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July 23, 2017

Today’s gospel passage allows us to reflect on yet another aspect of Christian discipleship. Here we have Jesus sharing a teaching moment, a parable, with his followers in which he narrates that the good work that is done in the name of God is often compromised by devilish intentionality.

 I confess to having a certain ambivalence about this parable, because a lot of the time I realize that within myself I just want to confront the nay-sayers, the doers of harm, the gossipers and idle critics. This is especially true when I think of all the wonderful people I meet about the parish, all striving to make a contribution to the good of parish life. It really upsets me when I hear people gossiping and maligning and tearing down the efforts of others. But I bite my tongue, and I trust that eventually, though the good and the evil necessarily coexist for the time being, eventually, the good will grow and the evil will fade to nothingness in the bright light of God’s blessings.

 All that said, there are none of us perfect. However, if I want to put my energy into something, it’s far better that I lean into things and roll up my sleeves to make things better, rather than sit back in the cheap seats and pass remarks and comments about others who are making an effort, even if it isn’t perfect.

 What is perfect, and what is often missed by those on the sidelines consumed with a need to pass remarks or comment or pass judgment, is the desire by those they would so readily criticize to please God through service of God’s people. I know from vast experience of my own that it’s always easier to criticize someone else’s efforts than it is to come up with a better option. I’m happy to talk about the bishop’s shortcomings. He’s happy to talk about the shortcomings of the Pope, I suspect. Parishioners talk about my shortcomings. Children talk about their parents, and parents talk about their bosses, their children, their children’s teachers, their who-evers. We get the point. It’s always easier to criticize others and point our fingers beyond ourselves. However, I’ve learned over the years to give people a generous helping of the benefit of the doubt.

In this parable, there is a curious remedy that Jesus offers. Instead of ripping out the weeds, Jesus suggests that it is more advisable to allow the fruit of the evil work to grow alongside the fruit of the good work. Eventually, the good will flourish while the evil will be withered, burned and trashed. It’s not that we don’t have to face the consequences for our willfulness, but that dealing with those consequences are not to be permitted to cause even more harm to the good.

 For ourselves, we might want to consider what benefit we expect from nay-saying or gossiping? Is it that I desire to appear to be influential? Or that I hope to sound more informed or educated? Is it that I am jealous enough that I need to detract from another? Perhaps we have all manner of different reasons for our negativity? But it is well worth the would-be disciple’s reflection to consider how to confront such a temptation to negativity and to burn it away from our lives.

 In a talk he gave about six months ago, Pope Francis had quite a bit to say about gossiping and none of it was good: He used very strong language when speaking about this offense against the eighth commandment. “The gossip is a ‘terrorist’ who throws a grenade - chatter - in order to destroy,” he added. “Please, fight against division, because it is one of the weapons that the devil uses to destroy the local Church and the universal Church.”

 Rather than wallow in the negative, choose instead to lift up the positive. Rather than rip away at what is negative, seek to double-down on efforts to be positive. Eventually, the negative will be burned off and the positive will be given growth. This is true for our personal lives. This is true for our parish. This is true for the Church.

 

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