11th Sunday of Ordinary
Time – June 13, 2021
We return to Ordinary Time on Sunday
and take up again the regular reading of Mark.
We hear one of the very few
passages in Mark not repeated by Matthew or Luke in the par-
able of the farmer
who reminds us to relax.
Jesus begins with the statement, “This
is what the kingdom of God is like.” What is
this ‘kingdom’? First of all, it
is not a place. We can be tempted to think of the
kingdom of God as a place
beyond this life. Yet, that is not what Jesus primarily
meant by the term‘kingdom of God’. The ‘kingdom of God’ is more a way of life than
a place.
Whenever we live as God wants us to live, there the kingdom of God is present.
Jesus was the person who fully lived in the way God wants us to live. God was
pleased
with everything that Jesus said and did. That is why everywhere Jesus
went, the kingdom
of God was present. The first thing Jesus said when he
started his mission was, “the
kingdom of God is here”. Whenever we live like
Je-sus, the kingdom of God is present.
The kingdom’s power is the power of love,
a creating and encouraging power, a power
that lifts up and enables us to be
what we are called to be. It is not a
coercive
power which achieves its ends by threats, force or violence.
Jesus speaks a parable which
acknowledges the mystery that is at the heart of the
most every-day experiences
of life. A farmer scatters seed on the good soil of Galilee.
Having done the
sowing, all he can do is to go about his other business, while the
seed takes
over and does its own work until the crop is ready for harvest. Yes,
of course
the gardener must do the in-itial spadework, and subsequently whatever
weeding
and watering may be required; but in the end it is nature (the Spirit of God)
which makes fruitful change happen. In the parable it is said of the farmer
that “he
does not know” how all this happens. Between his actions of sowi-ng the
seed and harvest
ing the crop, a great deal of activity goes on, which is
invisible to him and which he
does not fully understand.
There is a great deal in our world
which we do not fully understand, in spite of the
great expertise that has
developed over the centuries on all aspects of our universe.
When we say in the
Lord’s Prayer, “Your Kingdom come.” we are praying that people
everywhere put
themsel-ves under the loving power of God. Jesus seems to be saying
that if the
farmer does not know the ways of the humble seed, how can any of us
fully know
the ways of God? If growth in the natural world is mysterious, how much
more
mysterious must be the growth of God’s kingdom?”
With the parable of the seed
growing secretly, Jesus says that the kingdom of God can
be gro-wing among us in
ways that we do not fully understand, just as the seed the
farmer sows in the
ground grows to harvest in ways he does not understand. There is a
reassuring,
hopeful message here for all of us who may be tempted to be discouraged
by the
slow progress that the ways of God appear to be making in the world. The
spreading of God’s reign is ultimately God’s work, and that work is always
happening,
even when we do not see it or understand it.
We have a part to play
in the coming of God’s way of doing things among us, just as
the farm-er has a
role to play in the coming of the final harvest. However, this first
parable in
the gospel reminds us that the Kingdom of God is working.
The second parable in Sunday’s gospel
reminds us that God can be at work in situations
and places that seem very
unpromising to us. There is a definite contrast between the
tiny musta-rd seed
(the smallest of all the seeds), and the large shrub that grows from
it, in
whose br-anches the birds of the air can nest. Insignificant beginnings can lead
to a wonderful result. The kingdom of God is like that; it often finds
expression
initially in what is small and seemingly insignificant. On a
personal level, we can
feel that our own faith is insignificant, as small as a
mustard seed. Jesus assures
us that the Spirit is working in and through such
faith. Our hope can appear to
diminish to the size of a mustard seed.
The parable says that such hope is
enough for the Lord to work with us. Our various
efforts can seem to bear very
insignificant results. The parable assures us that
the Lord will see to it that
the final harvest from those efforts will be abundant.
Sometimes we have to
learn to be content with the small seeds that we can sow,
trusting them to bear
fruit in ways that will surprise us. The kingdom of God is
something very
humble and modest in its origins. We need to learn to appreciate
that less can
be more. We may not feel called to be heroes or martyrs, but we are
called to
put a little dignity into each corner of our small part of the world.
There are
little seeds of the kingdom that all of us can sow, a friendly gesture,
a welcoming smile, an expression of listening, a little ray of hope. God’s reign
often comes in power through seemingly insignificant actions of seemingly
insigni-
ficant people. Faithful, everyday choices to scatter small seeds of the
Lord’s
love can unleash a power that can transform the world.
Fr. Don, cp