I suspect everyone struggles at some time with the question of how a good God allows bad things to happen. And more specifically why bad people get away with it. For some this is an insurmountable barrier to believing in God. “I can’t accept a God that lets such things happen.”
This feeling isn’t new. The psalmist said “How long, oh God, how long will the wicked prosper?” (Ps 94:3)
Jesus in today’s Gospel tells us this is basically the way it is. And yes everything will get sorted out in the end. We may not be satisfied by this answer but it’s the only one available. God will work in His time, not ours. And this is actually the same answer as the psalmist arrives at in Psalm 93. The writer of the Book of Wisdom starts from the same position – God doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone, so He demonstrates how the powerful have to be just.
So in this Jesus isn’t really saying anything new. Maybe people had forgotten, or not listened, or didn’t care, but God’s revelation to his people had already got that far.
So why does Matthew say that Jesus is fulfilling this prophesy: I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation of the world. What is Jesus saying that goes beyond previous prophets?
I think there are at least two things.
In relation to our original complaint, the parable of the wheat and the weeds does provide a reason for why God doesn’t simply put an end to evil now – because it would risk harming the good as well as the evil. We may still struggle to accept this – why can’t God just figure it out. But what Jesus is telling us is that God has already figured it out – He loves us, we have nothing to fear, yes there is evil (even in the Kingdom!), but the evil will not overcome.
Perhaps most important is Jesus’ insistence that the Kingdom has already arrived. The Kingdom is not some future state in which everything is perfect. There is a perfect future, but it’s a continuation of the Kingdom which is already here (“the end of the age”). This is quite a challenging idea – we may be comfortable with the idea that there is a future “kingdom” in which God is in control and everything is perfect, and just as we would want it to be. But accepting that our current messy world is already the Kingdom – how can that be? But that is Jesus’ message – he is the fulfillment of God’s revelation. The Kingdom has arrived.
We have to work to understand this Kingdom – or perhaps not so much understand, but appreciate it for what it is. Matthew gives us this parade of parables in an attempt to help us. And they are only illustrations by analogy. We hear of farmers, and bakers, and trees, … All of these can only provide an incomplete picture of the nature of the Kingdom, even when Jesus spells out the symbolism. But, come on, imagine trying to tell somebody what a country they have never visited is like. Any attempt would be inadequate and open to criticism.
Taking all the partial views together we can piece together an image – maybe like a composite photograph. And each person would form their own image.
So what image have we formed of this Kingdom that we live in? We could perhaps focus on the fact that the bad guys will come to a bad end. Talk of people being thrown into a fiery furnace tends to get our attention in a way that discussion of mustard trees doesn’t. But that is only one piece of the picture, and not one that Jesus particularly emphasized. There is also the breadth and scale of the Kingdom – although it started really tiny, it grows to something huge with space for everyone. And the one caring for it doesn’t want harm to come to anyone in it.
This image of an all-powerful ruler, just and kind, was already becoming clear to His people, even before Jesus. Jesus pulls it into full focus, and makes it a present reality. So “whoever has ears ought to hear”. This is what was hidden from the foundation of the world – and now we see it and know it.