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June 17
Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mk 4:26-34
Jesus said to the crowds:
“This is how it is with the kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and through it all the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.”
He said,
“To what shall we compare the kingdom of God,
or what parable can we use for it?
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
With many such parables
he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it.
Without parables he did not speak to them,
but to his own disciples he explained everything in private.
There is a lot of comment on this website about how inadequate is teaching in the catholic church. Oldies recall mind-numbing recital of catechism formulas, the accent on sacramental power that smacked of magic, formulaic preaching that reinforced the brain-washing of childhood deep into adult years. People resent the fact they've lived in a state of dreaming under the guise of pious devotion or loyal allegiance to "The Faith".
The Sunday Reflections thread started life under the title "Ynot Question" - or in plain language, Why not question the readings? We have to learn to be learners by questioning everything we don't yet understand.
Last week, after the Easter cycle we returned to the consecutive readings of Mark's gospel. Today's selected passage is about methodology - and it contains principles that were basic to the method Jeshua used. Unfortunately they were lost sight of over the centuries and it's time we re-discovered them.
I believe these short parables are not just quaint ways of presenting mysteries to an illiterate audience in a more primitive time. In fact I daresay the people who listened to Jeshua were no less smart than we are; perhaps in many ways a good deal smarter. I like this insight of John Dominic Crossan:
"[It's] not that those ancient people told literal stories and we are now smart enough to take them symbolically, but that they told them symbolically and we are now dumb enough to take them literally. They knew what they were doing; we don't." ***
These parables are keys to understanding how the 'the kingdom of God' comes into being, and therefore how to work for its coming.
* * * * *
Mark has just three parables about the kingdom and all are to do with sowing seed. They run consecutively through chapter 4. There's one about the success or failure of the sowing in the case where the seed falls on the path or on stony ground or among thorns, etc., and the explanation provided shows that failure comes from the condition of the recipient, not from some defect in the seed or in the sower.
Of the two in today's selected reading, one points to how the seed grows by itself provided the farmer doesn't mess around with it, and the other compares the smallest seed with larger ones and makes the point that this tiny seed grows into the biggest shrub in his patch.
Other gospels have other images of the kingdom: catching fish in a net amongst many others in Matthew, while Luke runs a different set of parables. Mark was the first gospel written and it's interesting that for him the chosen image or model to illustrate how the kingdom works is in the sowing of seed. Points of emphasis are the condition of the recipient and the power or energy that is in the seed, reflecting the power of God who is the principal agent in the whole affair.
I'd like to look into this a bit more because it seems mostly to go unnoticed. The seed is the word of God, as we read in Luke 8:11. The purpose of the parable as a tool in teaching is that by comparing an unknown with a well-known thing we can work out how the unknown one works. From what happens with seed we can learn something of what will happen with the word of God, and in today's parable, from how a seed in suitable soil will grow by itself [αὐτομάτη - we might say 'automatically'?] we can learn how the word of God in a person who welcomes it will be fruitful by itself - of its own dynamic.
And then by comparing the size of the mustard seed to other herb seeds a farmer in Galilee might have sown we can learn that size is not relevant when estimating what outcomes to expect. Compared to all the things that preoccupy a person, the word of God may be the smallest, yet it may still grow into a sizeable feature of their life. The power is in the seed.
All this seems to run contrary to the practice of institutions. When things are found to be falling short of expectations leaders instinctively turn to programs of better training, more thorough instruction, more discipline and surveillance. As the church in Australia prepares for a national synod in 2020 we need to hope there will be a transformation that goes deeper than new methods to make good christians - which would seem to be an impossibility. You cannot make a christian by training. One who follows Jeshua is self-motivated, uniquely individual, and entirely free. Like one who loves.
One comment that I came across had the curious suggestion that the parable is a criticism of a lazy farmer who goes on with his usual routines while neglecting the seed which is left to grow by itself. I rather think the farmer is right to avoid messing around with the seed once it is sown. Wisely he doesn't touch it because he has trust in its power to grow by itself. It's a wise spiritual leader who will allow individuals to develop their own form of believing and their own way of living a christian life without heavy-handed direction. The same would apply all the way up through parish, diocese and regional synods, but it is not the common experience. What happened?
Preoccupation with institutional matters of membership, government, unity, continuity and so on has overshadowed key gospel values of freedom, individuality, humility, and living by trust in God as Jesus lived. Those who talk of restoring the church's standing and influence in the world might be on the wrong track here. The task for our time is to let go of what is not working, and to try new ways of living as christian communities in the modern world. Then the seed will produce its fruit of itself, not from human tinkering or manipulation but from divine power in the Spirit poured out upon the peoples of the world.
Tony Lawless
*** John Dominic Crossan, Who is Jesus? (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), p. 79. I lifted that quote from a very important article by David Tacey which is worth re-reading: http://www.catholica.com.au/gc0/ttm/012_ttm_print.php