(Homily 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Yr. B)
At the heart
of today’s readings is the demonstration of the divine power and its force at
work in the history of the chosen people and in the life of all believers in
Christ Jesus. The image of God portrayed
in the first reading and the gospel is that of a caring and provident God.
In the prophecy of Ezekiel he assured his people, “From the top of the tall
cedar tree, from the highest branch I shall take a shoot and I myself will
plant it upon a high and lofty mountain; on the mountain height of Israel will
I plant it that it may bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar”
(Ez.17:22-23). He is presented as
the one who gives life and growth to what is planted, He makes the seed
scattered by a farmer in the gospel to sprout and grow beyond the knowledge of
the farmer (Mk. 4:26-27). This is
symbolic of God’s graciousness in giving new life to those who believe in him,
a new life that is the prerequisite for entrance into the kingdom of Heaven. The context for today’s overriding theme is
agrarian, where new life springs,
grows and matures. Similarly, Jesus has sown his seed in our hearts and off
he went, like the farmer of the parable, and like every other farmer, and the
divine power shows its force always in assuring the growth of his seed/word in
us and the expansion of the Kingdom. As the Kingdom of God is growing, we are invited to grow as well; to grow
with the rest and the best!
The first reading and the gospel remind us
that like the plant, planted by God himself, and like the seed that God gives
life and growth, we are in a state of
becoming. And our state of becoming is two-dimensional: our becoming as in
our growth and maturity in God and our becoming part of that great Kingdom, the
second is predicated upon the first. Interestingly, the second reading, serves as a revelation of the climax of our
becoming, for on the last day, we shall see the
type of person we have become, and that will give rise to a state of
being, no longer becoming; a state of
being in and with God.
The first reading (Ez. 17:22-24)
is replete with menaingful symbolic images and equally in line with the
teaching of the parables. Indeed, during the time of the fall of the Kingdom of
Judah in 587 a.c., the dynasty of David, on which the divine promises hinged
and the hope of the people of Israel were seemingly compromised. During this
period the people of Israel were going through a very difficult period of their
history. Jehoiakim, the last of the line of David, had been
defeated and taken prisoner to Babylon. This
national disaster weakened the faith of many in Yaweh. They questioned
about God’s promise that David and his descendants would reign forever. Then,
here begins our reading, the prophet
makes assurance of what seemed humanly impossible, God will do it: from the top
of the cedar (that symbolizes the dynasty of David) it will take a shoot (the
Messiah), and he will plant it on Mount Zion (which repressents Jerusalem and
the people of Israel), and “it will put out branches and bear fruit and grow
into a noble cedar tree. Every kind of bird will live beneath it, every kind of
winged creature will rest in the shade of its branches” (v.23). That stands to
indicate that the Kingdom of the Messiah will be open to all peoples. All
this will be possible, only through the power of God, because the history of
the chosen people is in his hands. He is
the Lord of history: “I am the Lord, I have spoken and I will do it” (v.24).
Truly,
Jesus is David’s descendant par
excellence, and he is kingdom personified (Auto-Basilea). The birds and
the winged creatures represent the people of the earth who will find shade and dwelling
in the Him and in the Christian community. In all, this reading invites us to keep on believing in God, mainly when our
expectations seem to come to nothing and our hopes dashed. No doubt,
prophet Ezekiel desires to transmit a strong message of trust and hope to the
people of Israel exiled in Babylon. And to us today, it reminds us of the need
to remain focused in God and his promises, even when trials and difficulties
seem to uproot our root in God, even when the foundation of our faith is shaky,
let us not rely on human means and possibilities, but on the power of God, who realizes his words.
The Gospel
of today (Mark 4: 26-34) invites us
to reflect on the two popular parables of Jesus, drawn as usual from the
agrarian context. He used the scene of
the reality of everyday life experience, to explain transcendent truths: the
parable of the seed that germinates and grows on its own and that of the
musteard seed. He used them to explain some paradoxical aspects of the Kingdom
of God. In the
first parable Jesus shows the miracle of growth, which describes the dynamics of sowing.
The seed is sown in the earth, then without the farmers knowledge and
effort, it sprouts and grows by itself. The expereince of life in the
field reveals that man does nothing but sowing and waiting. We are in front of
the mystery of creation, God's action in history which we must contemplate
in amazement. He is the Lord of the Kingdom, man is a humble collaborator
contemplating and rejoicing of God's creative act and waiting for the
harvest eager to participate in it. In the second parable Jesus speaks of
the mustard seed, which is the smallest of all the seed, but when it grows it
becomes a very large tree, and he
likened it to the development and expansion of God’s kingdom. Irrespective
of the fact that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, it has an
unthinkable dynamism and power of life. The mustard seed becomes a high and robust shrub, able
to give shelter in its branches to the birds. Similarly, the Kingdom of
God, from a human point of view, may appear small, but it contains within
itself the mystery of a prodigious divine force that is unimaginable. Extrapolating from this passage, it behooves us to
affirm that the Gospel is a school that
educates us to the value of waiting. As such, in the
Gospel we can gather images of the value of waiting by which we can learn how to
live the "already and not yet", the paradoxical waiting of
the Christian life.
Be that as
it may, one could ask the reason behind the two parables? And from all
indications it does appear at that point in time, the ministry of Jesus was
encountering difficulties and incomprehension (cf. Mk. 3:22-30), with the consequence of exposing the apostles
and the disciples to pessimism and discouragement. Jesus intended to hearten them, and thus with the parable of the
seed that grows on its own he teaches that the Kingdom of God grows
irrespective of many incomprehensions and difficulties. It is not man that
gives success to the growth of God’s word and Kingdom. There is need to adopt
the virtue of patience, for the word of God in its own time will produce good
fruits (cf. Is. 55:11). The word of
God is to be procalimed with trust, courage and perseverance, then it follows
its course, and in accordance to God’s time too. With the parable of the
Mustard seed, Jesus intends to teach us that the Kingdom of God, the work of
salvation begins in a modest way, and later grows into a magnificent reality,
such that it has the capacity to contain people from all walks of life. This is
not as a result of human capacity or organisation, but through the power of
God. Furthermore, the parable reawakens
in us the consciousness to take serious the present time, the here and now.
The parable thus, serves as an invitation to
rediscover the value of trust in God, but also a reminder to remain committed to the Kingdom-cause. From the
beginning of his ministry, Jesus
announced that this is the aim of his mission (Mk.1:14). He inaugurates and established the Kingdom, teaching
also that the kingdom of God will grow and mature, but that it will reach full
manifestation, only at the end, with his glorious coming (1Cor. 15:24).
The second
reading (2Cor. 5:6-10) is in
conformity with the Gospel and the first reading. The central message is an
invitation to a greater trust, in the words of St. Paul: “we are always filled
with trust”, notwithstanding all the difficulties of the apostolic ministry. St.
Paul was getting old, and beginning to feel weary, in fact, the many sufferings and
persecutions he passed through had left their marks on him. Little wonder, at the beginning of the reading we see Paul’s famous spiritual saying delineating the Christian life as
a journey “we walk by faith and not by sight” (v.7). It is a journey towards God, for this he talks about leaving
the body.
Drawing the
issue further, as evident in the first reading and the gospel, it is God who takes
a sprig from the cedar to plant it, it is he who makes the seed to germinate on
its own and makes the mustard seed to grow, who gives growth and increase to
his Kingdom. Be that as it may, this providential gesture of God, should serve
as an invitation to a commitment for a coherent christian life, in the
continuous effort to do what is pleasing to Him (v.9). It equally serves as a reminder to rediscover the sense of
responsibility, with the consciousness that “at the judgement seat of Christ we
are all to be seen for what we are, so that each of us may receive what he has
deserved in the body, matched to whatever he has done, good or bad” (v.10). Indeed, at his judgement seat, our spiritual
developmental journey of ‘becoming’ assumes the reality of ‘being’, being in
and with Christ, for we shall see him face to face (cf. 1Cor. 13:12)
In all, that
God sees to the growth and expansion of his Kingdom does not mean that we have
to be passive expectators. We are called to cooperate with the grace of God. If we love and live in a way pleasing to God,
we will make the world a “Little Heaven”. Predicated upon that, the
question we have to ask ourselves today is: how are mine contributing to the
growth and expansion of God’s Kingdom, in our life and in the world around us?
If you show love, respect others and desist from whatever is evil, infact, in
few words, if you live in a way pleasing to God, then God is near to you, and
the nearness of God is the nearness of his kingdom. God our Father, as you
continue to ensure the growth of your kingdom, we pray you to sow the divine
seed in us, so that we may grow to the full stature of perfection, worthy of
your kingdom! Give us the grace to work for the growth and expansion of your
Kingdom around us, so that our families and our societies will become “little
heavens” at the imitation of your Eternal Kingdom! Amen!!!
(Fr. Vitus M.C.
Unegbu, SC)
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