In the Gospel of Mark, we don't have many parables, nothing like the Gospel of Matthew, there are just a few here in Mark chapter 4 and another one in Mark 12. So, I just want to dive into these, starting with the parable about the seeds.
This first parable about the growing seed is unique to Mark, it isn’t found anywhere else. Some call this the “Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly” because it says the seed is planted and it grows, but the farmer “knows not how” - it is growing night and day but it is growing somewhat secretly, or mysteriously, and after some amount of time it bears fruit.
Jesus is comparing the Kingdom of God to a seed which grows “secretly.” I mean, I’m not going to act like I am a great gardener by any means, but I know what makes a seed grow, it's basically good nutrient rich soil, water, and maybe some added fertilizer with sunshine.
But you think of the seeds themselves, since I am not a great gardener, if you just handed me a handful of seeds, I’d have a hard time telling what they were going to grow into. I mean I’d recognize corn, but even in a kernel of corn, will it be seed corn, field corn, or sweet corn??
Within each seed there is this innate power to grow into something, and it happens in its own time and in its own unique way. You think of a seed like corn, you know it will take a certain amount of time to grow and produce fruit, but then you think of a seed for a fruit tree, and that’s going to be years before you get any fruit, you know? And the fruit is all different.
So there are things we can control about the growing process, and things we can’t. This is true with the Kingdom, with the number of people in the Catholic Church, with people’s faith even. I think of when the Fransiscan Missionaries came to Mexico from Europe in 1524. It was during the Protestant Reformation, so millions of people were leaving the Catholic Church.
And the missionaries are working so hard to teach the native people about the love of Jesus, but not getting very far. But then suddenly, in 1531, Juan Diego meets the Virgin Mary on the road, she gives him an image for the Bishop, and when the people see that image, Our Lady of Guadalupe, they start converting by the millions, eight million to be exact.
And I was talking to Fr. John Lange who was a Maryknoll Missionary in Tanzania and he was saying how much he loves this parable and how much he relates to it, because in his time in Africa he built several schools, and when he began the last one it had a million dollar price tag on it, and he didn’t know where he was going to get the money, and he did, well, most of it, he still needs about $40,000 to finish the dormitory, but he is getting there, with God’s help of course.
We only control so much in our work in God’s Kingdom. So we do our part and work and pray, but then we trust God to take care of the things we can’t control.
Second parable, Jesus talks about a mustard seed becoming a large plant where all the birds come to dwell and compares it to the Kingdom. A mustard seed is super small, and it is really a weed, it is very invasive, and it is large for a weed, but not large for a tree.
This had to be super confusing to the people listening. The people of Israel thought of the coming Kingdom like a Cedar of Lebanon, a tall, majestic tree like we heard of in the first reading and the prophet Ezekiel. It made sense for the birds to dwell in a tree like that, but not necessarily in a mustard weed “tree.”
This seems very appropriate as an analogy or a parable because, think about it, the Catholic Church has it all, we’ve got the Sacraments meaning we have Jesus with us, we’ve got the Holy Spirit in us, we’ve got the Pope and the Magisterium who help us to interpret scripture, we’ve got the Church Fathers and all the Saints to model our lives after and grow in holiness…
All these majestic Cedars trees here in the Kingdom of God, yet, yet our lived experience of the Church doesn’t often feel like that, for example, shrinking Mass attendance, Catholic schools closing, priest scandals, bishops saying confusing things, declining belief in the True Presence…
If we are honest with ourselves, if we are living in the Kingdom of God right now then often it looks more like a field of mustard weed trees than a forest of majestic Cedars. If God is truly present here in the Catholic Church, it truly doesn’t look what we would expect it to look like.
It is important for us to temper our expectations. Do we expect more out of our bishops and priests? Yes, but maybe we expect too much. Do we expect more out of the lay faithful? Yes, but again, maybe too much. We try to control everything, but we can’t, and we get frustrated when our expectations aren’t met, but, we must remember, everyone is working and living out of their own hurt and woundedness, and unfortunately that has other wounding effects on us.
My encouragement is to control what we can control, ourselves and our own actions, and if we have high expectations it should be for ourselves to do good. Paul reminded us in our 2nd reading, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense, according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil.”
On earth it looks like weeds, in Heaven it may look like Cedars. God is in our midst, while His Kingdom doesn't look like we expected it would, it doesn’t surprise Jesus, so He calls us to do good in the ways we can and let Him take care of those things we cannot control all around us.