Fr Eugene Lobo SJ –
Sixteenth Sunday of the Year July 23, 2023
Wisdom 12:13.16-19 Romans 8:26-27 Matthew 13:24-43
Humankind has a constant but strange fascination with the exercise of power. Our world history presents us with details of human persons craving for power. In this context today’s liturgy makes a vital point. Power at its best is not external ostentation that makes people seek all control, but the interior reality that seeks to imitate the power of God and transforms the individual and the world. Power considered negatively leads a person to judge the other only to discover later how wrong we are in such an act. Instead of judging who is good and holy and who is not, we ourselves remain good and holy and leave the rest to God who sees every person in a benevolent way. Our understanding must radically change if we are to comprehend what God wants us to understand. We often run the danger of categorizing things as good and bad based on only the outward appearances.
The First Reading of today tells us about the love of God and the divine power which has mastery over everything and directed at gradually steering people toward the path of life. He cares about everyone, shining in righteousness and has patience towards all. Righteousness is His strength and he will not judge anyone unjustly. In His Divine righteousness, God provides all of us with the opportunity to be saved. When some are arrogant, doubting the power of God, He shows them His strength. Through such actions, He teaches His people that the righteous must be kind. He fills His children with good hope because He freely gives to all who repent of their sins. The all-knowing God knows every human weakness. In their weakness, people misuse the freedom granted them by God.
Speaking to the Roman Community Paul says that we weak human beings do not know how to fulfill the most basic Christian duties, namely to pray as we ought. Prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned towards heaven; it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy. Most people confine their idea of prayer to petition. We ask God for something we need and often we do not know what the best thing we must ask is. For Paul, the fact that we do not know how to pray as we ought to cause no concern, provided we let the spirit to come to our aid and do the needful. The spirit is within us, appealing to the Father on our behalf and enables us to call God Abba Father. Yet he tells us that as humans we do struggle against the flesh. The spirit indeed groans within us as we pray to our Father through Jesus. God the Father searches the hearts of Christians at prayer.
In the gospel of today we have the Kingdom Parables of Jesus. Kingdom in the Gospel does not refer to a place, either here or hereafter. The Greek word basileia is better translated as ‘kingship’, or ‘reign’, or ‘rule’, so some translations speak of the ‘Reign of God’. The Kingdom is primarily an environment, it is a set of relationships, and it is a situation where God’s values prevail. The divine values in practice are nothing but the deepest human values and aspirations as mirrored in the life of Jesus, who is himself the revelation of God to us in accessible human form. These values include truth, love, compassion, justice, a sense of solidarity with all other human beings, a sense of trust in other, a deep respect for the dignity of every other human person, a holistic concept of human growth and development.
The parables in this passage tend to emphasize the mysterious ways in which the kingdom grows. Especially highlighted is how something can begin very tiny and end up very big. Here we have three images or parables of the Kingdom at work among us. The first is the parable of the weeds among the wheat that explains about the judgment and who makes it. The wheat sown in the field is understood to be good and weed sown by the enemy is bad. The Householder’s slaves judged the weed to be bad and wanted to cut them down which is logical. The owner surprisingly says no and mandates that they should be left to grow together. Judgment will be rendered at the end and then only by the owner and not the slaves. The point is that the judgment between the wheat and the weeds is not easy and hasty judgment can be disastrous. A second point is that final judgment can be made only by the owner.
The Kingdom of God clearly calls people to attain the highest ideals and greatest generosity. It also calls for a great measure of tolerance, patience and understanding in seeing the Kingdom become a reality. The conversion of our societies into Kingdom-like communities is a very gradual process. There is always the danger that, when people try to take God or the good life seriously, they become elitist. We Christians, simply as Christians, can feel ourselves to be superior to those of other religions. Today’s parable far from being remote touches comprehensively the deep areas of our lives. The coming of the Kingdom then is not going to be a neat and tidy process.
The next two parables point to two other characteristics of the Kingdom. The parable of the mustard seed shows that the work of the Kingdom has tiny beginnings but ends with extraordinarily large results. There is no attempt to explain how this happens. There is nothing about it that would attract attention, wonder and admiration. It takes place in a quiet way. Such is the kingdom of heaven. Its growth is miraculous and mysterious and rooted in the things of our common experience. The challenge is always to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. The parable also reflects on the Church established by Christ and its spectacular growth. Wherever the vision of the Kingdom becomes truly rooted, it will experience certain and inevitable growth. This is because the vision of the Kingdom is not a narrow, religious one but an expression of the deepest aspirations of all human beings.
In the third parable, the Kingdom is compared to a small amount of yeast in a large batch of dough. Its presence cannot be easily detected for it is totally blended with and is part of its environment. In Palestine bread was baked a home. Three measures of dough meant the amount needed for baking bread sufficient for a large family. Leaven was a little piece of dough kept over from previous baking, which had fermented in the keeping. It may have started out small but it quickly expands into a monumental size. Perhaps Jesus had seen Mary doing this precious little job often enough and used it as an example of his kingdom. However, in Jewish language leaven was often connected with evil influence. That is why at the Passover meal no leaven was used and as a preparation for the feast every bit of leaven was taken out and burnt. Jesus may have deliberately used the example to shock people and draw their attention to indicate how silently and quietly the kingdom grows in spite of the evil.
Summing up the three parables we see a specific development of God’s Kingdom among us. The Kingdom of God is going to be, on the whole, a messy business in which the good and bad, the strong and the weak, the clean and the corrupt will rub shoulder to shoulder both inside the Church and its communities and outside it. To try to create islands of absolute integrity is not realistic and is even self-defeating. Secondly, no matter how small the beginnings, if we are faithful to the spirit and values of the Kingdom, we can be sure that apparently difficult obstacles, threats and even dangers can be overcome. Finally, a Kingdom-community, even though very small, can exert a real influence on the growth of the environment of which it is fully a part and be instrumental in spreading Kingdom values as the accepted values.
A man was out walking in the desert when a voice said to him, “Pick up some pebbles and put them in your pocket, and tomorrow you will be both happy and sad.” The man obeyed. He stooped down and picked up a handful of pebbles and put them in his pocket. The next morning, he reached into his pocket and found diamonds and rubies and emeralds. And he was both happy and sad. Happy he had taken some – sad that he hadn’t taken more.
There is a story about a young man and an old preacher. The young man had lost his job and didn’t know which way to turn. So, he went to see the old preacher. Pacing about the preacher’s study, the young man ranted about his problem. Finally, he clenched his fist and shouted, “I’ve begged God to say something to help me. Tell me, Preacher, why doesn’t God answer?” The old preacher, who sat across the room, spoke something in reply – something so hushed it was indistinguishable. The young man stepped across the room. “What did you say?” he asked. The preacher repeated himself, but again in a tone as soft as a whisper. So, the young man moved closer until he was leaning on the preacher’s chair. “Sorry,” he said. “I still didn’t hear you.” With their heads bent together, the old preacher spoke once more. “God sometimes whispers,” he said, “so we will move closer to hear Him.” This time the young man heard and he understood. We all want God’s voice to thunder through the air with the answer to our problem. But God’s is the still, small voice… the gentle whisper. Perhaps there’s a reason. Nothing draws human focus quite like a whisper. God’s whisper means I must stop my ranting and move close to Him, until my head is bent together with His. Then, as I listen, I will find my answer. Better still, I find myself closer to God.