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“This is how it is with the kingdom of God ….” So begins the two parables from the Gospel of Mark on this Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. These parables are addressed to the whole Church and all its members to give us all courage and assurance when our efforts at building up the kingdom of God on this planet seem to produce such meager results.

The first parable contrasts apparently lifeless seeds which, once planted, grow into plants and trees, and the incredible variety of plant life we enjoy on this planet. Biology can tell us why this is so, can explain the genetic processes, the chemical and physical principles that govern growth, and yet most of us are still delighted and surprised when something we’ve planted grows and produces vegetables, fruit and flowers. All human activity in growing things is not excluded, of course: the soil must be tilled, the ground fertilized and watered, and, like mosquitoes in Minnesota, there will always be weeds. You are not a successful gardener if your garden is overrun with weeds. Nevertheless, when growth happens there is still something wondrous, mysterious about the slow, inexorable, silent life that has developed out of our sight.

The hidden yet active power of the seed becomes the point of comparison in the Gospel parable about “the reign of God.” God is the one at work in building up the kingdom on this earth. That kingdom grows mysteriously, is growing even now, inevitably and inexorably, even though we do not always recognize where that growth is taking place, even though we do not know how it can possibly be happening in what we see around us. There is still work for human beings to do in building up the kingdom, work that may be likened to the work of a farmer or gardener, work that is like tilling and weeding and watering (fostering, protecting, nurturing).

All of us are charged with the work of cultivating the growth of the kingdom. We all have work to do. But it is God’s work, and God gives our efforts whatever success results. It ought to be enormously consoling that we are not personally and solely responsible for God’s Church. Like the original band of disciples, we are a motley crew at best. If we are impatient with what appears to be the impossibly slow growth of the kingdom, this is a parable that counsels patience. The “harvest” will come, but in God’s good time.

The second comparison or parable we hear in the Gospel has a slightly different, but related message. The mustard seed is very small, but the plant that results is fairly good size. In the mind of the Semitic storyteller, the size of the produce is unexpected, surprising, miraculous. As Jesus used this parable with his disciples, it is a message of reassurance in the face of what appears to be failure of his mission and message. It might appear to some impatient disciples that the work of announcing the advent of the kingdom had resulted pretty much in complete failure. Little did the disciples, only few in number then, realize that by the time this parable was written in the Gospel one generation later, small communities of disciples of Jesus would have spread as far as Rome. Within three centuries, the disciples of Jesus would become the official religion of the Roman empire, and then they would grow to become as numerous as the sands on the seashore. But that’s not the end of the story. In God’s own good time the disciples of Jesus would become something totally unexpected, something impossible except by the power of God. They would become an actual heavenly Kingdom.

The Gospel parables today call to us to a certain kind of waiting, but not lethargic passivity that lets things go because there is no hope. Where there is no hope, there is no commitment, and therefore no readiness for effort and self-sacrifice. What is essential for us in doing the work to which we have been called is patient waiting, characterized by prayerful discernment of God’s work in nature and history and in us. It is marked by an attitude of gratitude and collaboration. It is a matter of doing the human tasks, knowing that what seems so insignificant as to be hardly worth doing is like the mustard seed of the parable, growing to a harvest proportioned not to the human effort but to the divine intent. May God bring to perfection the good work he has begun!

Father Rask is the pastor of St. Odilia in Shoreview. He can be reached at [email protected].

Sunday, June 13