Back in 1933, when Japan invaded Manchuria and many persons were rattling their sabers in a call for war, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote an article in The Christian Century entitled "On the Grace of Doing Nothing." Richard Niebuhr was not a pacifist. He did support the US involvement in World War II when it finally came. And, he received a furious rebuttal by his brother, Reinhold Niebuhr in the next edition of The Christian Century. But, he had a point to make. The reason that Richard Niebuhr argued for 'doing nothing' was that human beings often have a way of responding to evil with acts that produce more evil, however unintended. Perhaps that's what's at the heart of Jesus' message in the Parable of the Weeds. In our determination to 'do something,' we often act in ways that, beyond our best intentions, perpetuate violence rather than repelling it.