← Catholic Bible Study
Catholic Bible Study
The Season of Advent: A Parable for Advent
00:31:12
A Parable for Advent: Waiting as Wheat among the Weeds by Dr. James Prothro
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:06]
A
Hello. Welcome to the Advent bible conference. I'm Dr. James Prothero. I'm a professor here at the Augustine Institute. And here in this talk, I want to get us into the mood for Advent by retelling a parable of Jesus. It's one that you've probably heard called the wheat and the weeds, or maybe the wheat and the tares. It's in Matthew 13. And it's a parable that addresses us in our time of waiting. And that's really what Advent is about. Of course, we experience an Advent waiting for the Christmas holiday, right? So you're preparing things, you're making sure that you've gotten all of the right presents for people to care for people and love your neighbor. Maybe also, you know, fulfill some of that pressure that you get from others to get a certain kind of gift or a certain number of gifts that can become a problem. We're waiting for time with family, right? We're waiting for plane flights to come in. There's all kinds of waiting that goes on during the season of Advent in these weeks before Christmas. But actually, at its heart, Advent isn't about waiting for Christmas for the celebration of it. It's not about waiting for a celebration of something that's already happened in Christ's first coming and his birth in the manger. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way. In paragraph 524, in Advent, we renew our ardent desire for Christ's second coming. It's a time of waiting, not for a celebration of something that's already happened, but a celebration of something that we as the Church are still waiting for. The return of Christ to raise the dead when he comes to judge the living and the dead and will cast out all evil, all sin and darkness, will mend and restore all the brokenness in the world. The new Jerusalem will come down to the world that God created and that became broken. The new heavens and the new earth will be made, will be made new. As Jesus says in the Book of Revelation, behold, I'm making all things new. And Christ will gather all of his faithful, his bride, into the eternal wedding banquet. That's the hope that Advent is supposed to make us remember and give us a special time to focus on that we're going to look ahead to this wonderful promise of God. It's something that can get lost in our Christmas preparations. If we're honest, it's something that we can lose sight of even in our daily lives of faith. But it's something that the Church, in every Mass, always is inviting us to remember when we say the Nicene Creed every week we say, I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. That's that Advent hope. We're looking forward to Christ's return to make all things new and judge and cast out all evil and sin. Every week again and even daily in the celebration of the Eucharist, right? As often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Even the Eucharist as we receive God's gifts and his love now, and we're joined to him as his body once more. Even the Eucharist is setting us every week and every day in that Advent hope, looking forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. This means Advent is a time when we're thinking consciously about this. We're thinking about our identity as a waiting people, waiting now in our life as we continually receive God's gifts in the Eucharist, the working of the Holy Spirit, and always moving forward toward the day when the Lord returns, even past our death. In the Book of Revelation, the saints around the altar, the martyrs, their souls that are already there, already at peace with God, look out on all of the evil in the world that God made for good. And they call out to the Lord, how long? How long, O Lord, until you judge the evil in the world and restore all things? The whole church here and even in heaven is in that sense a waiting church, waiting on God's promise. And that's what we ought to be as people of God's Word, made new by His Word and always looking forward in hope to what His Word has promised. So Advent is a time of waiting. But waiting on God can be difficult. Just ask the disciples on Holy Saturday, when they are sitting in in nervousness and fear, wondering what's God up to and what does he want us to do now after they have seen their Lord crucified? Even longer than that. That was just a day. Even longer than that. Ask ancient Israel when they waited 400 years for God to bring them out of Egypt and into the land that he had promised them, when they waited for God to bring them back from exile 70 years? Or when they waited for God's promised Messiah to be born for so many centur. And in fact, this is why it's so fitting that Christmas comes at the end of Advent, is that in Advent, and in so many of our readings, we listen to the prophets promising the coming of Christ, that first coming. And we, as the catechism of the Catholic Church says, are sort of stepping into the shoes of ancient Israel, their shoes, while they waited for Christ's first coming, and us as we wait for the second coming. But it took a long time for them, and it's been a while for us, too. And Israel, when God was taking longer than they expected or maybe wanted, they were tempted to take things into their own hands by revolt, by setting up their own messiahs, or maybe tempted to despair. And we can have a similar kind of experience if we haven't forgotten God's goodness, if we haven't forgotten his creation of the world as good, and his promise to make everything perfect again, to mend all of the brokenness and cast out all sin forever. If we haven't forgotten that looking out at the world and even the brokenness and the sin in our own hearts can make us ask that same question. How long, O Lord? We might be tempted to despair and give up on God's promise. Maybe we forget that it's something that we should want. And we decide, oh, I'll just put that off to the side. Why would I hope for something like that? It's too good to be true. Or we might be tempted to take things into our own hands and set up our own little kingdoms and utopias by force. But politics, righteous rage, waiting on God, when we're thinking about it, brings us into a situation where we ask questions. What's God up to? Why does it feel like he's taking so long? And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? And there's so many scriptures that address this. So many. And you'll hear so many of them this Advent season in the liturgy. And if you just read through the New Testament, you'll see every single book in the New Testament talks about our waiting and our hope for this. The passage that I want to focus on today is a parable from Jesus in Matthew chapter 13. As I said earlier, it's often called the wheat and the weeds. It comes in Matthew 13, starting in verse 24. And I'd invite you to open up your own Bibles to read along. Of course, I'll read it out. Jesus tells the parable, and then his disciples ask him to explain it. And then he does, starting in verse 36 in Matthew 13. Let's hear the parable. He put another parable before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, an enemy came. And sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds? And he said to them, an enemy has done this. So the servants said to him, then do you want us to go and gather them? But he said, no, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. And at harvest time I will tell the reapers, gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn. Skipping down to verse 36. Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him saying, explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field. He answered, the one who sows the good seed is the Son of man, the field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil One, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age the Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes for sin and all law breakers and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Jesus tells this parable and his parables give us a picture that tells us something about what's going on, about what God is up to and how we should see ourselves in his kingdom, how we should conduct our lives. Now they don't tell us everything. Usually they're a response to a question that somebody has asked, or a question that God, as he inspired the text, knew that people later would ask as well. You can think about the parable of the lost sheep in Luke chapter 15. Jesus says, if you get one sheep out of 100 who goes away, the shepherd will go and find the sheep, and he'll leave the 99 and he'll bring him back, and there'll be rejoicing in heaven over the sheep who's come home, just like a sinner who repents. Now he tells this parable as an answer. Luke says to people who are saying, hey, why is he hanging out with tax collectors and sinners? And that answers exactly what they're saying it answers the problem in their hearts and the questions that they're asking because it tells us that that one lost sheep is so important is a cause for rejoicing, to bring them back into the fold that he'll go out and get them. But of course, in the parable, it's about a shepherd. And a shepherd can only be at one place at one time. So the shepherd's going to go get the lost one, and he leaves the 99 to the wolves. But see, God doesn't have to do that with us. It's not as though God says, well, good, you're baptized. As long as you stay in a state of grace, you can just hang out over here, and I'm going to be off doing other things. I'm not really interested in you. But that's not how that works. The parable doesn't answer that kind of question. It answers the other question. But even when they don't say everything, the parables invite us into a story, to envision ourselves in a story, in a situation, so that we can learn something of what God is up to and about our lives in his kingdom. And in this parable, the questions that are being addressed come right out of the mouths of the servants of the Master. So the first question, didn't you sow good seed? Jesus says, the kingdom of the heaven is like this. Where a man owned a field and he sowed good seed in it. He planted wheat, and it was good. But while his people were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed weeds, weeds that look just like wheat until you can see them bud and flower. And then they noticed that the weeds were there, too. And the first question that the servants ask is, master, didn't you sow good seed? Why are there weeds? God, didn't you make the world good? Why all the evil? Jesus explains the parable and says that the field is the world and the good seed are God's holy people, the sons of God's kingdom. They're the meek, the peacemakers, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who follow the Lord and the bad seed. He says, the weeds, right? These are those who follow Satan, those who follow the enemy and hate and oppose the goodness and the love of God. The Lord made the world good. He created the world without a blot of iniquity, without a stain of sin, and without any wickedness or evil or hatred. We know that and we believe that. But when you watch the news or when you do your examination of conscience at the end of the day, and you take stock of yourself, we can look around and see a lot of evil, a lot of brokenness. And if you believe that God made the world good and you believe that God is all powerful, you start to ask the question, why? Where did it come from? What's it doing here? Why won't it go away? In Jesus day, some people saw evil in the world and decided God must have just sort of made it that way on purpose. It made some people good, made some people bad. Other people said, well, he made some people good, some people bad, but the bad are just there to test the good. So that is to say, like God made some people bad, God made some people good. But even the good he didn't make good enough to stay good because they might go bad. And so they're just being tested and tempted all the time so that God could kind of see how they do. Other people just decided, maybe God doesn't care that much about evil and good. I mean, if he's letting it be around. And I feel like that's our solution today. A lot of times, a lot of people try to solve the problem of evil by making evil not a problem. And Jesus parable first calls us to remember that no matter what it looks like, God is absolutely in control and absolutely good and is not the cause of evil if he lets it be in his world. He didn't design it. It's not his idea. He didn't introduce it. Did you sow this evil seed, Master? The parable says, no. An enemy has done this. Not a buddy of mine who is kind of my co architect, an enemy. It's a problem. And God sees it as a problem. Fallen angels, with Satan as their leader, introduced sin and evil into the world with temptation. And they still pull at our hearts to stir up sin every day. And if we know our hearts well, we know that they've got a lot to work with. And when we look out at all of this, we might ask the same question that the servants do. But the answer to the first main question from the parable is that when we see evil and we feel tempted to despair, we have to remind ourselves of the truth that God is good and is not the cause of evil if he lets it be in the world. He didn't design it. It's not his idea. He doesn't put it there. We have to cling to that first, that conviction of God's goodness. But that brings up the second question from the parable. What are we going to do about it if this isn't God's intention with all the evil. Well, what should we do? What should God do? I think for a lot of people the answer is, well, God has to come and fix it right now if he's going to be good. I don't want to see any more of this stuff. I don't want to feel this way anymore. And a lot of times, of course, we're focusing on the big ones and those other people. If God would just fix that, if God would just take those people out of here, good riddance, then that would be over. I had a conversation, it was really like six weeks worth of conversations with a college student once who was really struggling with all this. He'd been really into the news. He'd been reading history and everything like that. And he said, listen, I believe in God, but I'm not going to anymore if I see one more evil dictator come up. Wasn't really bothered by like child abuse and other things like that, but the kind of the big ones, right? One more evil dictator. That's one I just won't believe anymore. Come on. This is the same kind of impulse that the servants have in the parable. They say, master, did you sow the weeds, the bad seed in here? The master says, no, an enemy did it. And they immediately say, well, then should we go pluck them up? Don't we want the evil? If it's not what you want, then we'll just take them out. Let's go. Sin to sin and wanting the world pure from sin and my own heart pure from sin. This is a good hope. This is something God wants. This is something God is going to do and bring about. But he's not going to do it before the judgment day. Hear what the master says to his servants when they ask him, should we go just pluck out all of the evil things, all of the weeds? He says, no, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Good and evil are too closely intertwined in human beings. And when we look with kind of shortsightedness, right, and we say, okay, just at least get rid of the dictators. Just at least get rid of this, get rid of this thing over here. Just fix that and then I'll be comfortable with the world and I won't kind of whine to you anymore, God, or say, how long. The master knows more fully than we do. He's not short sighted. He knows that to actually uproot all evil out of the world for the way that he created it, you have to remake the Whole field. It's not just a matter of a little plucking out, weeding operation. It's all too closely entwined together. And remember, here we're talking about people, right? What does he say the weeds are? He says the sons, right? The followers of Satan, the evil one. It's people. It's human beings that he created with an immortal soul. We're not just talking about evil ideas that we wish weren't there. We're talking about human beings that God made. And if I can put it this way, when we hear the Master's answer, God is more interested in seeing good flourish than he is irritated by evil. He says, don't pluck out the evil ones because you might also pluck up the good ones. Let both of them grow until the harvest. He wants the good to grow, and he will allow the evil to grow too, so that he can see the good. Now, again, that doesn't mean that God has sort of like gotten over the whole sin thing, the whole good and evil thing. Doesn't mean he's not still keeping track. Jesus says there will be a judgment day at the day of harvest when time is up, it's fulfilled, and God's holy angels will gather up the tares, the weeds, and cast them into the furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And God's people, who've been showered with his mercy and grace and have followed him in charity and hungering and thirsting for righteousness, followed him in peace and mercy, will be purified and shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. The world will be set right and there will be a reckoning. But this parable addresses us in the meantime to tell us that what God wants to see is growth in the good. This is why God didn't send his angels just to wipe everyone out. This is why God isn't coming back with another flood. And he promised that he wouldn't. Even when he sent the flood to purify the world, there was still sin in the hearts of Noah and his family. Instead, instead of sending fire, he sent his son into a world filled with sin. He came to give Himself, to show us the perfect way of love, to show us God's own heart and to redeem us. He won for us forgiveness, new life from the dead. And that's something that we can see in our own lives. And it's something that we need to remember when we read this parable. Remember, they don't tell us everything in the parable. We're just Dealing with the situation as we look out and we think, how long, O Lord, there's good and there's bad. The way the parable does this is by giving us two different species of plant, weeds and wheat. Now, I don't know a whole lot about gardening, but to my understanding, you can't sprinkle something particular on a bunch of weeds to make it turn into wheat, and you can't do anything to the wheat to make it turn into a weed. But we know in Christ that the sons of the kingdom can in fact be tempted to fall away. And we know in Christ and in our own lives that the redeeming love of God can transform weeds into wheat. We know the work of God and His love in this time in between, in this waiting time, to bring the good to flourish and to convert what is bad, to convert hearts that are turned away from God so that they turn toward him and to love for their neighbors. When we read this parable, we can see ourselves in the servants, in the way that they ask their questions. And we can hear the answers given. Master, you made the world good. Why is there the evil? And he responds, I didn't do that. And we say, well, can we just get rid of it all now? And he says, no. But then in his last command, we can also hear ourselves, not just as the servants, but as the grain, as the wheat. Let both grow until the harvest grow. That's our message that addresses us here in this Advent time, to tell us to grow in love, in repentance. If you think that in the field of God's world you are a stalk of wheat, then grow and bear fruit. And if you think that you're a weed, that you're fallen away from grace, that you're not there, that you're unloved, his call isn't stay a weed because weeds can't change. His call is to let his word and his love and his promises into your heart, to turn you toward him, to become a follower of the Lord Jesus, one of the sons of the kingdom who live in hope of his return. Our job, when we see the mess out there, isn't to call down fire from heaven on those sinners or to decide which groups of people we wish just didn't exist anymore, which stalks we just wish we could sort of pull up and they wouldn't be around. Our job is to grow and let the fruit of goodness shine out within this world. Speak out against evil. When you see it with the prophetic and merciful voice of Jesus. When you see evil attack a friend, come to their side and comfort them with Christian charity. Use your prayers not to call down destruction on evil, but to call on God to send and grow goodness in that place where you've seen evil thrive. Be an example of hope and repentant, humble love for all the people who are around you, toward your children, who are under you, toward your bosses, your priests, or if you're a priest or religious, to your superiors above you in your communities, in your homes. Let the good grow. Because by God's grace and mercy, the fallen world is still full of good and it's capable of more. And God calls us to grow in good for ourselves. In part, that means repentance and toward others that means encouragement and evangelization so that both in our own lives and in the lives of those that we have an influence on, we can be part of the growth of the kingdom so that there's more good for God to gather into the barn at the end, more members of the bride of Christ for Christ to bring to that eternal wedding banquet. St. Peter says it this way in chapter three of two Peter in the New Testament. He says, the Lord's not slow if you thought he was to fulfill his promise to come back. He's being patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance, repentance, growth. St. Paul says it this way in Galatians 6. Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Advent is a time to renew our expectation for Christ's return, to remember and set our minds on the good that is here quietly in the sacraments and in the love of the members of the body of Christ, to remember that it is coming in full on the day when he returns to judge the living and the dead, to raise the dead, and to make all things new. And as we wait, the more we think about this and we think about the perfect promise of God, we might get more sad or frustrated because we might see even more clearly how broken the world is and how broken we are. But what we are called to more than complaint, more than lamentation, more than anything, brothers and sisters, what we're called to is conversion, conversion of our own hearts and evangelization of others. And this is why Advent is a penitential season, to help us grow. It's not just kind of like God's way of saying, well, you know, you're going to get really overfed during Christmas just so that you don't have to buy new belts. You know we'll have a fasting time before Christmas. That's not the idea. The idea is that these practices of penance, of penance, fasting and self control, almsgiving and charity, prayer in hope toward God for what he has promised and for all that he wants to do in the world to make good flourish, those things are part of our waiting. And I encourage you this Advent season to make those a part of your daily and weekly practice of observing adventure. Let us not grow weary in doing good prayer, fasting, almsgiving, in love and being a good example. Let us not grow weary in doing good. And let us rejoice even in the midst of evil and sorrow out there in here. And when it comes to our own homes. Because God is coming to set it right at the end. And the harvest and that great wedding banquet will be eternal joy. May God bless you as you continue to look forward today, every day, and especially this Advent, to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Let's pray. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.