Never Tired Of Waiting

Matt 13:24-30

The first thing I do when I arrive at the station is glance up at those screens at the entrance. Is my train scheduled to be on time, for my life depends on it you know?

I make my way up to the platform and immediately check the monitors again, is it still going to be on time or is there a delay, even a few minutes is crucial you see.

 Then I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the man’s voice over the tannoy “I’m sorry to announce that the……”, surely not my train, not late, not cancelled, don’t they realise I can’t afford a delay. Don’t they know my whole timetable’s going to be put out if my train does not run on time.

We tend to think that such impatience is just a consequence of our mad twenty first century living. We’ve all become such important people we can’t wait even for a second.

But in biblical times it was just the same and in our Gospel reading Jesus is speaking to the impatience of his followers.

They had come to believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah. They had made an enormous step of faith and they had given so much by deciding to join him.

. Here he was with all the power of God at his fingertips and seemingly not in a hurry to bring matters to an end.

 Instead of taking the cities by storm, he largely confined his ministry to the countryside. When he performed a miracle of healing, instead of parading it about for evidence, he asked people to keep it quiet. There was surely going to be a dramatic overthrow of the civil and the religious authorities, but Jesus did not share any of his plans for that. They were all for him putting people in their place, giving them their due cumuppance.

Now. Immediately. But  he was all for giving everyone another chance.

That’s what the parable of the weeds is really about, I think.

We tend to see it as a worrying tale about the destructive end that will come the way of those who will not conform to God’s standards.

Yet when read carefully it is a wonderful example God’s enduring mercy. A prime characteristic we often forget about – the Lord is not in a hurry.

“Shall we gather the weeds up now” ask the servants impatiently

“No” says the Lord “Lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them”

 Even though goodness and evil grow together within the same person, there is no sudden intervention with a decisive judgement.  He gives us time.

 For he understands that the weeds have been sown in the wheat not because of our own disobedience or weakness, but because of the infiltration of an enemy, and God’s business is about bringing love to bear on enemies.

The patience of God is not because He is a soft touch – it is because at His heart  is more optimism about the human race than we will ever know – that in us there is more goodness to scoop up than we ever imagined. Too easily we consign bits of ourselves to the destiny of  burning – yet God brings his love to bear with interminable gentle patience – through the cross taking that love to places within our lives from which we imagined it would be spurned.

For he yearns to bring us to that place where the righteous shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.

This is a story then which teaches us about the stature of waiting.

Of living our lives according to God’s timetable, not our own frenetic one.

So that his love matures in us, so that his love changes us, so that not one iota of our God given goodness is lost.

And if we can come to believe that he deals with us with such mercy and grace, this will do two things.

It will challenge the pace at which we tend to live our lives and it will make us look again at those whose sowing, we judge, has been overrun with weeds.

RH  20.7.08