Kirkepiscatoid

Last Sunday's Gospel had a lot of "disconnects" in it.

This is one time when the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible lets me down and the KJV seems to underscore things better. It doesn't happen often, but this is one of those times. The NRSV in the Matthew 13 parable, talks of wheat mixing with "weeds" sewn by an enemy. This is the story that in the KJV, the weeds are called "tares."

Now never mind that as a kid, "tares" never made sense to me. I thought "tare" was what you did to a scale to set it to zero. But "weed" is so nondescript and "tare" is very precise...I'm kind of surprised the NRSV backed down to "weeds." "Weeds" could be chicory, sunflowers, whatever. "Tares" refers to a particular plant that has been called "false wheat" that strongly resembles wheat. That makes more sense to me when you think about the parable.

Ok, but let’s play with the word here...what’s a tare? The greek word is “zizania”, thought to be a plant called the darnel, a type of cockle. Here is what Wikipedia says about this plant...

“It usually grows in the same production zones as wheat and is considered a weed. The similarity between these two plants is so extensive that in some regions cockle is referred to as "false wheat." It bears a close resemblance to wheat until the ear appears. The ears on the real wheat are so heavy that it makes the entire plant droop downward, but the "false wheat", which ears are light, stands straight.” I found another reference that said that tares have black seeds which also can help distinguish them from wheat...but more near the end of the growing season, when you could send people in to "harvest" the tares first before the wheat.

It was interesting to think about this at the time I was hearing Wallace's sermon yesterday. He was talking about how the "wheat" and the "weeds" in our lives become very admixed and intertwined. We have had several conversations in the past about how our best features and our worst faults often come from the same roots. Well, like the wheat and the tares, you can’t tell what’s “good” and what’s “bad” until it grows to a certain place in the growing season. Even then it may not be apparent from a distance. Maybe you have to be up close to really see it.

Well, and really, what’s the difference between the wheat seeds and the tare seeds? One’s nourishing; one isn’t. The "holiness" of us is nourishing, the "humanness" of us..ehhhh...sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Do we radically change our tune about our bad behaviors in an abrupt 180? No, we sort of deal with them over time. But they, like our good points, are “us” and as much “us” as our good stuff. We have to accept these two sides of us intermingle. It’s what I have come to appreciate in the Hebrew concept of the Yetzer ha-tov (the good inclination in us) and the yetzer ha-ra (the evil inclination in us.) That’s what the weeds and the wheat mixed together represent to me. This would have been a concept easily understood by Jesus, being reared a good Jewish boy and all. It would make sense that he would see "wheat" and "false wheat" and going together in a story.

Now, in Wallace's sermon yesterday, he mentioned more disconnects. Earlier in the chapter, Jesus calls the parable, "The parable of the sower." Later, the disciples ask to explain "the parable of the weeds in the field." Oops, there's a disconnect. Then Matthew himself might well have a disconnect. Matthew has Jesus quoted as to what the parable means, but when you read the parable, is that exactly what you get when you try to take home a message? Is this really a parable about "retribution"? Or is it one more of "tolerance" of our human flaws?

Think about this. The tares/weeds coexist until harvest time. Is "harvest" a retribution, a consignment to Hell for all of our human nature? Or is this "burning" at harvest a purification?

This is what I think the “burning” is all about. I think it’s hard to see our "wheat" sometimes b/c of our "tares". But at “harvest time” (when we die) all that “flawed human stuff”..."the tares"...will be collected and burned off, and leave exposed the brightness and holiness of “our wheat.” We will FINALLY SEE WHO WE ARE AND WHO WE WERE MEANT TO BE! It’s not “burn like burn in Hell,” It’s burn like “purify, burn off the bad stuff to show the good.” No more human flaws, just our holy selves! What a concept!

It's just too easy to peg this parable as "retributive"when perhaps the deeper meaning is we can undergo purification and revelation...at least I'd like to think that!