Where God is.

“I’m busy,” God said.

“Busy doing what?” I asked, but I didn’t get an answer.

Clearly God has been busy doing something this week, because otherwise we wouldn’t have seen Israel/Palestine blowing up each night on the nightly news; we wouldn’t have seen the young children who have become train jumpers continuing to flee to the United States from homes ravaged by drugs and violence; we wouldn’t have seen a Malaysian flight struck down and fingers pointed at who is to blame.

God must be busy. Or on vacation. Or out to lunch. God must be looking the other way, because surely God could have prevented all of this. With a flick of a wrist, God could do away with the evil in the world. Wouldn’t it be great?

The kingdom of heaven is like good seed sowed in a field. I imagine it is a place that promises no tears, no suffering, no bombs, no war, no fallen jets, no hungry children, no war-torn countries, no addition, no arguments… The kingdom of heaven is more complicated than a bunch of good seed sown in a field, though. Matthew doesn’t tell us that the kingdom of heaven is the field that only has pristine good seed planted in it with no threats to its thriving. Matthew doesn’t say, “The kingdom of heaven is like a place where there is only good seed, and then there are some weeds sown among the seeds, and it’s no good anymore. It’s not the kingdom of God anymore.”

But master, how can this be? In the midst of all of these weeds, in the midst of all this evil, how are we supposed to find you? I cannot help but wonder if there is a tinge of accusation in the voices of the slaves who go to their master: “Master, you sowed good seed here, didn’t you?” They expect the master to answer: “Of course I did.” Indeed, good seed was sown in the field. At least the farmer in this weeks’ parable has found a proper place to plant the seeds. But the pesky weeds have come up in the field of God’s kingdom, having the audacity to stand right next to the heads of wheat, their spiny purple flowers dotting the bright green landscape with pain and evil and hurt.

“Well, should we go pull the weeds?”

What the master says next is really surprising. “If you take up the weeds, you’ll take up the wheat with it.” On its own, it’s no real shock. Of course, we have all probably met weeds that have decided that they wanted to use the good plants to grow tall, choking the roots of the plants. What is shocking is reading this in light of Jesus’ explanation: if God were to root out all evil in the world, none of the crop would be allowed to stand. It would all be destroyed. Perhaps it is because the weeds and the wheat grow so intertwined it is difficult to pull one and preserve the other. But perhaps it is because it is really difficult to tell which of the green leaves poking through the earth is going to be a weed and which is going to be a plant… at least, perhaps it is for the sort of gardener who would, only a week ago, toss seeds on paths and on rocky soil as well as on fertile earth.

“No, pulling weeds – getting rid of evil – is not your job.”

Okay, well fine, Jesus. It might not be my job to get rid of the evil that’s in the world, and I know full well that I cannot get rid of the evil that lurks in my own heart. But if it’s not my job, then it must be yours, and you seem to be botching it. The end, when the world will be righted, seems an awfully long ways away.

And so we ask Jesus what he is doing about the problem of evil in the world, demanding an answer as to why the field of the kingdom of God is full of all these weeds and all this evil and all these bombs and warring nations and addiction and suffering and anxiety and stress.

Now the tables turn.

“What do you suppose I have been doing?” Jesus asks me.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” I respond.

We are here, groaning along with creation under the weight of the world, wondering why God allows evil to coexist with beauty. Why the God who numbers the hairs on our heads seems to have forgotten to bubble-wrap the world and make it just-so, where all life can thrive.

But we do not groan alone. Creation groans with us, yes, as we all strain toward God’s future, in which the promises made through Christ come to fruition. It is more than that, though: God’s own Spirit intercedes for us. As we raise our hands (or our fists) in silent prayers through clenched teeth, the Spirit places her arm around us, gathering us to herself as a mother hen gathers her chicks. The Spirit intercedes with and for us, straining with us and all of creation as we await the redemption of all things.

Dear brothers and sisters, your spirit of adoption is not one that binds you to fear: of evil, of the unknown, of tomorrow. No, we have been adopted into the freedom of Christ Jesus, as we cry, “Abba, save us!” we pray along with Christ and the Spirit, who strain along with Godself and all of creation as the new creation struggles to be born among us. As we participate in the birth of the new creation, straining toward the kingdom of God, we learn exactly where God is.

God is straining with us, demanding that not a single one of us be uprooted, ensuring that not a single one falls without God knowing, not a single one is alone, cast off, forgotten. Christ is binding himself to our roots, becoming our root. Hope that is seen is not hope. We do not hope for what we see: we hope for the promise of what is unseen.

You have been given a spirit of adoption; you have not been given a spirit of bondage that you might fall back into fear. You have been given a rootedness in God’s kingdom that will not allow you to be uprooted. To this, the present sufferings cannot be compared. Indeed, even in the present sufferings, those who suffer do not suffer alone. Christ, revealed in suffering, draws alongside, taking it on as his own.

“I’m busy,” God said.

“Busy doing what?” I asked.

“Busy saving you all.”