The Act of Binding

DAILY BYTE

At the end of this long week, you might be asking the vital question: Does God’s mercy and love mean that we have permission to relax while evil and hatred and violence exist within us and around us?

Well, the British philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke, said (pardon the gendered language): “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

No - the parable in Matthew 13 does not call for passivity. It calls for a very active attention to: growth. It says, if you want to play your part in God’s kingdom, you must struggle to grow in the face of very difficult challenges. Why is it that when we’re children, we itch to grow up, but when we’ve finally grown up, we get skittish about breaking out of our comfort zones and growing some more?

Growing requires us to persevere through storms and droughts and floods, accepting the sun and rain and manure. Soaking it up with our bodies and our roots so that we can be strengthened to look inside of ourselves and around ourselves and instead of judging and rejecting the evil and hurt we find there, asking God, how can you transform this for your glory? And, how can I be a part of that transformation?

I think perhaps the greatest miracle in this parable, beyond even the abundant grace and loving hope that God shows in nurturing all of our growth is that at end of the parable, when we assume that the weeds get burned, it doesn’t actually say they are burned.

It says they are bound to be burned. In the Greek, the same word for bind means to beg for or “pray.”

These strangling, poisoning weeds that have grown up alongside the good are at the end gathered up and bound in prayer.

Maybe it is a prayer begging God for creativity for how those weeds might be transformed, redeemed, and used for God’s glory. Perhaps, as the preacher Barbara Brown Taylor suggests, the weeds are turned into bricks to fuel the fire to bake the wheat bread.

Perhaps, this is where the real call to gospel action lies for us within this parable. We are called to grow through actively praying.

Prayer may seem like it accomplishes nothing because we rarely get to see the results – and we don’t see the results in this parable – we never find out what really happens to the weeds. But, it seems we are called to bind all the evil in the world and in ourselves up in prayer, asking God to transform it, redeem it, and help it to contribute to our growth, as we strive to become more like Jesus.

So, as we continue to confront the Saddam Husseins of the world and within ourselves, we ask this question: Are we releasing judgment to God and instead, are we - are you - binding every evil within yourself and in the world up in prayer?

FOCUS TEXT

Matthew 13:30 (NRSV)

‘Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"

PRAY AS YOU GO

Binding God, You constantly draw us to yourself, holding us close and desiring growth and life for us. Help us to pray, binding the whole world - even the darkest corners of our own souls - up in Your loving embrace. Transform every evil around us and within us so that we will flourish and bring Your life to the world. We pray this in the name of Jesus, who taught us how to pray. Amen.