PROPER 11-A,  -- July 17, 2005

Mickey Spillane, the writer of the Mike Hammer series and other somewhat trashy detective and mystery stories, says that when he himself reads a mystery story, he always reads the last chapter first to discover who did it. Then he starts at the beginning, knowing who the real bad guys are, and watches how the plot unfolds. He can then focus on the details that really are important in solving the mystery and not the other sidebars that can sidetrack a good detective.

Some would believe that that is a horrible way to read mystery stories. Most, if not all the fun, in reading Agatha Christie, for instance, over even Mickey Spillane, is to see if we can solve the mystery as quickly and as easily as Hercule Poiroit or Miss Marple or the great Mike Hammer. Wouldn't it be fascinating if we could live our lives the way Mickey Spillane reads mystery novels? What if, right now, we knew how the story of our life is to end? What if we knew the final details? Would that make our life right now easier?

Perhaps, but we cannot live our lives that way even if we wanted to. We have to take each day as it comes, take each event in our lives, focusing on that event, not knowing what will happen next. It can be nerve-wracking. It is certainly often difficult. But we have no other choice. We don't know the rest of the story of our lives because that story has not yet been written because it has not yet been lived.

Real life, in many ways, is like a mystery story. Since we don't know the ending, we have to focus on the details because each detail might be very important as to the end result. Part of the problem, like in a mystery story, is that we don't always know who the bad guys are. The other part of the problem comes when we give the details too much attention, or when we give certain details in our lives more attention than they deserve. I think that is part of what Jesus is saying in today's Gospel parable.

My theological mentor, Robert Capon, says that the parable of the weeds is really a mystery story. A farmer plants good wheat, good grain. He goes to bed and while he is asleep, weeds are sown among the wheat. "Who did the dastardly deed?" his servants want to know. "An enemy", say the master. "What enemy?" they want to know. "I don't know," Jesus says. "And besides, it doesn't matter." "Well, what do we do next?" ask the servants. "Nothing", says the master.

"Now, wait a minute," say the servants, say the disciples and say you and I. So we say to Jesus, "Remember last Sunday in the parable about another sower, didn't you say that some of the seeds fell among the weeds and were choked to death? Well, why not get rid of the weeds right now and save the wheat?" And Jesus says, "Look, don't worry about it. This is a mystery story, remember. But I'll tell you what I'm going to do for you. If it will make you happy, I'll tell you the ending of the story right now. The wheat will survive in spite of the weeds - if you leave the weeds alone. But only if you leave the weeds alone."

We stand there for a moment and think to ourselves. The weeds obviously symbolize evil, the evil in this world. Jesus wants us to just leave it alone, leave evil to itself, do nothing? That just does not make sense. So we ask for a clarification. "Are you saying, Jesus," we say to Jesus, "that our response to the weeds, our response to the evil in this world, which the weeds obviously symbolize, our response is to do nothing?" "Yes," says Jesus. "That is precisely what I am saying.  For the time being, the preferred response to evil is to do nothing."

But that is to get slightly ahead of the story. That can happen, of course, if we start from the back. So note what it is that Jesus says the enemy sows among the wheat: weeds, specifically darnel. Darnel is an annual grass that, with its long, slender bristles, looks very much like wheat. What is Jesus' point here? It seems to me that what Jesus is saying is that any program designed simply to get rid of evil is doomed to failure. Why? For three reasons. First, it is sometimes difficult enough to recognize the real difference between good and evil, between weeds and wheat. Second, and what is worse, is that in our frantic pulling out of the weeds we tear up the wheat along with the wheat.

Even worse yet, since good and evil in this world commonly inhabit not only the same field but even the same individual human beings - since there are no unqualified good guys any more than there are any unqualified bad guys - the only result of a truly dedicated campaign to get rid of evil will be the abolition of literally everybody.

I think that that puts the finger on the whole purpose of the enemy's sowing the seeds, on evil itself. Evil has no power against goodness in and of itself. Evil, like darnel, is a counterfeit of reality, not reality itself. Evil looks like good. It grows like good. It thrives where good grows. But it isn't good. It is a parasite on good, not good itself.

But as Jesus develops his point in the parable, the enemy -- whom Jesus makes the personification of evil -- the enemy turns out not to need anything more than negative power. He has to act only minimally on his own to wreak havoc in the world. Mostly he depends on the forces of goodness to do his work. All he has to do is sucker good people into taking up arms against the confusion he has introduced.

That is precisely why the enemy goes away after sowing the weeds: he has no need whatsoever to hang around. Good people will do his work for him. Good people, if they are sufficiently committed to plausible, strong-armed methods will in the very name of goodness do all and more than all that evil ever had in mind. Good people bomb abortion clinics. They try to overcome what they consider evil with evil. That's not to say that we should not resist evil. What it is to say is that, for the most part, it will be ineffective. Our first response to evil must be to recognize it for what it is: evil. We have to recognize, distinguish, the weeds from the wheat and that is not easy.

The second response is to get on with being wheat in the midst of weeds. We fight abortion not by bombing clinics or calling those who have abortions "murderers." We fight abortion by teaching and living responsible sex. We can spend so much time resisting and fighting the evil around us that we stop growing, stop being good. What is worse, we can do evil in the name of doing good. That is precisely what the devil, what the enemy, wants us to do.

There is evil all around us, most of it masquerading as good, but some not hiding under any disguise at all. The weeds are there. We can see them: drugs, alcohol, irresponsible sex, terrorists, you name it. But the weeds, as Jesus is saying in the parable, will not stop the wheat from growing up, from maturing. What will prevent us from growing into the person we are called to be and become is when we stop spending our time growing and start spending our time fighting the weeds. And sometimes the evil we perpetrate in fighting evil is just as bad as the evil we are fighting.

Again, it is like a mystery story. There are the good guys and the bad guys. The end of this mystery story tells us that the good guys always win. They will overcome the bad guys, the evil. That will only happen, however, if we focus or attention not on the evil around us but rather on the good within us and the good within others. Good always overcomes evil not by fighting against evil but simply by being good.

That sounds so simple that it seems simplistic. Let evil alone. Don't mess with it because, like weeds, it can grab hold and choke you to death. It's like playing with fire. It is playing with fire, real hellfire. Just be good yourself, Jesus says. Teach others to be good. Live out Matthew 25…and all that jazz. That, in and of it itself, will overcome evil. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? But it is true. Don't take my word on it. Take Jesus'. He wrote the book and he knows how the mystery is solved.