For years the vacant lot in front of the house was overgrown with weeds. Somehow a bougainvillea hit upon the lot and prospered, as did a number of sugar apple trees and papayas, thanks to the soggy ground. But the bougainvillea had the run of the place. The shrub shot up and spread out on all sides. In time it became a huge mountain of green, with pinkish flowers seasonally adorning its slopes.
What we feared, the neighbors and I, was that our wild surroundings, the green anarchy of the unused lot in particular, would become a refuge of unsafe creatures—snakes (of which one as big as a man’s arm succeeded to slip under our car), the homeless cats that periodically foraged our village, and, which was unlikely but possible, those who might be running away from justice.
So delighted was I one morning when, as I gazed out of the window, I could see clear across the lot to the other side. Nothing impeded my vision, except two or three free-ranging chickens. Obviously, someone with a broad knife had swept the runaway vegetation down, and for good measure cleaned up by gathering whatever remnant was woody and usable as kindling. That someone was bound to return to claim the bound bundles of twigs and branches left on the side.
The sight reminded me of the householder in Jesus’ parable in the Gospel of Matthew. The householder told his slaves who came to him to ask why if he sowed good seed there were weeds in his field, and if he wanted them to pull out the weeds from among the wheat. “Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, ‘First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
Happily, the one who hacked the rampant bougainvillea and the wheels of weeds that rolled out any which way left the sugar apples and papayas untouched, except that judging from shreds of peel strewn about he most certainly gathered their fruit. Aside from their being the good plants, these were not fixed in the ground by anyone. They came from seeds thrown out by our help after we had eaten the fruit, for every fruit had upwards of fifty seeds embedded in the flesh, the reason why the species can only burgeon.
I am amazed at how Jesus used scenes like this in his parables, scenes from ordinary life—the wheat field, the mustard seed, the yeast in the flour—and drew from them truths that go into the very essence of living.
The weeds that grow uninvited and threaten to choke the wheat that bears fruit regardless suggest the call for and sureness of justice—justice for those who continue to live principled lives in an environment of iniquitous people. The tiny mustard seed when fully grown becomes the largest of plants, such that the “birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.” This speaks of the power of faith and humility. And in the yeast that makes the flour of wheat expand is the message that not just disease but good moral health as well can go viral.
And so in a way I can read God’s word in nature. Indeed, the landscape before me now, scene of a small-scale devastation, calls up the last day and the last judgment.
Even the chickens looking for grub among the cut grass, scratching the ground before pecking. I counted three—a hen and two chicks tall enough to be pullets. They, too, speak of destruction, no matter if only in a roundabout way, because Jesus used them to illustrate his compassion for Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”