Faith in times of difficulty
One of the priests in my first year of formation for the priesthood, Fr Marius Banks, was terribly keen on growing vegetables. Once he bought some very special cabbage seeds - very expensive, costing about R1 each. I don’t know if you know, but cabbage seeds are incredibly small, so small that if you put them on the soil they are immediately invisible. He planted them out and carefully watched their progress. To his dismay three of the 20 seeds didn’t come up. He had a wonderful sense of humour and went back to the shopkeeper and asked for a refund on the 3 seeds that didn’t come up. The shopkeeper’s sense of humour certainly matched Fr Marius’ because he told Fr Marius to bring back the 3 seeds that didn’t come up and he would swap them for new ones.
Perhaps, at times, you can identify with the feeling of being overwhelmed by the circumstances of life? Perhaps you, like so many of us, struggle at times to make sense of it all? For many of us, it is sometimes difficult to see how Christian faith interacts with our life and circumstances? If this is a fair description of what you have felt at times or if you are currently overwhelmed, the readings for Mass this Sunday can speak to you. We might easily fall into the trap of thinking that the Scriptures come out of an idyllic context, but that is simply not true. In fact, the power and relevance of the Word of God is precisely in that it speaks into our lives and context.
You see, the first reading today from the prophet Ezekiel was written in a time of utter devastation for the people. At the time of Ezekiel’s prophecy, around 600 years before the birth of Jesus, the Babylonians had conquered the Kingdom and taken most of the leadership into exile, leaving behind a kind of puppet state. Now the Babylonians were about to re-conquer them and take the rest of the people into exile. And yet, despite the depressing and gloomy outlook, Ezekiel, in faith, gives a prophecy of hope: he speaks of a return from exile and a restoration of the Kingdom of David. And the imagery that is used for this is that of a sprig, a twig, small like a mustard seed, which when planted on the mountain of Israel, becomes a huge cedar tree and bears fruit and gives shelter to the birds and other animals.
Encouraged by this prophecy of Ezekiel we can read a promise of God raising us up again out of our times of difficulty. A remnant of Israel eventually returned to their homeland and the Kingdom of David was rebuilt. Can it be said that we are the sprig, the tender shoot, the mustard seed from which God will renew and sustain his Church?
This painful context into which Ezekiel gave a prophecy of hope is not unlike the one in which Jesus lived and taught. Remember they were occupied by the Romans who violently and severely oppressed them. And also, at the time Mark wrote his Gospel, reporting these words of Jesus, Christians were under serious persecution. They had been rejected by the Jewish religious leaders and they were being persecuted and martyred by the Romans.
The public ministry of Jesus begins with the proclamation that “the Kingdom of God is at hand” and much of his preaching and certainly the content of his parables has this central theme. What does it mean to say that the Kingdom of God is at hand for us here today?
Perhaps one of the best ways in which we can identify the presence and action of the Kingdom of God among us is in the line from St Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, which we have for our second reading today: “We walk by faith and not by sight”. To ‘walk by faith and not by sight,’ means living in faith, trusting the bigger picture to God, not despairing; it means persevering in good works. To ‘walk by faith’ means acknowledging the Kingdom of God among us, at work, growing and spreading. To ‘walk by faith’ means clinging to hope despite the difficulties we face. To ‘walk by faith’ means that we are attentive to God and the movements of God, which most often cannot be observed by sight.
In his teaching, Jesus uses parables to give us insights into the nature of the Kingdom of God. These parables are simple stories, using imagery which would have been very familiar to the people of his time. So often the images refer to farming, and the planting of crops or the keeping of sheep.
Today we have two such parables about the Kingdom of God. I’m sure most you have had the experience of planting seeds and watching the seedlings push through the soil. Or in primary school when we planted bean seeds in cotton wool and each day we lifted the top layer to see the progress of germination - first the radicle, then side roots with fine root hairs, then the shoot and finally the leaves. Then we would have planted the seedling out in the soil and experienced the delight of flowers and finally pods of fresh beans.
Of course when you plant seeds directly into the soil, there is the mystery of waiting to see the shoot pushing up out of the soil, not knowing what is going on underground. ...Ok, forgive my enthusiasm ... I am a bit of a farmer. This mystery and delight in the growing of seeds is what Jesus wants to tap into in explaining the Kingdom to us.
So what does the germination of seeds and the growing of crops have to do with the Kingdom of God? Well, the first parable is a story about the growth of the Church. We are responsible for planting the seed. The seed is the Word of God that we are called to proclaim. The rest is God’s work.
The Kingdom of God is not a physical or political entity. It is a mysterious, spiritual reality which permeates our lives. It is a reality in which the reign of God is acknowledged within each one of us and in the world as a whole. Remember, Jesus said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.”
The second parable is about the mustard seed principle. In this spiritual world of the Kingdom of God, small or little is beautiful and good – these are the mustard seeds. Small expressions of faith, love, trust, and goodness, are valuable because they germinate and grow into greater things. In this life we walk by faith and not by sight, and our small steps of faith and expressions of faith, however weak and inadequate we deem them to be, are valuable. The promise of Jesus’s parable is that these mustard seeds contribute to something much greater and more beautiful, something mysterious, and which is entirely dependent on God.
Because we walk by faith and not by sight, we don’t see the whole and the progress of the Kingdom of God appears mysterious to us, much like the germination and growth of seeds beneath the soil. The Kingdom of God has a life and force which is not dependent on us; it is a God-dependent thing; and we are invited to be part of it, however small our contribution.
One of the parable-like images that I have about the Kingdom of God is the expression of beauty and goodness which I saw in some video footage about 30 years ago. In the black and white documentary film a Missionary of Charity sister was nursing an emaciated dying man in an abandoned Hindu temple that had been converted into a house for the dying. The footage captured a look on the man’s face that is unforgettable. There was a glow on his face and in his eyes, as he gazed up into the sister’s face.
Small acts of faith in beauty and goodness, like that sister caring for a dying, emaciated man, giving him dignity and compassion, germinate and grow to be part of a greater reality, the Kingdom of God, which will eventually flood like river, breaking its banks, and take over our lives and our world. So, take heart! We walk by faith and not by sight. Don’t be overwhelmed; don’t give into despair in difficult times. Consider that we have a responsibility to be that remnant of Israel, that sprig or tender shoot, a mustard seed from which there will be a renewal of the Church.