The gospel today is a continuation of the sermon of the parables we heard last week. Today we hear three more parables to help the followers of Christ understand the Kingdom of Heaven. These messages are very important to society today, yet we are not necessarily in tune with them as we lead our lives.

The society of our time has degraded to a society that upholds the right of every individual to believe themselves to be God. As a line in the movie, Rudy reminds me, “There are two things in this life I have learned. The first is there is a God and the second is I am not he.” Our culture of relativism has exploded even though it was pointed out that the path we were headed down would lead to trouble.

The other portion of our culture of relativism is we have begun to be the judges of everyone around us. We are all guilty of this at times, judging what someone does because it is not in line with what we believe. This judgment is wrong. We are reminded in the first reading from Wisdom, there is only one judge, and we are not it.

God is that one judge who can truly judge the person, he is the only one who truly knows what is in that person’s heart and he has the ability to remove the sin or condemn the person for that sin. We don’t, as much as we would like to think we do, have the power to decide who gets to heaven and who will end up in Gehenna. As it finishes in the reading from Wisdom;

And you taught your people, by these deeds,
that those who are just must be kind;
and you gave your children good ground for hope
that you would permit repentance for their sins.

We inherently know this from what we have been taught all our lives and by what God has written on our hearts. We also have the benefit of taking advantage of this grace of redemption through the sacrament of reconciliation.

The parables today do a nice job of tying all this together for us. As I mentioned earlier, all around us there is sin going on with little to no repentance, yet in the parable of the wheat and the darnel we are told that this is designed to grow together. Why would God who is all-powerful allow good and evil to coexist?

God wants everyone to have the opportunity to join Christ and be in Heaven. We all have the opportunity, no matter how bad our sins, to be forgiven for our sins. Of course, we all know that there are those around us who are truly sorry for their sins, and there are those around us who are not sorry for their sins. This is what we hear when we hear;

He replied, ‘No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
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.”‘”

This is where the reading from Wisdom ties in. God is the one who will judge people for what is in their hearts on the last day. Those who are repentant for their sins he will gather into Heaven with himself at the table of plenty. The ones who are not repentant will go to Gehenna to suffer forever. We as the landowner remind his gardeners that we cannot decide who these people are because we do not have the capacity to decide who will turn to God and repent of their sins and those who will not.

All of this requires from us a faith that needs to continue to grow. Though our faith may be no more than a small mustard seed, if we continue to follow Christ’s teaching that seed will grow larger and will allow those around us to take shelter in our faith as their faith begins to grow.

As the other parable we heard today reminds us, we are called to be the yeast that is added to the flour as we were baptized as priest prophet, and king. Our faith in conjunction with the Spirit work together to leaven those around us to bring all of us closer to God.

How do we continue to have the strength to do this in the face of the current climate in our society. God understands that we are truly challenged in the society we live in today. Just look at all the things we are dealing with today. People are confused about who they were made to be by God at their very essence. We are called not to condemn these confused folks, but to be the yeast that will allow them to see into their hearts what God has created them to be. After all, he named us before we were born so he knows who we are called to be as has created us as the correct being from our conception.

To have the strength to lovingly, pastorally, and compassionately show those around us the right way is not necessarily just to agree with their choices, but to show them when they choose to act as God has created them their life will have more meaning and will be totally fulfilling.

To strengthen us in this effort Christ has given us his Body and Blood which we will receive shortly. When we receive the Eucharist we receive Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity within us. This is to fortify us in the call which God has placed on each of our hearts. When we receive this heavenly food we are fortified to be the people of God we profess ourselves to be.

After we receive the grace of Christ in His body and blood we are called to go forth and lead our lives as the yeast to leaven all those we come in contact with. This should be seen in our attitude toward those around us and our peaceful attitude in the fire of the storm will allow us to be like the farmer and allow the wheat to grow amongst the weeds even if we cannot tell the wheat from the weeds as we are growing. IT will also give those around us the opportunity to see their sins and repent to become the wheat that will be harvested into God’s barn.

The question we all need to answer for ourselves is Do we want to be the yeast to help the Spirit leaven those around us to help them see that we are repentant for our sins. We have become more joyful and compassionate by following the Christian way. By leading by example and not by judgment we will bring more people to God to ask for forgiveness and to be turned from weeds to wheat. Are we ready to be the yeast so those around us can be leavened for God?