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Previous Special Bulletin Article
Copyright 2010 by John B. Reynolds - john@jrwrites.com
August 29, 2010

ON WEEDS AND A-LISTS

With my daughter pushing twenty-four, she may not remember something she said to me when she was very small, but it has stayed with me for years now. I was pulling dandelions way back then from the small flower garden my wife and I had planted in front of the house. Tiny Sarah asked me why the dandelions had to go. I told her that they had to go because they were weeds. She asked me what weeds are. I had a ready answer to the difficult question because it’s one of my favorite definitions ever. I told her that weeds are simply unwanted plants. She responded that someday in her garden, all the plants will be welcome.

I smiled at her naiveté, but I smiled also because to a certain extent, my garden was already a realization of Sarah’s dream. Perhaps remembering the glory days when our home’s previous owner maintained a vibrant flower garden of annuals, an elderly neighbor pointed one summer day to the various spring-blooming-but-now-dormant wildflowers that my wife and I had planted years prior and suggested I pull up all the weeds. I explained that the jack-inthe- pulpit and lilies-of-the-valley and the Jacob’s ladder were not weeds at all. Peggy wanted me to pull the wildflowers. Sarah wanted me to keep the dandelions. Life’s funny that way.

These memories come to mind as I consider today’s Gospel. Actually, they come to mind because of something Sarah told me just now, something akin to what she said years back. In the Gospel, Jesus, while dining at the home of a leading Pharisee, tells his host that when he holds a party, he should invite the marginalized - the people who can’t return the favor - instead of friends, relatives, and wealthy neighbors who’ll invite him back. I think these friends, relatives, and wealthy neighbors would constitute the Pharisee’s “A-List” if I understand today’s jargon, and when I asked Sarah just now for confirmation of this A-List understanding, she said she didn’t know, adding that her parties are pretty non-exclusive. In my garden, all the plants will be welcome…

This is a hard Gospel passage to take because it makes us consider who’s on our own individual A-Lists. Or should be. And yet certainly we don’t have to look far in any of the Gospels to see who is on Christ’s. He shuns the religious elite when choosing his disciples, turning instead to a handful of working Joes who fumble along each day just as we do; he dines with sinners and tax collectors; he goes out of his way to touch the untouchables of the day. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes don’t follow our Lord’s lead so well in these regards. Heck. I know some folks who right at this very moment should be on my A-List but aren’t, mostly because, well, because they are just too much bother. And yet, I expect Jesus to bother with me. Maybe I need to get a clue from Sarah here. Maybe I need to be more inclusive in who I invite to my table. Maybe I need to be more welcoming to all the plants in my garden.