Posts Tagged ‘evil’

‘There’s a crack where the light gets in’ – the beheading of John the Baptist

July 13, 2024

Pentecost 8 – 2024

Mark 6:14-29

Marian Free

In the name of God whose light shines in the darkness and whose strength holds us in the midst of our pain. Amen.

I confess that I am a great fan of Leonard Cohen and while I can’t claim to fully understand the lyrics of his songs, I think I get the gist of what he is saying. By and large he presents a bleak view of the world and the people in it. For example, in what I believe was the last song he wrote before he died, ‘You want it Darker’, Cohen wrote: 

‘If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame.’

Later he repeats a line: ‘A million candles burning
For the help that never came’, replacing the word help with love the second time around. ‘A million candles burning for the love that never came.’ (https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=you+want+it+darker+lyrics&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)

Cohen’s lyrics could be a song for our time. We live in a world which appears to be fracturing along many different fault lines. The Russia/Ukraine war has divided nations along much the same lines as the Cold War. Across the globe countries which are proudly refusing to become directly involved in the war are not so reluctant to supply one side or the other with arms and military equipment thereby deepening the rifts between them. The Israel/Gaza conflict is threatening to split once harmonious communities in all corners of the world. Natural disasters are wreaking havoc on a scale not witnessed before and the gap between rich and poor are increasing at an alarming rate.  

These and other events are enough to drive the most hopeful among us to despair – to sing with Cohen that there are a million candles burning for the help that never came. We live in a time when we cannot ignore the very real presence of evil, the impact that human greed and selfishness are having on the planet and the capacity of human beings to inflict horrendous suffering on others.

Cohen is not afraid to name the darkness that hovers over us.

In the same way, the Bible refuses to paper over the ugliness of human existence, to sugar coat the terrors that human beings inflict on each other or to pretend that God can once and for all miraculously sweep away all that is wrong with the world. From the beginning to the end of our scriptures we are confronted with the capacity for evil that resides in each one of us. Cain kills Abel, the Israelites destroy the inhabitants of Canaan, Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah murders anyone who stands between herself and the crown and on it goes. The story of the death of John the Baptist is just one story in a litany of accounts of the frailty and insecurity of human beings. 

There is no way to gloss over or to find good news in the story of the beheading of John the Baptist. Here, Mark, who is known more for his brevity than his attention to detail, does not spare us. In his account the worst of humanity is exposed – Herod’s pride and insecurity, and his need to keep face (honour and power) at whatever cost.  Herodias’ spite at the Baptist’s moral stance and the supposedly innocent pawn – the daughter – who refuses to trust her own judgement but defers to her mother and who not only willingly enters into the unfolding drama but who adds her own particularly gruesome detail in asking that the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter.

In placing the story here, Mark does two things (apart from reporting on the event itself). Firstly, he is making it clear that it is not only demons and evil spirits who cannot bear their wickedness to be exposed by Jesus’ goodness. Evil is not external to but integral to the human condition. Herodias wants John gone because he makes her feel uncomfortable (just as Jesus unsettled the demons). John has pointed out what Herodias already knows – that her divorce and remarriage are against the law – something she does not want to be reminded of.  

Secondly the account of John’s beheading acts as a sort of corrective to any misunderstanding about Jesus – his role and his powers. For the readers of the gospel who have been caught up by the miraculous events of the story – Jesus’ ability to cast out demons, heal the sick and even to calm a storm, Mark, through this story makes it clear that there is no magic wand or miracle cure for the ills of the world. The world and all its wickedness will not suddenly be transformed by the presence of Jesus. There will always be Herod’s – the immoral, the volatile, the power hungry, and the selfish. The evil that resides in the human heart will have to be confronted one person at a time.

That said, the story ends on a hopeful note. Mark tells us that John’s disciples came and took his body and laid it in a tomb. John’s life and ministry have not come to an abrupt halt. Herodias has not won. In the midst of darkness and despair God’s goodness and love has broken-in.

To return to Leonard Cohen. Another of his songs include the line: “There’s a crack in everything that’s where the light gets in.” Rabbi David Sachs tells us that this image comes a story in Jewish mysticism, known as: “The breaking of vessels”. According to the story, when God created the world and filled it with light the world was simply not strong enough to hold that light, so the vessels containing the light broke and everywhere there are broken vessels and within those vessels is divine light.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s3kQSZ_Qxk)

The death of John the Baptist is a stark reminder of humanity’s ability to defy God, and to desecrate goodness, but just as John’s disciples faithfully took and buried his body, so there are in every generation those who, despite the consequences will be the presence of goodness and holiness in the world. Despair, horror and evil will never hold sway because wherever there is an act of courage, of kindness or selflessness, we are reminded that there is a crack in everything and that’s where the light gets in.

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When good is perceived as evil

June 6, 2015

Pentecost 2 -2015

Mark 3:20-35

Marian Free

 In the name of God whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts. Amen.

If you have never read the Gospel of Mark from beginning to end, may I suggest that you take the time to do so. Mark’s account of Jesus is quite short and I think most of us could read it in one or two sittings. This is important, because, it is only by reading the gospel from start to finish that we can gain some idea of the plot development and of the themes that run through the gospel. For example, a prominent theme is Mark’s gospel is that of “conflict”, in particular a conflict regarding who has authority – Jesus or the religious leaders? The question can be narrowed down still further to “who has God’s authority – the authority to represent God before the people?” – Jesus or those who have been given, or who have assumed the authority to interpret scripture and to guard and to pass on the traditions of the faith. When the question is narrowed down still further, we begin to see that the conflict is a contest between good and evil, between the heavenly authorities and earthly authorities, between God and Satan.

The earthly authorities (whether the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the priests or the Herodians) try over and over again to discredit Jesus, to demonstrate that he not only disregards the law and the traditions of the elders, but that he willfully breaks the law and ignores the traditions. The “authorities” are determined to assert their own authority to represent God, and to expose Jesus as a madman, a fraud, a blasphemer or worse, an agent of Satan. Instead of which they themselves are exposed as self-serving, misrepresenting God, misinterpreting scripture, enforcing a tradition that has reached its use-by date and worse, as blasphemers. Despite the best effort of “the authorities”, in every confrontation Jesus is able to turn the tables on his accusers and to reveal them to be guilty of the very things of which they accuse him.

Jesus is accused of breaking the Sabbath, but whereas his actions (of healing) lead to wholeness and life, the action of the authorities on that same day is to plot Jesus’ death. The authorities try to entrap him with questions about divorce and about the resurrection, but Jesus knows the scriptures so well that he is able to point out that they simply do not understand. They accuse Jesus of breaking the law only to have Jesus point out their hypocrisy and their propensity to twist the law to suit themselves. All their attempts to entangle Jesus or to cause him to lose face before the people have the opposite effect. A result of the conflict – which they have instigated – is that the so-called “authorities” are revealed as loveless, legalistic hypocrites.

Nowhere is the battle between good and evil so clear as in today’s gospel. This is the last of the first series of confrontations between Jesus and the authorities. So far Jesus has been accused of blasphemy, of breaking the laws of ritual purity, of failing to observe fast days and of breaking the Sabbath. At the same time the crowds have identified Jesus as “one having authority” and the evil spirits have recognised Jesus as the Holy One of God. The end result is a conspiracy to destroy him.

In today’s gospel, the scene is set when Jesus’ family, made anxious by reports that he is “out of his mind”, come to restrain him. The idea that Jesus himself might be possessed by an evil spirit is taken up by the scribes (who apparently have come all the way from Jerusalem to Galilee to attack him). The scribes accuse Jesus of having Beelzebul (Satan) claiming that only Beelzebul would have the power that Jesus has to cast out demons.

Such a claim is so ridiculous that it is easy for Jesus to demonstrate that it is utterly baseless. No one would possibly try to defeat an opponent by destroying members of their own team. Jesus points out that is only because he has already defeated Satan that he can now so easily dispense with Satan’s minions. Having dealt with the attack on him, Jesus turns the tables on his accusers. He suggests that by identifying him with Satan, the scribes have revealed their true nature and committed the most serious sin of all – that of the sin against the Holy Spirit which is the only sin for which there is no forgiveness. In Jesus, the scribes have seen evil and not good and in so doing they have confused God with Satan. Their attack on Jesus has exposed just how completely they have come to depend on themselves and on earthly authority and how, as a consequence, they have effectively shut God out of their lives. They cannot recognise in Jesus God’s beauty, love, wisdom and compassion. Instead they see in him only evil and threat.

Worse, what is good has become to them so threatening and so disturbing, that they believe that they have to destroy it. The scribes are so intent on preserving their position and their traditions that anything that shakes the status quo is, by their definition, evil. The goodness and life that Jesus represents is to them the source of evil and death.

This then, is the unforgivable sin, to mistake what is good for evil. The scribes have become so blind to goodness that they have closed their hearts to all that is good and true. Believing themselves to be arbiters of good and evil, the scribes simply cannot see that they are in need of forgiveness. They have so effectively locked God out of their hearts and lives that they have put themselves out of reach of God’s loving compassion. It is not so much that God won’t forgive, but that they will not allow God to forgive because instead of seeing in Jesus an example of God’s goodness, they can only see the destruction of everything that they have come to hold dear.

Seeing evil in what is good is not limited to Jesus’ first century opponents. A willingness to rely on human authority and a desire to maintain the status quo has led to acts of oppression and injustice and that have seen the imprisonment and torture of good and prophetic men and women. It is fear of change and distrust of the other that has allowed humanity to turn a blind eye to the abuse of power and the destruction of innocents discrimination against those who are different and rejection of those whom we imagine would threaten our lifestyles.

My our lives be so focused on God that we are not so afraid of change or so determined to hold on to what we have known and believed to be true that we fail to see goodness when it is right in front of us. May our lives be so driven by God’s love and wisdom and compassion that we do not hear the voice of change as the voice of evil when the change is for the greater good.

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Defeating evil, by submitting to evil

April 4, 2015

Easter – 2015

Marian Free

In the name of God who turns darkness into light, despair into hope and tragedy into victory. Amen.

I don’t think that anyone would dispute that we live in a world that is full of inequity, injustice, oppression and cruelty. By accident of birth, most of us have escaped the horrors that abound in nations too many to name. In this country we have a democratically elected government and sufficient wealth that our children do not die of hunger or of preventable disease. Few of us have had to flee our homes because we are terrified by relentless bombing or the approach of an enemy that is known for its cruelty. Our children are not at risk of being killed or kidnapped simply because we choose to educate them. It is very unlikely that we will be sent to prison (or worse, ‘disappeared’) because we challenge government policies or laws or expose corruption or injustice. Our labour laws ensure that the vulnerable cannot be exploited and our poor are not so desperate that they risk life and limb eking out a living from rubbish dumps nor would they sell their daughters into prostitution or their children into slavery.

The awful reality now, as in every previous generation, is that all over the world innocent people suffer and die in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. Impossible as it is for most of us to imagine, an over-riding desire for wealth, status and power drives some people (even groups of people) to exploit, oppress or silence others.

These are not easy issues to contend with. When we think about the unspeakable suffering that is inflicted on some people in order to gratify the needs of others, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation. We can’t even begin to grasp the horror that is the daily existence of millions of people throughout the world and we feel both impotent and ill-equipped to do anything to change things. We are frozen by indecision and do little or nothing.

One of the things that is different about Jesus is that he faced evil head on, he determined that evil would not have the final word, that violence, injustice and oppression could be both confronted and defeated. Jesus refused to play by the rules of his enemies. He understood that it is impossible to defeat evil with evil and that violence only leads to violence. By refusing to resist arrest, by accepting the false accusations, by submitting to the taunting, by enduring the flogging and by accepting the cross, Jesus proved that in the final analysis, violence and evil are powerless to destroy goodness and life. For good triumphs over evil not through violence or war, not through oppression or force, not by resistance or compulsion.

Jesus defeats evil by submitting to the power of evil. By freely accepting his fate, Jesus made it clear that the powers of this world in fact had no power over him. By choosing to relinquish his right to defend himself, Jesus demonstrated how ineffectual his opponents really were. By refusing to fight for his life, Jesus made it clear that those who sought his death had not power over him. Throughout his trial and even on the cross, Jesus remains in control – his enemies might take his life, but they cannot destroy him.

The resurrection is proof positive that by submitting to death, Jesus has frustrated the powers of this world and shown how impotent they are. Injustice and cruelty do not have the final word, their victory is limited, temporary. Jesus refused to be bound by worldly values that give success, influence and possessions priority. He was prepared to lose everything, even life itself rather than lose his integrity and play the game the way his enemies played.

It is all too obvious, that Jesus’ victory over evil and death was not the final solution. As we have seen for millions of innocent people the world continues to be a place of horror and suffering. That said the resurrection is a powerful demonstration that while evil might persist in the world, it does not ultimately have the power to enslave us.

We have a choice. We can choose to resist evil. We can make the decision not to be governed by the forces that control this world. We can resolve to live by kingdom values – seeking above all the well-being of others and our own self-aggrandisement. We can play by different rules and in so doing expose the failings and the evils of the rules that govern behaviours that result in exploitation, injustice and oppression. We can cling on to power, possessions and status, or we can give it all away for the ultimate goal of life for all in the present, and life eternal in the future. Jesus’ victory is our victory, if only we chose to share it.

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“Get over it” It’s not that complicated

October 18, 2014

Pentecost 19
Matthew 22:15-33
Marian Free

In the name of God, in whom and of whom are all things. Amen.

Sometime ago, I was part of a Parish that took life and faith very seriously. I could tell a number of stories, but three in particular come to mind. One concerns a woman who was a member of a group that had convinced her that the Star of David was a source of evil. The poor woman was distraught not because she had such a star in her home, but because she was afraid that she might have one of which she was unaware. Her plan – until we had spoken at some length – was to go home and turn her house upside down until she was sure that it was safe. To this day I’m not sure what sort of theology promotes the idea that inanimate objects are evil and it frightens me that there is someone out there sowing seeds of fear in the name of Jesus who casts out fear.

Another story relates to an elderly couple. One of their pleasures in life was to create beautiful teddy bears. They poured everything they had into making these bears using exquisite and expensive materials. The bears were of such a high standard that they won prizes at a number of shows and cost more than I could afford to pay. One Sunday morning this pair stopped me after church. On the previous day they had attended a seminar and had been led to believe that they should give up their hobby because it was not holy or religious enough. Needless to say they were very distressed – not only because they might have to give up something that they loved, but also at the thought that for so long they had been doing something contrary to the will of God. Again, I was surprised that anyone could imagine that making teddy bears was in some way offensive to God. After some discussion, I managed to persuade the couple that in making such beautiful toys they were sharing with God in the work of creation and in case that was not convincing enough, I added that every time they completed a teddy that they should say a prayer for the person who would one day own it.

Perhaps the most shocking story of that part of my life was the day I entered the church to see a flyer headed: “Ten reasons why Santa should be shot”. Now I realise that most of us are distressed by the commercialisation of Christmas and that we might wish that Jesus received more credit and more attention than Santa Claus, but to promote that sort of violence in Jesus’ name was to my mind an extreme and unnecessary reaction.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” The stories I have told suggest to me that the those who see evil in inanimate objects, who believe that only some activities are worthy of being called holy, or those who encourage violence have not only misinterpreted this passage, but have seriously misunderstood the gospel and the relationship between the holy and the mundane.

In order to understand the debate in today’s gospel, we need to understand the background. As we have seen, in these chapters of Matthew various church leaders engage Jesus in debate. Their intention is to expose him to ridicule and to re-establish their authority in the eyes of the people. In this instance it is the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians who try to trip Jesus up. (The Pharisees representing the religious establishment and the Herodians representing the Romans.) “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor or not?” There were many taxes in first century Palestine, but tax in question is one that Rome imposed on its subject peoples in order to support the occupation. That is the Romans expected those whom they had subjugated to pay a tax to support their presence. Needless to say, there was a great deal of resentment in relation to this tax – not least among the crowds – the followers of Jesus. The tax was a constant reminder of their status as a conquered people.

A special coin was used to pay this tax, a denarius or the Tribute penny. Like all Roman coins it had a picture of the Emperor on one side with the inscription Son of God. For the religious leaders paying the tax implied that they acknowledged Caesar as God and this was an affront to their piety.

No wonder the questioners thought that they had Jesus backed into a corner. If he said not to pay the tax, he would have the crowds and the Pharisees on his side, but would be risking his safety by committing treason against the Romans. On the other hand, if he said that the tax should be paid, the crowds might well have turned against him. It appears to be a no win situation. However, Jesus sees through the question and sidesteps the issue. “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.”

Jesus’ response suggests that paying or not paying the tax is a trivial detail in the scheme of things. Ultimately all things are God’s – that includes the Emperor and the Emperor’s coin. The distinction between worldly and other-worldly is a false distinction. What is important is our attitude to the things of the world and the value that we give them. Essentially, the question about the taxes is a distraction. The more important question is the question about being true to God in a hostile and difficult environment.

Non-Christian symbols, teddy-bears, a secularised Santa – all of these things are irrelevant diversions. Worrying about such things takes our focus off God. We become so absorbed in fretting over whether or not something is holy or not, that we lose sight of the bigger picture – our relationship with God. Essentially Jesus is saying to his sparring partners and therefore to us: “Get over it. Concentrate on the things that really matter. Real evil is much more subtle than taxes, teddy bears or Santa. Believe that everything is God’s, place yourself and your life in God’s hands and let the rest look after itself.”

It is just not that complicated. If we put God first in our lives everything else will fall into place.

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The seeds of evil

July 19, 2014

Pentecost 6b. 2014

Matthew 13:24-30 (31-33) 34-43 (see below)

Marian Free

(It is always difficult for a blog to represent just what is actually said, and the tone with which it is said. I was unhappy with what I wrote last night and so spoke from the heart. The update – what is immediately below – represents as best I can remember, the verbal edition.)

In the name of God who sends rain on the just and the unjust. Amen.

 

(Sung before the reading of the Gospel:

God is love, and gently enfolding

all the world in one embrace,

with unfailing grasp is holding

every child of every race.

And when human hearts are breaking

under sorrow’s iron rod,

then they find that selfsame aching

deep within the heart of God.

Timothy Rees 1874-1939)

 No doubt you, like me and countless others, woke up on Friday to the news that flight MH 17 had been shot out of the sky over Ukraine – presumably by pro-Russian separatists. No doubt you too have spent the time since in a state of bewilderment and incomprehension. How could such a thing happen? How could anyone wantonly take the lives of nearly three hundred civilians who have nothing to do with your cause? How could a civil war so far away and in which we have no stake come all the way to our shores? The impact of the loss of life is more powerfully felt because twenty-eight of those on the flight are our fellow citizens, friends of our friends, people whom we might have known. We are not at war and yet we, and many others who are equally removed from the situation, have been affected by an act of war.

The how and why of these questions belong with a broader group of questions – how could the Rwandans, the Serbs and others slaughter vast numbers of their fellow citizens – former neighbours and friends? How can would-be lovers throw acid in the faces of the women who reject them? How can men gang rape a woman to the point of death or rape teenagers to settle a score with their family or tribe? How can men and women commit acts of torture, degrade other human beings? How can anyone force children to become soldiers? How can a person traffic others into slavery or into the sex trade? How can people stroll through a shopping mall indiscriminately shooting anyone they see? How can such evil and ugliness persist in a “civilized” world?

How? How? How?

On a day like today when there are so many questions, we have to ask ourselves what does the gospel have to say in such a situation. In particular what does today’s gospel have to say?

At first glance today’s gospel makes it easy – the devil did it. This response is problematic for two reasons. The first is this, that Matthew or someone telling the story before Matthew has radically changed the original parable as told by Jesus. In Mark, chapter 4, we find the same parables that Matthew has grouped together in chapter 13. Mark’s version however, is that of a sower who sows seed and goes to sleep and wakes and goes to sleep while the seed grows. (The sower does not know how it grows.) The writer of Matthew has added an enemy, weeds and reapers. Not only do these appear to be additions to an original, but they don’t really make sense. What enemy would go to the trouble of sowing? It would be much easier to wait until the wheat was ripe (and dry) and set fire to it. Furthermore, who would make a large collection of weed seeds (which might affect their own crop)? Finally, darnel (the weed) carries a fungus that is hazardous to the wheat. Leaving the weed to grow until the harvest is not really an option.

It appears that the original parable was adapted to answer the same question that we might well be asking at this time: What has happened to the kingdom of God that Jesus promised? Why does the world look so different from that which we might have expected as a result of Jesus’ preaching? By the time Matthew is putting pen to paper, Jerusalem has been destroyed, the Temple razed to the ground and the community for whom Matthew is writing has been forced to leave their homes. This is not what they expected. The parable is recast to enable them to make sense of the current situation.

That said, there is another reason that taking the parable at face value is problematic – for to do so would absolve us of our complicity in the affairs of the world. It would be to make the assumption that some among us were good, in contrast to the others who are not.

I can’t answer for you, but I know for sure that I am a long way from perfect and while I do not wish to share my flaws with you, I can assure you that they are many and that I am as yet only a poor reflection of the child of God I was created to be. Until I, until you, are perfect and perfectly fitted for the kingdom, the world will remain violent, unjust and cruel.

And this is where the parable as told by Matthew shines a light on our current situation. Good and evil exist side by side in the world and in each one of us and, failing a miracle, will co-exist until the end of time. It is this our brokenness that excludes us from passing judgement. Only God, who is without flaw, can truly distinguish good from evil, and as a result, only God is in a position to judge.

In the meantime, it is essential that we who are concerned with the kingdom do all that we can to ensure its presence in the world – by allowing God’s love to expose the presence of evil in our own lives, by making Jesus’ life the model for our own and by giving the Spirit free reign to produce in us the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

It is only when we are not part of the problem that we can be part of the solution. It is only when we allow God full reign in our lives that we can begin to alleviate the sorrow that is “deep within the heart of God”.

 

Matt. 13:24   He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; 25 but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. 27 And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?’ 28 He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. 30 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.’”

Pentecost 6. 2014

Matthew 13:24-30 (31-33) 34-43

Marian Free

In the name of God who sends rain on the just and the unjust. Amen.

No doubt you, like me and countless others, woke up on Friday to the news that flight MH 17 had been shot out of the sky over Ukraine – presumably by pro-Russian separatists. No doubt you too have spent the time since in a state of bewilderment and incomprehension. How could such a thing happen? How could anyone wantonly take the lives of nearly three hundred civilians who have nothing to do with your cause? How could a civil war so far away and in which we have no stake come all the way to our shores? The impact of the loss of life is more powerfully felt because twenty-eight of those on the flight are our fellow citizens, friends of our friends, people whom we might have known. We are not at war and yet we, and many others who are equally removed from the situation, have been affected by an act of war.

The how and why of these questions belong with a broader group of questions – how could the Rwandans, the Serbs and others slaughter vast numbers of their fellow citizens – former neighbours and friends? How can would-be lovers throw acid in the faces of the women who reject them? How can men gang rape a woman to the point of death or rape teenagers to settle a score with their family or tribe? How can men and women commit acts of torture, degrade other human beings? How can anyone force children to become soldiers? How can a person traffic others into slavery or into the sex trade? How can people stroll through a shopping mall indiscriminately shooting anyone they see? How can such evil and ugliness persist in a “civilized” world?

How? How? How?

Evil permeates the world in which we live. This, it seems, is the problem that confronts the community for whom Matthew writes. They know that Jesus announced the coming of the kingdom of God and yet the world of Matthew’s community does not resemble the kingdom any more now than it did before Jesus’ came. In fact the situation could be said to be worse. Jerusalem and the Temple have been destroyed and the Matthean community has been forced from their homes. Why, they might be asking, have things not turned out as they expected? Why has the kingdom not come to fruition?

At the time that Matthew is writing, some fifty years have passed since the death of Jesus. In that time Jesus’ teaching has been passed on and sometimes adapted to meet changing circumstances. This process may be reflected in the parable included in today’s gospel, that of the wheat and the tares. We can make this assumption because a similar parable occurs in Mark. The Markan version makes more sense in the context of the parable of the sower and the parable of the mustard seed with which it is told. Mark’s parable is simple, while the farmer sleeps, the seed grows though he does not know how, the farmer wakes and sleeps and the seed grows until it is ready for harvest (Mark 4:26-29).

Matthew or someone else has retold the parable in the light of their experience of the world and added new elements so that it makes sense of their situation. That this has happened, becomes clear when we realise that many of the aspects of the story do not really make sense. What enemy would think to sow weeds and at night? Even if he did think that this was a good idea, it is very unlikely that anyone would have sufficient seeds of the weed to hand? In any case, apart from the obvious inconvenience at harvest time, the weeds in the story have made little or no difference to the final crop. (In reality, darnel contains a fungus that in turn damages the wheat. It would be worse to leave the weed than to pull it out.)

We cannot know for sure in what form Jesus told the parable or whether both versions come from him. It does seem clear though that the author of Matthew uses the parable in a way that reflects the experience of his community – that, even though the Kingdom of God has been sown, evil continues to be real and effective in the world.

Nothing has changed. There is still little evidence that the Kingdom of God has come. Terror and violence persist to a greater or lesser extent in all parts of the world, and this despite the best efforts of local and international law-makers. Increased communication and better understanding of different cultures and faiths has made little difference to peace, harmony and goodwill. People continue to commit atrocities and inflict cruelty on others. Innocent men, women and children continue to be caught up in disputes that don’t directly concern them. Locally and internationally violence against individuals continues.

It would be easy, like the author of Matthew, to place the blame elsewhere, but one thing that the parable tells us is that the good and bad exist side by side and will do until God’s kingdom is firmly established. Humankind is capable of the greatest good and the basest evil. We have no need of an external power to sow the seeds of discontent, anger, hatred, greed, envy or fear. To a greater or lesser extent, all of those characteristics exist side by side with love, compassion and contentment in each one of us. In the final analysis, only God can distinguish evil from good, and only God can root out evil from the world.

Our task in this lifetime is to do our best to be part of the kingdom now – by allowing God’s love to expose the presence of evil in our own lives, by making Jesus’ life the model for our own and by giving the Spirit free reign to produce in us the fruits of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When, in our own lives God is all in all, we will have played our part in the coming of the kingdom.

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