The central parable in the Gospel this Sunday
yields at least three points for us to ponder. Firstly, God's infinite
compassion. Secondly, the call to repentance and continual conversion. Thirdly,
the reality of judgement and hell.
Firstly, an experience similar to the Parable
of the Wheat and the Weeds is that of planting rice. In a farming community, at
least from where I came, to plant rice, one would need a nursery. It is a bed
of soft and watery mud where seeds are sown. Now, if you are unhappy with your
neighbour, all you need to do is walk past his nursery patch and sprinkle a
handful of black glutinous rice (pulut hitam). There is no difference in how
the shoots look like once they germinate. The unsuspecting farmer will gather
the seedlings once they are of a certain height and then transplant them into
the regular fields. Only when the rice starts to crop will one realise the
sabotage because of the appearance of the distinctive black grains of glutinous
rice. The entire crop is somewhat spoilt and good only for home consumption as
spotted milled rice is not saleable in the market. That is where the similarity
with the Parable ends because the aim is not to highlight the tainted harvest
but rather to give prominence to the infinite patience of God in His dealings
with us.
Most, if not all of us are both wheat and
weed. God is definitely more patient with us than we are sometimes with
ourselves. In the context of God's forbearance, the comfortable or
uncomfortable co-existence of both good and bad in us leads us to the second
point which is the challenge to repentance and conversion. If God is infinitely
merciful, then His patience is really our salvation.
Not too long ago we wrapped up the year of
Mercy and what have we to show? It is not so much the programmes that we have
covered or the activities we have gone through. Has it been a year of success
or have we, perhaps, just cosy up to this grand scheme at taming God into
submission. There is a spirit of the world that desires of a God who, basically,
is hopelessly indulgent in His mercy and the Church is supposed to reflect
that. This is a God best depicted by Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son.
God is that "helpless" old man who is pining for us to return.
Which brings us to the third point. God may
be compassionate and merciful. However, the parable ends with a separation
between the wheat and the weeds. The weeds are gathered to be burnt. Likewise,
there is judgement and there is hell. Heaven and hell are not dualities in the
sense that there is a heaven and there is a hell. Instead, the loss of heaven
will result in hell. But, what is disturbing is that our therapeutic world
conceives heaven as a fuzzy feel good state where God's duty is to make people
feel happy whenever they need Him. We are incapable of fathoming the loss of
heaven and this is amply illustrated by Boys II Men's collaborative hit with
Mariah
Carey: One Sweet Day. There is a presumption that everyone we know will be
in heaven, smiling down on us. Firstly, who are we to say that they are not? It
is true that we should not be judgemental. But secondly and more importantly,
is it not overly presumptuous on our part to believe that they are? This is
exemplified in the many canonisations that take place at our feel-good
funerals!
Heaven is not defined by the absence of hell.
Instead, the reverse is true in the sense that the loss of heaven will result
in hell. Without conversion, there is a possibility that we might lose heaven.
Therefore, let not a misguided notion of thinking that God cannot help Himself
but forgive lull us into damning complacency. Rather, think of God's mercy as
our invitation to repentance—a form of reciprocity which is brought up in the Parable
of the Unforgiving Debtor. There, the God who showed mercy to the
debtor was inviting the debtor to imitate same generosity by being merciful to
those who are in a similar predicament of indebtedness. Not that God needs
anything from us but, if generosity is the mark of our God, then the God who is
merciful and full of compassion is inviting all of us sinners, through the
conversion of our hearts to return, with gratitude for His loving kindness, grace
for grace and love for love.
