I heard a story recently about a clergyman. He was a very holy man. He couldn’t abide sin - so sinners beware!

On his first Sunday he asked the wardens to direct smokers into the side aisles, leaving the central seats for non-smokers. In his sermon he warned that this was to show how it would be at the Final Harvest., with sinners being cast into outer darkness. Most of the smokers were amused at being used as a sermon illustration, but some never came again.

Tragically, this comical segregation turned out to be an illustration of our cleric’s whole ministry. He and his disciples gradually weeded out those with less than orthodox beliefs, those who were less than regular in church attendance, those who gambled, those who drank a little too much.

The sad thing was that all of the condemned sinners were, in some way, actually saints - saints in the way they gave of their time to the community, in the way they put their family first, even if it meant missing church which was so important to them.

Our cleric and the church leaders had converted the church from being a hospital for sinners into a resort for ‘saints’ - who in any case were committing the sin of self righteousness. Thet should have read today’s New Testament reading about the parable of the weeds.

Gardeners know that weeds never fail to appear. They know of the constant battle to keep them at bay.

Where do they come from? They seem to appear overnight choking new roots entangling delicate blossoms.

They are distructful , a constant danger to young seedlings, can very easily destroy the natural order of things, and as any gardener knows remarkably difficult to remove without damaging existing plants.

Jesus was in a rural community talking to farmers and men of the land, familiar with problems of sowing and harvesting and it is in this setting that he tells the story of the farmer who discovers that poisonous weeds are growing amongst the wheat.

He tells them that the weeds have been purposely planted by someone who obviously has a score to settle.

This is a particularly malicious crime and is aimed at not only endangering the entie crop but ruining the farmer financially. By the time the crime is uncovered the weeds are so intertwined with the roots of the wheat that there is nothing to be done except let the grow and be separated at harvest time.

Here Jesus uses the familiar image of weeds in a field of wheat to convey his message about good and evil in our lives.

Our world is far from perfect and none of us needs convincing about the existence of evil. Daily we are fed a litany of bad news by the media.

In our own make up as humans there are many weeds, human fraily being what it is. We seem incapable of change.

We hear so much about suffering, hatred, violence and death, we are left wondering has evil triumphed and is good in danger of being suffocated?

Nowadays, there tends to be so much emphasis on what makes colourful headlines that good news often goes unnoticed.

It is there all the same in all the unspoken acts of kindness………. And we all know of numerous individuals whose daily lives are grounded in compassionate love.

The story acknowledges that good and evil are present in all walks of life and that the search for a perfect church or flawless society is an illusion.

In the early church, some believed that it should consist only of the select, the chosen few, and those who did not measure up should be rooted out and excluded.

With a policy like this, there is no room nor is allowance made for any change.

But with God, people can change and conversion is possible.

Sometimes we are too quick to judge!

Jesus did not isolate himself from the world of sinfulness or from people who did not respond to his message.

Did he not eat with sinners? Did he not preach to lost souls? Did he not cure the spiritually ill?

But he never sought to impose or enforce his way of life on others.

He had compassion for the wayward, he was slow to condemn, he was anxious to extend the greatest amount of love and understanding to his people.

We should sort through the weedy areas and dark crannies of our own lives in order to become better people who have learned from their difficulties.

As a church we are called to be open, inviting and forgiving to sinners, as was Christ.

We are invited in our own lives to imitate his mildness and leniency and to develop that capacity of looking beyond appearances to see the best in others, believe the best about them, and encourage the best from them.