Casey Anthony, Harry Potter, and the Mixed Field

For those who had been following the Casey Anthony trial, the verdict seemed completely unexpected last week. How could she have been found not guilty? Facebook and Twitter were filled with people crying out about how wrong the jury was, how evil Casey is, and how justice did not prevail for the little girl who died.

Read this week the parable of the wheat and weeds (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43), complimented by the story of Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:10-19a).

Where is God in the face of perceived injustices? Where was justice, righteousness, or the truth? It seems as though no one will ever really know what happened with Caylee and the circumstances surrounding her death. Ms. Anthony will be released tomorrow, although where she will live or what she will do now is a mystery.

In the parable of the wheat and the weeds, we like to think that it is obvious that we are the wheat, and people like Casey Anthony or O.J. Simpson or Fred Phelps or Lord Voldemort are the weeds that have been planted in our lives by the evil enemy. We are in the right, and they are in the wrong, so why doesn’t God just pull up those weeds right now? Why doesn’t God let Her justice reign down right now? How can a good God let these things happen? Does God care about what goes on “down here”?

What we read and hear in the Genesis story is that in the most unexpected times and at the most unexpected places, surely the presence of the Lord is here. Here. Not over there, up there, or down below. Right here, right now, the presence of the Lord is here, wherever we go, wherever we are. And what that says, in the midst of our field/world of wheat and weeds, is that God does care. God is the great farmer, wiser than our impulsive and judgmental selves, taking care not to harm the wheat in order to rip out the weeds now. God knows that evil, as real as it is in our world today, is only temporary.

(image courtesy of fanpop.com)

The last Harry Potter movie ended on a note that felt like good would never triumph, that evil has all the real power, and that love was going to be defeated by hate. This Friday, when the last chapter of the Harry Potter series is released, the world will discover the true and final ending. And we as the church have our real ending as well. The real ending is the resurrection, not the crucifixion. The real ending is the promise we find in Christ – that He came, that He is in this place today, and that He will come again. Alleluia, and amen.