Accepting Life’s Mysteries

Today’s Gospel reading tells a story, a story of seemingly senseless vandalism. There was this farmer who had worked hard, prepared the ground, and planted his field with wheat. When he was done, nothing remained but to wait for the harvest, which would hopefully come in a few months.

Now, farming, as you know, is a risky business. The planting of a crop does not guarantee the gathering of a harvest. Things can, and often do, go wrong. A drought can come, and the plants will die for lack of moisture. Or an excessive amount of rain can fall, and the seed will rot in the ground. Swarms of insects can come and devour the tender vegetation, leaving the field as barren as a desert.

Disasters like these are a part of the natural risk of farming. Those who make their living by tilling the soil expect them, and somehow learn to accept them. They go with the territory. But the farmer, in our text for today, fell victim to another kind of disaster, one that was rooted, not in the quirks of nature, but in the wickedness of a human nature.
No farmer would expect it and learning to accept it would be nigh unto impossible.

The problem found in our text for today did not become known until the growing season was well underway. It was then that the farmer’s servants observed that the field was just saturated with weeds. Our text suggests that the weeds were probably a plant that strongly resembles wheat until it begins to reach maturity.

It was obvious to the farmer what had happened. This was no natural happenstance. It was a deliberate act of vandalism. Shortly after the farmer had planted his crop, someone had come under the cover of darkness, and sown the entire field with weeds.

Weeds that would not destroy the wheat, but would drastically reduce its yield, and would certainly complicate the harvest.
Why would anyone do such a thing! The farmer must have asked himself that question at least a hundred times. For there was nothing to be gained by this act of vandalism.
• The perpetrator had lost sleep (since he or she had come in the night.)
• This person had to work extremely hard to accomplish this mischief.
• Yet it would put no money in their pocket nor food on their table.
• The only thing this person could possibly have derived, from all this careful planning and hard work, was some warped sense of satisfaction in seeing another human being suffer.

This story, which was told by Jesus, vividly illustrates one of life’s most baffling mysteries – the presence of evil in God’s world. Where did it come from? How did it get started? Why is it allowed to continue?

Disappointing though it may be our Christian faith offers no precise answers to any of those questions.

The New Testament does speak of Satan or the devil as the originator of evil. But that does not solve the mystery. And Jesus offers no excuses for God; neither did he offer any explanations of evil. He simply recognized evil as a fact of life.

The universe, in which you and I live, is filled with mystery. We are living through one of the greatest mysteries right now as we journey through this pandemic.

Early in childhood, we ask questions. Some of them are simple and easy to answer. And our parents probably told us that we would understand better when we were older.

In one sense, that is true. Many of our childish questions no longer bother us, at least for those of us who are grown. In the process of growing up, we have found some answers. But we have not diminished the mysteries of life.

The questions that confront us now are only deeper, and more far-reaching, than any child could even imagine. Once we asked: “Why did my toy break, and will you fix it?” Now we ask: “Why is my heart broken, and will anyone, or anything eve ourselves, ever be able to fix it?” Once we asked: “How far is it to Grandma’s house, and when will we get there?” Now we ask: “How far is it to God’s kingdom, and when will we ever get there?”

We may as well get used to unanswered questions. They are going to be with us as long as we live. This is not to suggest, however, that we should accept our ignorance and stop searching for truth. It is simply to acknowledge that life is so deep, so profound, and so complex that we will never understand it all.

But there is something very disturbing about that. Like children in a dark room, we fear the unknown. We like answers. We long for certainty. That is why we are searching so hard for an anti-virus right now. Yet, it seems to me that, if we are going to live in this world, and do it with integrity, we must first come to terms with mystery. It surrounds our limited store of knowledge, like a mighty ocean surrounds a tiny island. And at least for now, the best thing we can do is accept it, as a fact of life, and determine our course of action accordingly.

That, however, is not the end of the story. The farmer instructed his servants to let the weeds and the wheat grow together until the harvest. Then the weeds were to be collected and burned. And the wheat would be gathered into his barn.

That is our Lord’s way of saying that someday the contradictions of life will be sorted out and separated. But, for now, we are to live with this strange mixture of evil and good, falsehood and truth, ugliness, and beauty.

But a day is coming when God will set the records straight, and we will be able to see things as they really are. As St. Paul wrote in his famous and favorite chapter on love: “My knowledge is imperfect now; but then I shall know even as I am known.” (I Cor. 13:12).

In the meantime, we are to accept this as a fact of life. We will face countless questions, to which the only available answer will be, “I don’t know.”

But in the amidst of all this mystery, there is at least one thing we do know, and it is this: We already have enough truth to live by. It is not all that we want. It is not all that we will ever have, even in this life. For, we are learning new things all the time. Just as they are learning new things about the virus everyday.

But we do have enough truth right now to live decently with ourselves, kindly with our neighbors, and rightly with our God.

We already have in our hands the basic building blocks of good character and a decent social order; and, our thoughts for this morning will not be complete until we accept that reality.

So, what is it that our faith does for us?
Does it clear up the mysteries?
No, to the contrary, at the heart of our faith is the greatest mystery of all – the crucifixion of Christ.

Is it not strange to you that a man dying on a cross has done more, than anything else in history, to convince the world that God is love? I cannot explain it, but I know that it is true. That is why we Christians are glad that the focus of our faith is a person, and not a creed. Creeds change: even ours do. But that strange man, who faced all the mysteries that we face, yet lived and died triumphantly, he stays the same. In hours of our confusion, we can look to him, and find all the truth that we need to guide our lives; and the strength to follow that truth.

Amen.