"Are we there yet?" - Weekly Reflection 19th July 2026

 There is an old and wise parable that you may have heard. It goes like this:

One day an old Cherokee man sits down with his grandson to teach him about life.

“A fight is going on inside of me,” he says to the boy. “It’s a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is full of rage, jealousy, arrogance, greed, sorrow, regret, lies, laziness, and self-pity.”

He continues, “The other is good – he is filled with love, joy, peace, generosity, truth, empathy, courage, humility, and faith. This same fight is going on inside the hearts of everyone, including you.”

The grandson thinks about this for a few minutes, and then asks his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replies, “The one you feed.”

This well-known story helps us to get close to the Gospel reading set for today in the Revised Common Lectionary, Matthew 13:24-30 & 36-43 (Proper 11)

Our preacher at St Oswald’s this morning invited us to reflect on the reading, often referenced as, The Parable of the Weeds, by positing a question, ‘Why doesn’t God do something.’

It might be possible to read this parable and deduce a simple binary of good people and bad (evil) people. The good people “will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (v 43) while the evil people will “be thrown into the fire,” (v 42)

This simple binary has been further developed into a summary message of the Gospel, the Good News.  All of us have sinned and fall short of God’s glory and subject to God’s wrath but in Jesus’s death and resurrection we have a possibility of an ‘escape’ by acknowledging Jesus and following him. With the ultimate aim of going to heaven when we die and live with God for eternity while the evil people burn for ever in the torments of hell.

My question for those who proclaim this ‘Gospel,’ is what then is the good news, the Gospel that Jesus came proclaiming and sent the disciples out to proclaim – before Jesus’ death on the cross?’

As this is a short reflection I am not going to get into all the weeds of that discussion, but I invite you to ponder on this.

And this parable is well worth the effort of going beyond such a simple binary reading as it seeks to present Jesus’ teaching about evil, and what God is doing or has done about it.

Encapsulated in this parable is the course of human history and the story that the corpus of Scripture outlines by way of a journey. 

We have a beginning and there is an end, a ‘telos’ a conclusion within the reality of the present. 

And on the question of 'are we there yet?' 2 Peter 3.9,  The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 

The plain truth is that we all are an admixture of both good and bad, we all have those two wolves, and we each make a choice about which one to feed.

This again begins to nudge us into another huge subject, that of nature versus nurture.

There are numerous places you can go to explore this further but as a contemporary resource I have found Dr Gwen Adshead’s Reith Lectures and her book, ‘The Devil you know’ very helpful.  

In some older translation the word used for wheat is ‘tares’ which is closer to the original.

This is probably ‘darnel’ a poisonous weeds nearly indistinguishable from wheat until maturity.

Think of Jesus’ run in with the Pharisees. Consider passage such as Matthew 23, and 25.

The Pharisee knew about orthodoxy for sure, the right practise, but in straining out gnats of orthodoxy  they failed to heed the camels of orthopraxis – right action.

 “Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. “You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? “So, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. “Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “So then, you will know them by their fruits.”  Matthew 7:15-20.

James writes, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves.” James 1.22.

This is a very rich parable that is worth the effort of meditating upon in the context of the whole of Scripture and the larger narrative of what God has done and is doing regarding the evil in the world.  (Much beyond the scope of a short reflection)

Colossians2:15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he (Jesus) made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

However, from this parable of Jesus, we learn than wheat and weeds can look alike and we have both wheat and weeds in our lives. That evil is a reality and that some people find themselves entrapped and ensnared by evil.  And, importantly, evil will be uprooted and destroyed. 

In context we learn that it is not enough to have the right belief, its important that we also have the right practise, evidenced by the fruit we produce. By our lives and our care for others. We also learn from the eagerness of the ‘slaves’ that we need to be cautious in our judgment. We need to be careful before we dive in and think we know how to tell if something is a weed or not. We learn that the ultimate judge is ‘The Son of Man’ – Jesus. (Cf. Daniel 7)

 ” But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23

 

 

 https://youtu.be/u1WU-lSSKPE?si=_UE_vj-vzly7wghz