schindler and Amon Göth, the concentration camp commandant, where they talk about power. Göth says to Schindler, control is power; the Jews in his camp fear him because he has control, he can kill them whenever he chooses. Schindler disagrees,
They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man commits a crime, he should know better. We have him killed and we feel pretty good about it. Or we kill him ourselves and we feel even better. That's not power, though, that's justice. That's different than power. Power is when we have every justification to kill – and we don't.
Göth doesn’t believe this is real power, Schindler goes on;
That's what the emperors had. A man stole something, he's brought in before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy, he knows he's going to die. And the emperor pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go… that’s power.
Power, is knowing that someone has done wrong, having the right to punish them and the means to punish them and the authority to punish them, and choosing to show mercy. Choosing to pardon.
The Book of Wisdom describes God’s power like this; he is God, he answers to nobody, his power comes from his almighty strength, and yet he is “mild in judgement, [and] … govern[s] us with great lenience.” Why does he do this? Why does he hold off?
Because, as the psalmist writes, God has long nose. You didn’t hear me wrong. It’s an idiom in Hebrew, included in today’s psalm, to say someone has a long nose when you really mean they are slow to anger. The theory obviously being, the longer your nose, the bigger your nostrils are and the deeper breaths you can take; if you can take deep breaths you are less likely to be quick tempered. God is patient, he does not strike us down the moment we sin, he doesn’t punish us immediately.
This is the point of the parable of the wheat and the darnel (or the wheat and the chaff). Darnel is a poisonous weed that looks exactly like wheat all the way through it’s growth, right up until it ripens and it’s ear appears – wheat browns when it ripens, whereas darnel turns black. Wheat can be eaten, but darnel can only be thrown away and burned to stop it growing back.
The difficulty is this: until it ripens you can’t know for sure which is which, and so the farmer in the parable tells the reapers to hold off until reaping day, when both wheat and darnel have ripened, and only then to throw them into the flames.
The wheat and the darnel are human beings; the good and the wicked, who will be divided on the day of judgement and each sent to their eternal reward. But this metaphor Jesus uses isn’t exact – because he isn’t preaching some kind of predestination, where some of us just are wheat, virtuous people destined to be virtuous, and some just are darnel, wicked people destined to be wicked, like good and bad seed sown by different sowers.
Listen anyone who hears!
God doesn’t strike us down every time we sin because he is merciful. His mercy is a cause for hope, as the book of Wisdom puts it “that after sin [He] will grant repentance.” It’s in our human nature to change and grow over time – you can’t tell until we’ve ripened, until our lives have run their course whether we were good or wicked. Jesus calls on his listeners to hear because he’s giving them a warning; the day is coming when you will be judged, either to be just or to be wicked. Listen anyone who hears!
This parable is a powerful call to repentance; God’s mercy is for those who repent. Each one of us has this choice to make; do I want to be a child of God, or a child of the evil one? Who do I want for my master? This fundamental choice, then has to be lived – it isn’t enough just to desire it, it isn’t enough just to will it, we actually have to work for it.
How do we work for it? Every virtue and every vice is fundamentally a habit, and habits are a lot like brick walls; just as a brick wall is built one brick at a time, a habit is built a single action at a time. If our lives are like a house, it’s up to us to choose what kind of bricks we’re going to be built out of.
Every time we stop during the day to pray, we have laid down a brick of piety, a brick of faith. Every time we give something to someone in need, we lay down a brick of generosity, a brick of charity. Every time we fast, we lay down a brick of self-denial, a brick of humility and temperance. I could go on, but the point is this; every good habit comes from little virtuous acts, that build and build and build until the habit becomes as solid as a brick wall. We have been given time by God, to build these houses of ours, to grow either into wheat or chaff. But what we actually choose to do matters.
Some people today, sadly even some of the clergy, will tell you it doesn’t matter; good or bad everyone goes to heaven because God is merciful. If that were true, aside from rendering a large number of Jesus’ parables about the last judgement nonsensical and calling into question the point of his preaching at all, it would make our lives meaningless. Earth would just be a waiting room for heaven and none of our decisions or choices would have any meaning at all.
The reason our lives matter, the reason we have been given the opportunity and the freedom to grow and change, is because we have the freedom to choose to accept God’s love or to reject it. The way we live our lives matter is because, at the end, there is a judgement. At the end there is a division between good and evil. Our lives matter because it’s up to us to choose.
Jesus says Listen, anyone who has ears to hear, because his whole mission of preaching and teaching and performing miracles is rooted in this truth; He has come to call us to repent, to have our lives transformed by Him, to work with Him towards our salvation. So, if you have ears to hear, listen, repent, come back to the Lord and ask him to help you, as brick by brick you build a house of virtue.
Readings:
Wisdom 12:13,16-19
Psalm 85(86)
Romans 8:26-27
Matthew 13:24-43
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