ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
14 JUNE 2015
Saint Paul says that we need to be
courageous and walk by faith, not by sight.
In saying that, he is really telling us to walk through life with the
conviction that God is in charge. That
is what the prophet Ezekiel had told his people some six hundred years
earlier. He was among the 3,000 movers
and shakers who had been taken into exile in Babylon. While in Babylon, he and his fellow exiles
heard that the Babylonians had completely destroyed Jerusalem, torn down their
temple, and murdered their king. That
royal tree of David which had grown strong from the root of Jesse had been cut
down. In the midst of their grief and despair,
Ezekiel assures his people that God is in charge. He tells them that God will take the top part
of what is left of that majestic tree and transplant it back on Mount
Zion. Because God is in charge, people
from every nation will be drawn to the reconstructed Jerusalem and dwell in God’s
shadow.
We see Ezekiel’s prophecy fulfilled
in Jesus Christ. Jesus proclaims the
Kingdom of God: that God is in
charge. In sending out his disciples to
proclaim that Kingdom, he instructs them to spread the Word as well as they
can, like a farmer sows seed in a field.
Once that work is done, disciples need to trust that the Kingdom will
grow, because God is in charge.
For those who first heard the Gospel
of Saint Mark, the parable of the mustard seed spoke strongly to them. They had chosen to follow a peasant from
Galilee who had been murdered like a common criminal outside the walls of
Jerusalem. They came to believe that God
was in charge, because the Father had raised Jesus from the dead. The initial growth of the Church was as small
and insignificant as a tiny mustard seed.
But because they believed that God was in charge, they gradually watched
as those humble beginnings begin to grow and attract new members, even in the
face of persecution by a state that saw this movement as dangerous to the
culture. This new Church spread throughout
the Mediterranean Sea and took root in Rome.
This has been the way the Church has
grown throughout history. This pattern
has repeated itself over and over again.
In the late 19th century, a group of young men were invited
to become pages of a powerful king at a place called Namugongo in Uganda. These young men had recently become
Christian. Some were still
Catechumens. When they discovered that
the king wanted sexual favors from them, they resisted him, under the
leadership of Charles Lwanga. In the
face of his threats, they trusted that God was in charge. He ruthlessly murdered all of them, and the
situation was desperate. It seemed like
a mustard seed. But the word of their
courage began to spread and brought other people to believe in the Kingdom of
God proclaimed by Jesus Christ. We
celebrated their Feast Day on June 3. My
friend, Father Larry Kanyike, e-mailed me to say that a million people gathered
at the Shrine of the Martyrs in Namugongo on that day to celebrate Mass. Christianity has become the fastest growing
religion in sub-Saharan Africa and has grown into a very large shrub,
attracting many people to dwell in it.
Saint Paul wants us to walk by
faith, not by sight, trusting that God is in charge. We must do whatever we can to further the
Kingdom of God. We need to practice our
faith and teach our children. We need to
work for a more just world. We need to
share our resources with those in need.
We need to pray for those things which we think we desperately
need. But, then we need to trust that
God is in charge, even when we watch our world descend into violence, and even
when it seems like our prayers are not being answered.
It takes courage to walk by faith,
not by sight, because our sight alone cannot see the ways that God is in
charge. What seems like a mustard seed
grows eventually into a very large bush.
We may not see that bush now. But
it exists. We trust that through faith.
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