Until the Harvest

There is a certain current in Christianity that imagines God primarily as a wrathful judge. Humanity has offended him, justice demands that someone be punished, and Jesus offers to suffer that punishment in our place. Christ becomes something like a son who steps between an enraged father and the rest of the family, drawing the blow onto himself so that the others might be spared.

It is a disturbing image. It also creates an opposition within God himself: the angry Father demands punishment while the merciful Son tries to save us from him.

Scripture does speak of divine wrath and judgment. Sin is real, evil matters, and the Cross is not merely a dramatic illustration. But God’s wrath is not a temper tantrum, nor does the Father need to be persuaded by the Son to show us mercy. The Father sends the Son because he loves the world. The Son freely offers himself in that same love. Salvation is the work of the one God who desires to reconcile us to himself.

The Book of Wisdom tells us that God has “care of all.” His power is the source of his justice, yet he judges with clemency. He does not need to prove his strength by crushing those who oppose him. Because he is truly sovereign, he can be patient.

More than that, his patience gives his children “good ground for hope” because he permits repentance after sin.

The psalmist speaks of the same God: “You, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in kindness to all who call upon you.” God’s forgiveness does not require him to vent his anger upon someone else first. His mercy is not purchased from him by the suffering of Jesus. The Cross is itself the action of divine mercy.

Left to ourselves, we are dead in our sins. We cannot simply decide to repair the damage sin has done to us. Christ enters into our suffering and death, offering the human obedience that we had refused to offer. His obedience undoes our disobedience. His self-giving love opens again the path to communion with God.

Even then, we are not left to find that path by ourselves. Saint Paul tells us that the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness. When we do not even know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Grace does not merely point toward salvation from a distance. God is already at work within us, drawing us toward the life for which we were created.

And yet we know from experience that not everyone responds.

Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a field in which a man has sown good seed. During the night, an enemy comes and sows weeds among the wheat. These are not merely unwanted plants growing nearby. Their roots become entangled with the roots of the wheat. If the servants try to purify the field immediately, they may destroy the wheat along with the weeds.

The master therefore tells them to wait.

This is not indifference. The master does not pretend that weeds and wheat are the same. A separation will come. But he refuses to destroy what is still growing in an impatient attempt to make the field pure before the proper time.

We live in that time of patience.

The kingdom of God has already begun, but it has not yet been fully revealed. It is like a mustard seed that begins almost invisibly and grows into a great bush. It is like yeast hidden within flour, quietly working until the whole batch has been leavened. God’s grace is already at work, even when its effects remain difficult to see.

The parable has its limits, as every parable does. Weeds cannot become wheat, but people can repent. We have not yet reached the harvest. Until then, God continues to offer the grace by which sinners can be transformed. His patience leaves room for conversion.

But patience is not the denial of judgment. The harvest will come.

This does not mean that God delights in punishing the wicked. He desires their conversion. But love cannot be forced. Heaven is communion with God, which means receiving love and giving ourselves in love. For someone determined to remain turned inward, clinging to the self and refusing communion, heaven would not be a reward. It would be the very life that person has rejected.

God gives us what we need to grow into the people he created us to be. He gives us his Son. He sends us his Spirit. He grants us time to repent. But he does not force us to love him.

The question, then, is not which of our neighbors we should identify as weeds. The servants were specifically forbidden from beginning that work. The question is whether we will allow the grace of God to take root within us while there is still time to grow.

“Whoever has ears ought to hear.”