Readings: Ezekiel 17.22-14 / Psalm 91.2-3,13-14,15-16 (R/v cf. 2b) / 2 Corinthians 5.6-10 / Mark 4.26-34
Have you ever been bothered, bewildered and bewitched by unexpected abundance?
Recently, a good Jesuit friend and I hiked through Point Reyes National Park in California. We strove to reach Tomales Point, a bluff that dropped into the blue and wild Pacific Ocean.
As we hiked along the crest of these cliffs that bordered the ocean, the terrain before us was stark and barren, brown and bare. No trees. Not much greenery. Just scrub and rock in most parts.
Making our final trek down to this northernmost point in Point Reyes, the landscaped unexpectedly burst into colour: a myriad of spring blooms in yellow, white and lilac greeted our sight and scents. We felt like we were walking in a garden.
How could this have happened on these wind-swept cliffs? Science and geography can provide us reasonable answers. Suitable soil conditions; plentiful water and sunshine; seeds borne by bird and wind. Yes, these explain how a garden comes to be.
But there is also that quiet, unseen force that gives life and leads to growth. As people of faith, we call this life force God’s life-giving power.
The first parable in today’s gospel reminds us of this divine power:
a man scatters seed on the landhe sleeps and rises night and dayand through it all the seed sprouts and growshe knows not how.Of its own accord the land yields fruit,first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe.
Small, disparate bits at first, but at the last, an abundant crop, ready for the harvest. Through it all, a mysterious process at work. Through it all, an invitation for the farmer to work together with this process.
I think this mysterious process is indeed at work on Tomales Point. And it is good enough for life to take root, to grow and to flourish.
In today’s gospel passage, Jesus reminds us that this mystery of abundant life is what the kingdom of God is about. How can you and I experience the kingdom of God? By paying attention to two lessons from todays’ gospel of two parables.
The first lesson is from the first parable: fallow for abundant growth.
Jesus speaks about the man scattering seeds onto fallow land. Such land is always ready to receive life and to let it flourish. I think we are called to make our lives truly fallow lands for God. Our lives should be open to God, always ready to receive the life that God wishes to plant and grow in us.
We become fallow not by our holiness or faithfulness. Rather, we become fallow for God by humbling ourselves. Saints and sinners make this most human of actions before God in their daily lives. Humility makes us fallow for God to grow our lives into fullness. Holiness and faithfulness are the fruits of such humility.
The question is: do we want to humble ourselves before God whose ways for life are not our ways to live?
The second lesson is from the second parable: trust that growth will flourish.
Jesus speaks about the tiny mustard seed growing into the largest of plants. The farmer simply sows this seed. He does not control, manipulate, or determine its growth. He scatters, and he trusts that the seed will mature. He has confident patience that it will flourish.
I think we are called to really trust that our Christian growth in God will flourish abundantly. God’s actions in our lives are usually small, quiet, ordinary. They are often unnoticeable to many of us. Even the most prayerful among us do not always attend to them for they are taken for granted. And yet, God’s exceedingly tiny, silent, modest ways of laboring for our growth and our good invite us to trust: to trust that something greater, better, more wonderful than what we can make of our ourselves will be bestowed on us and for us by God’s power to give life prodigiously. This is why we can wait in hope.
The question is: do we have the hopeful confidence to await this moment when all will flourish? When the smallest of our desires, the tinniest of our dreams, the minuteness of our belief will not just grow into abundance but will flourish aplenty, like the five fish and 2 loaves that fed thousands and still had much more leftover?
Fallow yourselves so that God can grow you for life. This is what I think Jesus is inviting us to prayerfully reconsider for our lives this week.
To accomplish this, you and I, must rearrange ourselves humbly and trustingly to let the mystery of God grow in us. According to the Jesuit John Foley, this rearrangement involves detaching ourselves from distractions and fascinations that pull us away from being God’s own. If we sincerely wish to become more and more like God, then, detach we must. Then we can more fully embrace what God’s aims to grow in us: the fulfilment of God’s image we are created in. How much do you and I want to grow into God’s likeness?
The good news is that God loves each of us as we are.
Isn’t this true for each one of us here at this Mass? Aren’t we going to come to Jesus, God’s ultimate gift for everyone of us, at Communion, no matter how saintly or how sinful we are? We come because we believe God loves us as we are, and that God loves all equally as God’s own.
This is the depth of love that moves God to quietly plant the different seeds for our growth, seeds like faith, hope and charity; and not just plant but continue to nurture, care and prune them. The depth of this love also moves God to let each of us grow at our own pace, going on to the next step when we are ready. Yes, God tends to our growth according to our individual pace, but always in God’s time and in God’s ways. We only need to say “yes.”
Our Christian duty must be to prepare the land of our lives for God to do God’s work of growing us, and finally, to see the result that happens of God’s own accord. Then, we can say with the psalmist: “Lord, it is good to give thanks to you.” Good and right to praise for as our first reading reminds us, God wishes to grow us into flourishing abundance for no other reason than this: it is God’s loving will for each of us to have life to the full.
Perhaps, in those moments when we experience our lives flourishing, it will dawn on us then that what has indeed grown so big and so good in our lives and communities is not you and me but God’s life-giving presence. As Foley adds, “If God who is great enough to be loved above all things and within all things, taller than a man or woman’s head, so to speak, then God is large enough to found our greatest plans or hopes.”*
And these moments, I will add, are when the unexpected abundance of God growing in our lives and communities should always bother, bewilder and bewitch us into greater faith and much more delight.
*John Foley, SJ, "Grow Unobserved."
Preached at St Ignatius Church, Singapore
photo: tomales point, point reyes national park, california by adsj
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