“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Albert Einstein
I have always been good at school. From when I was a young kid in grammar school pretty much all the way through veterinary school. For the most part it all came fairly easy for me. It was my “thing”. Family and friends thought of me as the “smart one”. And coming from a working class family, being good in school was admired to some degree. I knew it was my ticket to success.
The rest of my family…my Father and both my brothers…were not that great in school. My older brother graduated from engineering school and got a great job with Standard Oil, but it was not in him. He eventually moved back to New Jersey and started a roofing business with my younger brother. Roofing was my Father’s business and was also his Father’s business.
So while I knew school was my strength, I still could not help feel somewhat disadvantaged or as if school was my consolation prize. After all, the rest of my family could do amazing things with wood, and aluminum, and working on cars. Me? I could barely drill a hole in a board without hurting myself!! In spite of my strengths, I saw myself as a failure because I could not do the “simple” things my brothers could. Was I stupid or something? And I felt as if, even though schooling was valued in my family, that they saw me as less accomplished since my abilities in creative fields was lacking.
To the person who did not know me well, and maybe just saw me in terms of my limiting traits, they would view me differently than those who know me in my capacity as a veterinarian. They would form a completely different image of the person that I am…an incomplete image.
The website, Brightside.me recently collected stories of people who were wrongly viewed by people in authority and had to struggle in finding themselves. The one story I recall was of a student who was excellent at debating and government classes but was awful in his pottery class. His pottery teacher in that class assumed he had learning limitations and expressed surprise when they saw him working at a retail store as he was working himself through college. The teacher exclaimed “It is so awesome you have a job! Good for you!”
We all judge one another from time to time based on limited information. We feel like we can best determine the worth of a person after noting some aspect of their personality or character. And this occurs at one moment in time. It is like we judge based on a still picture of someone’s life as opposed to being able to see the movie to completion. It would be like determining that Star Wars was a terrible movie because you walked out on the “stupid opening” of the text scrolling endlessly across the screen. You never got to see the Death Star blown up or the coming together of the characters to help save the republic.
And this is what Jesus is telling us, I believe, in today’s Gospel from Matthew. Jesus tells the parable of the master of the farm that has had wheat seed sowed but in the night an enemy has sowed weeds amongst the wheat. Weeds that closely resemble the wheat early on before the wheat matures and is ready to be harvested. His workers ask if they should pull the wheat but the master tells them no since they may pull up the wheat with the weeds. He tells them to wait until the harvest. At that time the reapers will separate the wheat from the weeds. The wheat will be placed in the barns and the weeds will be burned. Notice that the reapers (angels) do the separating and not the slaves (us). The slaves serve to care for the crop but the final reaping (judgement) is handled by the reapers.
In the parable the slaves ask the master, “Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?” The master tells the that an enemy, the devil, did this. God does not make bed stuff. Only good. WE are good. We are wheat. It is the influence of the evil one that seeds weeds into our lives.
God gives us time. What a gift…in the words of Father Mike Schmitz…thanks Liz 🙂 Time for us to mess up, to stray away, to be influenced by the devil and the evils of the world. And time to be healed before the final judgement. And at that time God judges who has lived a life that has glorified him and has served others…and who has not. Even if it is only that last moment before reaping that we have returned to Him. Our job? To make the Gospel, the GOOD NEWS, known to those we encounter in this life. We are the slaves caring for the crop.
But we are also the wheat AND the weeds. We all have a bit of each in us. Our lives are spent trying to get the wheat to grow and the weeds to be removed. To be purified before the final harvest. The only real time that an opinion about who we are really matters. We have to just remember that the movie of our lives may be a double feature or may merely be a short story. Will we prepared for the review by the ultimate Critic?
