Eleventh Sunday or Ordinary Time-B
During my academic days, I met a freshly minted physicist who just defended his dissertation. During our conversation, I asked him what he studied. He told me his paper was entitled Phonon on a Stepped Surface. A theologian has no idea what a “phonon” or “stepped” surface is. Being inquisitive, I asked questions, and he began explaining his thesis in terms I could understand. He said it was about the atoms’ motions on a crystal’s surface. Now, that explanation is something I can comprehend, even if I do not know what his method or conclusions are. He made the complex simple enough for me to understand his study.
Jesus used the same technique of simplifying the complicated. Consider the complexity of explaining God and his Kingdom. Jesus didn’t downplay the intricacies and complexities of his relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit; he acknowledged our human limitations and worked with them, making his teachings accessible and relatable.
Jesus likens the Kingdom of God on earth to a man who scatters seed on the ground. Without his knowledge, the seed turns to a blade, then to an ear, and finally to ripe enough to be harvested. By using the well-known to explain the complex, Jesus teaches that the unknown is God working in silence and absent from sight. Something is behind the growth from seed to harvest: God’s power and benevolence in nature.
The same holds when we substitute the seed for a person. The grace of God, which is invisible, works on the person until the growth within him manifests in a harvest of good beyond his human power alone. Each biography of the saints in heaven has followed the same trajectory, even though their circumstances might differ.
As we have seen repeatedly in scripture, Jesus often chose to use this method because of the type of people he encountered when he inaugurated the Kingdom. The disciples were ignorant fishermen and corrupt tax collectors. They were not Rabbis or teachers in the synagogue but ordinary people. In the same way, most have been educated but remain ignorant of the truths of the kingdom. Jesus meets us where we are.
Of course, there is the more recognizable story Jesus uses about the tiny mustard seed growing into one of the biggest bushes where the birds build their nests. Intuitively, for a tiny seed to grow into a big bush, some conditions have to be present. The seed only has to worry about itself and do what it was created to be. Good soil, light, and water are all provided by God.
God’s law governs the seed and the human person, and only the person can rebel against His law. So, when Jesus likens the Kingdom and our participation in it to developing a mustard seed, he speaks as though there are no hindrances. Jesus’ explanation is more related to a saint’s life than most of our own. The saints are the seeds, and the necessary components for the seed to grow are all provided by God. God’s grace is needed for the seed to grow into something greater than themselves. The saints’ lives prove that those people worked with natural law and, along with grace and faith, blossomed into valuable beings where not birds but their fellow humans could find peace and refuge.
Many years before, Ezekiel described this saintly phenomenon, and it was long before we took time to reflect on it. Thus says the Lord, “I. too, will take from the crest of the cedar, from its topmost branches and tear off a tender shoot…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.”
Although not saints, do we consider whether we have worked with grace and his law? Are we tender shoots planted on a mountainside producing much fruit or seeds that will grow into bushes and places of peace, stability, and knowledge of God given to others?
Too often, one of our first replies to someone who questions our faith is to retreat, not necessarily because of fear or embarrassment, but because of a sense of not feeling competent about talking about God and His Kingdom. Men and women, boys and girls who are but seeds and destined to grow to be mighty bushes. And the prerequisite of this growth is not gobbles of degrees in theology, but rather, a faith and a conviction to follow the Truth. Inherent in every person who is sincere in following that call of Truth resides the knowledge and the answers to many questions about God.
Simply put, we instinctively know right from wrong, good from evil, and love from hate. Refusing to proclaim this knowledge to the world means denying our relationship with our Blessed Lord. Convincing others about the glory of God does not require complex language or knowledge. The simplest of speech most often suffices. “Do not worry about how you are to speak or what to say. . . For it will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” The Holy Spirit is speaking through you!
We have been called to proclaim the Good News to those who search for it. We have been called to be holy people where the hobbled, tired, downtrodden can rest and find shelter in our presence.
Relying on the Holy Spirit and using language we are comfortable using can achieve the desired result of proclaiming the Kingdom of God while becoming saints simultaneously.