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Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 13, 2021
Thus says the Lord God:
I, too, will take from the crest of the cedar,
from its topmost branches tear off a tender shoot,
and plant it on a high and lofty mountain;
on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it.
It shall put forth branches and bear fruit,
and become a majestic cedar.
Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it,
every winged thing in the shade of its boughs.
And all the trees of the field shall know
that I, the Lord,
bring low the high tree,
lift high the lowly tree,
wither up the green tree,
and make the withered tree bloom.
As I, the Lord, have spoken, so will I do.
It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
to sing praise to your name, Most High,
To proclaim your kindness at dawn
and your faithfulness throughout the night.
The just one shall flourish like the palm tree,
like a cedar of Lebanon shall he grow.
They that are planted in the house of the Lord
shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall bear fruit even in old age;
vigorous and sturdy shall they be,
Declaring how just is the Lord,
my rock, in whom there is no wrong.
R. Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.
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.
They are such simple little stories about growing grains or planting trees you'd wonder what they're doing here among the teachings of a great seer, healer and revolutionary leader. But here they are so we might as well try to identify a key that could give the answer to that question.
Perhaps there were some critical minds listening that day: 'Here he goes again, the carpenter from Nazareth talking about farming when he has no experience of it!' But this the teacher does know: while the farmer has experience in growing wheat or barley - what land is best, what ploughing is needed, when to sow the seed and when to harvest - he doesn't know how the seed germinates or how it grows. In the field and in the garden 'the earth itself produces fruit.' And up-dating the parable to our times, neither does the scientist know what makes the life of a plant or what makes it able to reproduce itself, even to multiply many times over. We know the form and the way it works but the inner dynamic, the oddly energy of life is beyond our reach.
"The earth itself produces fruit." Life remains a mystery.
Why would this be an important item as we learn how the Kingdom functions? At its most simple it seems to warn us not to think we need to analyse and 'understand' everything. Our focus is on sowing the seed. The second parable will tell us that even a little bit of sowing, a tiny seed has in itself all that is needed to grow into a mighty tree that will give shelter to many birds.
Individually we need this lesson. Many people feel they can offer so little that it's not worth thinking about. Not so. Others imagine that if they can't explain all the components of Christianity in the language of today they are useless or, even worse, if they promote it they are fraudulent. To 'follow blindly' is not in favour among thinking people today (though it thrives among those who want the thrill of following any pied piper who comes along provided what is offered is sensational enough.
The greatest leaders and the most effective teachers know that they are but instruments whose task is to proclaim and apply the great truths in a way people will grasp and accept. What mistakes are we making as community, as ecclesia?
Let's go back to gardening and farming. Experience shows that you need to leave a seed alone to sprout and grow. Apart from keeping the soil moist, anything more will disturb the process and may even bring it to a halt. And a good garden is one in which each plant has space to show off its beauty. A few centuries ago, in the Enlightenment period, every plant was trimmed and shaped to produce an imposed order that was a wonder to behold. The controlled formality reflected the newly recognised order in the natural world. A spiritual community where individuality is repressed will be as lifeless as these one-time models of perfection. The Divine Gardener has something else in mind.
Today the art of farming has been forced to submit to the science of monoculture which is more productive in the short term but may in the end bring starvation upon the world.
Has the imposition of a monoculture Catholicism caused this present dissatisfaction and desertion by millions? Is it inevitable that any institution will eventually fall victim to its own success?
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We can apply all this to the community of christians as a whole, the [i]ecclesia[/i], the great gathering in Plenary Council that will take place in October. The questions must be well above the level of tinkering and embrace the widest vision of what might be, with a pulsating trust in the Life Force that will make it come about. The heavy tedious work in the garden is always about digging and weeding and pruning to ensure each plant has the space it needs. How often does that require us to sacrifice some unrealistic dream, forego some preconceived notion of what we want, and accept both what develops and how Life makes it happen.
During the week Ian's post http://www.catholica.com.au/forum/index.php?id=241030 asked about which path to follow:
1. Staying committed to this tired, and now more complicated, authoritarian Church structure;
2. Shifting focus to the spiritual path ...; or
3. Trying to forge the two together to retain the Church for the brilliant sparkles which shine among the dross, while emphasising personal spirituality ahead of ecclesial community.
This led me to asking, if I were to recommend one principle to be made effective at whatever cost of radical change, would it be that an individual's personal relationship with Jesus is the basic essential for membership in the ecclesial community.
Since it is unrealistic to expect the Church to change structurally in the short term, where could a start be made? Supposing for a minute the celebration of Eucharist were to be the starting point: ritual being down-graded and the primary place given to the participants' spiritual development. The Readings become a real teaching, reflecting and sharing experience. It is left to the people to read the texts for themselves; the leader takes one passage or one topic and works through it for the 25 minutes available. Gifts are welcomed as real things sacrificed with love by the people, items like those accepted in community aid collections for the needy - all manner of groceries, or for those who have them, vegetables and fruit from their own gardens or knitted wear for winter. Cash always welcome.
The prayer of thanksgiving brings our sharing of life within the compass of Jeshua's self-giving love expressed in the breaking of bread and sharing a drink together. The meanings expressed should be broad enough to encompass those who see a 'real and substantial' change in the gifts and those who find it enough to witness the actual change is attitude and behaviour of the participants.
Communion will be simply what that word requires: that we communicate with one another, making peace where there is no peace, making love where there is estrangement, making light where there is darkness – prejudice, selfishness, injustice, superiority, oppression - making fruitful what is barren in our society.
And finally the all-important Sending Out expanded from a three word abbreviation to be a real commissioning, even in the detail of appointing some volunteers to this task and some to that. For Christians are above all 'Those who are Sent'. We are the sowers, even of tiny seeds: the earth will of itself produce the fruits coming from the Word of Love, coming from the Father through Jeshua of Nazareth in the power of their Spirit.
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I would finish my time of reflection today by returning to Ezechiel's poetic flights of fancy as he contemplates the Divine Initiator, the Giver of Life, the Provider of Love.