James R. Gorman
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, William Rehnquist was born in Shorewood, Wisconsin. After law school, his first practice was in Phoenix, Arizona, and while he was there he heard this story about Arizona that pretty well sums up life there.
In the very earliest days of the settlement of Arizona, the Archbishop of Los Angeles sent a missionary out to Phoenix to try to establish a church there. After two years, the priest returned to tell the archbishop that he could not establish a congregation in Phoenix. "Why not?" asked the Bishop. "Are there no people there?"
"Well, yes, there are people there," said the priest. But those who live there during the winter have no need of heaven and those who live in Arizona during the summer have no fear of hell."
This same thing has been said of 20th century Americans. We are among the most religious people on the globe, but most of us have no fear of hell nor no need of heaven. And this leads us into certain odd dilemmas in the world of law and order and criminal justice. Since, in our system of government, we no longer believe in a final day of judgment in which the good will be rewarded and evil will be punished, we feel compelled to do all the rewarding and punishing ourselves. We like to say that heaven and hell are what we make of this world.
So, in Jesus' parable of the weeds and the wheat, "when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well." And when the servants asked the master if he would like them to pull up the weeds, the master said, "No, for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them."
The problem with rooting out evil and punishing it is just as Jesus warned. In order to pull up the weeds, you must uproot some of the wheat along with them and it is, on balance a divine task best left to the Holy One at the time of harvest, by which Jesus meant the end of time in which all will be judged according their deeds. It is in Matthew, after all, that the great day judgment is characterized by an accounting of how we have cared for, or neglected to care for, those who are the least among us.
I was thinking about all these things some weeks ago. Thinking about evil and its odd and perplexing place in our life. I was thinking about these things even before my cousin Peggy was killed in a horrifying auto accident in the pre-dawn hours in central Nebraska, leaving behind four pre-teenaged children.
In part the question is the question that Rabbi Harold Kushner asks, "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" The way the question is put in the prophetic writings is, "Why must the innocent suffer?" And that is a compelling question all by itself. Why must the Kennedy family [John Kennedy, Jr. is still missing at this writing after his plane went into the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts, Friday night/Saturday morning] suffer so, for example?
This part of the question is simply about suffering. Why must there be suffering? Why must the innocent suffer? Why must there be untimely death? What sins did my cousin's children commit to warrant growing up without a mother?
But as information came out about the death of my cousin Peg, a new dimension developed and the other question in the perplexing twin questions emerged.
"Why must the innocent suffer?" is always paired in the writings of the prophets with its reverse, "Why must the evil prosper?"
What has come out about the accident and is not talked about much in our family, is that the driver of the truck that rear-ended my cousins' recreational vehicle at three o'clock in the morning left the scene of the accident and then called the police to report that his truck had been stolen while it was parked at a casino. He told police in a telephone conversation that he left the keys in the truck, the engine running, the doors unlocked and his wallet on the passenger seat. And some bad guy came along and stole his truck from him and then must have rear-ended that R.V.
But after reporting his truck stolen by phone, the owner of the truck has gone missing and the police are still trying to find him. It also seems that he was already wanted by the FBI for crimes committed in his home state of Florida.
Now the question about the suffering of the innocent is expanded by the question about the prosperity of evil. Why do the innocent suffer and why do the evil ones prosper? Why must Peggy's children grow up without a mother and why should the truck driver be free? Master, shall we root out the weeds in our midst? No, it is best to wait until the time of harvest, by which Jesus meant the day of judgment at the end of history.
There's a part of me, of course, that would like to go on a personal manhunt to find this guy and do unspeakable things to his person. Part of me would like to get a posse together from among the men in my family and hit the road.
But, I admit that it is just a very small part of me; a part of me that watches too many bad cop movies. In those movies the hero is a renegade lone ranger type cop (usually played by Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson), and this cop moves recklessly against the bad guys (guys who are always very evil, indeed) and in the ensuing hail of gunfire and explosions and the destruction of entire buildings, not one innocent person is hurt by Mel or Bruce in their pursuit of evil. Which leads to the unfortunate idea that the weeds can be gathered without destroying any of the good plants.
And I'm afraid that too much of our jurisprudence in our society is founded on this false premise as well. The rise in capital punishment in several states and the implementation of the "three strikes and you're out" laws are indications that, first, we can't wait until the judgment day for God to sort out good and evil and secondly, we believe that we can weed the garden of evil without doing any damage to the innocent.
There have been several stories lately about men on death row who have been proven innocent of the crime of murder by DNA evidence. In the Illinois case, it has been shown that several of the police officers were more than zealous in their pursuit of evil and in the process got an innocent man convicted. Well, to be honest, this guy was not completely innocent; he was guilty of other crimes, and that's why it was so easy for the police to push the envelope on the case. It's just that he was not guilty of the murder and rape which put him on death row. In a just society, that should be an important distinction to make.
Jesus is right again. In our zeal to root out evil it is possible to hurt the innocent, Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis movies to the contrary notwithstanding.
In part evil must prosper because we are not so perfect in our knowledge that we can root out evil without, ourselves, doing evil in the process. Does that mean that we should let all the evildoers go? Of course not. A stable social world demands that we lock up evildoers when we know they've done wrong.
Really, I am amazed at how little revenge I want in all of this--or at how little the fate of the missing truck driver is discussed in our family. I think it is because I don't want the memory of dear Peggy--peaceable, lovely, funny, innocent Peggy--besmirched by any consideration whatsoever of the future of this truck driver.
God will deal with him at the end of his life.