ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
17 JUNE 2018
The
prophet Ezekiel writes to his people who are in exile in Babylon. Although he is honest with them that their
infidelity to the Covenant caused the destruction of their beloved Jerusalem and
the Temple, he also wants to encourage them.
They have given up and presume that they will never return to their
homeland. However, he uses the image of
a mighty cedar to give them hope. The
mighty cedar represents Zedekiah, the corrupt and powerful king who had
dominated the scene before the exile.
But he was gone. The Lord has
made low the high tree. Now, the Lord
will take a tender shoot off the top of the tree, who is Jehoiachin, the king’s
nephew. The Lord will transplant
Jehoiachin and the remnant of his people back to Jerusalem. The Lord will lift high the lowly tree and
rebuild his people. God’s plan is to
restore his people from exile. But it is
also God’s plan to establish a future messianic kingdom.
We see the
fulfillment of this prophecy in Jesus Christ.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus uses two other images from nature to help us to
understand the kingdom of God. The
Kingdom of God is not a place. Rather,
the kingdom of God is what happens when God is totally in charge of life. The kingdom of God is like a man who scatters
seeds and then watches the plants emerge from the ground and are eventually
brought to the harvest. The kingdom of
God is also like a mustard seed, the smallest of the seeds on the earth, which
eventually grows into the largest of plants.
In both cases, the growth occurs beyond human control.
The
earliest disciples of Jesus needed to hear these parables, because they were becoming
discouraged. They had embraced the
person of Jesus Christ. But their
communities were small and being persecuted.
These parables instilled courage in them and gave them hope.
These
parables also give us hope. We live in a
world filled with violence, hatred, division, injustice, and fear. Our eyes are drawn to the big cedars of our
world – the powerful, the wealthy, and the famous. The parables draw our eyes away from them and
point to the ways in which God tends to begin small and grown his kingdom
gradually. C.S. Lewis said that God took
on human flesh in a dusty outpost on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Jesus snuck in behind “enemy lines” and was
executed for his efforts. But, because
of the resurrection, many other disciples took heart and started small. Saint Francis heard the Lord speaking to him
in a tiny chapel in Assisi. He founded
the Franciscans, and order that has served the Church for many centuries. Charles Lwanga (on our triumphal arch)
refused to give up his faith. For that
refusal, he was executed. Those who
killed him thought they were done with him.
On his feast day last week, a million Africans gathered at the shrine of
the martyrs in Uganda to celebrate their faith.
Mother Theresa (also pictured on our triumphal arch) began picking up
dying people and orphans on the streets of Calcutta. Today, the sisters of her religious order
attend to the most desperate people throughout the world. Many people have planted seeds and trusted
that God would work through their initial efforts to make the kingdom of God
more visible.
Saint Paul
was another one of those people who stared small. He encountered the risen Christ on the road
to Damascus, and the seed was planted.
Through his efforts, the Gospel spread to the gentiles. He reminds us that our efforts will please
the Lord while we are at home with our bodies.
He encourages us to trust that our smallest acts of kindness and feeble
attempts to love will make a difference.
Today, we fathers especially need to hear this message. It is easy to get discouraged. It is tempting to think that our sacrifices
are in vain. We wonder how we can make a
difference in a world full of towering cedars.
Keep planting those seeds. Even
if you don’t see results, even if your children rebel against you, don’t lose
hope. God will do the rest!
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