Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Ezekiel 17:22-24, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, Mark 4:26-34
The Reign of God is like…
Dear friends, in today’s Gospel (Mark 4:26-34) we are invited to reflect on two beautiful and meaningful parables of the reign of God. (I call it “reign” rather than “kingdom” as the term reign has a neutral connotation than the kingdom).
The reign of God has, as Jesus explains, a small beginning; like that of a seed, planted in the field, or on the mountaintop (Ezekiel 17:22-24), a weak, seemingly lifeless seed. But as soon as it is planted, it begins to show its capabilities; it germinates and brings forth life and grows, one day at a time… slowly… silently…. The reign of God is working among us silently, yet powerfully.
Many times we are unaware of it, for the reign of God is not as tangible as we think. It is not visible to our physical eyes, rather it is something that we experience in our daily lives, where we see a blind person is helped to cross the road, where a hungry person is given food to eat, where a naked person is given clothes to wear and where justice is done for an innocent person wrongly convicted. It is there we see the reign of God.
Having said that, we all are the instruments in spreading this reign of God in our own life-style and as Christians, we have a stronger obligation, for we have experienced that reign of God in the life of Jesus himself. The very life of Jesus is a striking example of the reality of the reign of God. The powerful and spectacular reign of God is visible through Jesus’ way of living, where he accepted everyone at the table. He reached out to those whom the “society” had rejected, and he touched the lives of those whom nobody cared about. That is the reality of the reign of God and many times we as Christians are guilty of being unresponsive to this reign of God in our own lives.
Let us then, dear friends, see how this reign of God may be made real in our own lives here and now. How am I able “accept” this reign of God in my own life? How am I able to “live” this reign of God in my daily life? How am I able to “witness” this reign of God to my fellow human being? And finally, how am I able to be a true messenger of this reign of God; a real seed that grows and shelters the birds of the air? If we are able to do this in our everyday lives, then we are not far from the reign of God, the power of God’s love.