11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 17:22-24 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 Mark 4:26-34
Saint Mark, the Evangelist was writing about 40 years after the time of Jesus. It was a time of crisis. The new phenomenon of Christianity, like all such movements was falling off a little. The early enthusiasts were thinning out. Paul and Barnabas had their troubles too. They did not agree on some of the traditions and doctrines of the new community. There were more worrying problems also: Self-proclaimed prophets and healers were springing up and distorting the message for their own advantage.
Perhaps, we today can identify with what must have been a difficult time for the early Church: disagreements on doctrine and moral teaching, self-proclaimed experts and visionaries, moral standards falling, violence and crime, lack of respect for the pillars of society and for leading persons in society. It all sounds familiar!
Mark gathered together five parables of Jesus to instruct the people, who were seeking the Kingdom of God. Today’s Gospel reading has two of these parables. The kingdom of God is like the seed which grows in the hiddenness of night as well as in the light of day. And the mustard seed holds out the promise of a huge expansion from the tiniest of beginnings. This theme of ‘seeds and growth’ is used by the Lord throughout his ministry and it is one most of us can appreciate.
We can take comfort from the parable of the seed growing even though we don’t notice it. The work of the Kingdom of God will endure despite the opposition and indifference of the world. The Lord has promised to be with us ‘until the end of time’. When we feel inadequate or insignificant in the building up of God’s Kingdom, we are reminded that the power of God’s Holy Spirit is working in the least of us and, like the smallest of all the seeds, we can grow into something ‘beautiful for God’ (St Teresa of Calcutta)
Large crowds of people heard these parables of Jesus but they stayed outside the circle of believers. It seems that those who were called disciples received the gift of further instruction and insights into the teachings of Jesus. They were the ones who began to hear the parables as part of their life and allow these teachings to form them in the ways of Lord.
The call of the Lord is to ‘repent and believe’. To believe is to hear the story and to know that I am part of it. It involves me. Repentance means taking stock and noticing what needs to change or improve. Paul and Barnabas were able to recognise where they needed to change and improve and went on to be powerful workers in the building up of the Kingdom. Paul even formed a close bond with Mark, who had been part of his disagreement with Barnabas! (Acts 13:13, 15:36-40) St Mark understood the frailty and the strength of those who believe! And, then Mark has an intriguing comment to make: ‘He would not speak to them except in parables, but explained everything to his disciples when they were alone’.
‘When they were alone’! The Lord still takes us aside, to be alone. The Scriptures can only be understood when the Lord himself opens them up to us. The parables do still have a message for each of us and we learn from them in the moments we spend alone with the Word of God, reading and pondering the Holy Scriptures, the Gospels.