Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time Cycle B June 16, 2024

 Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time   Cycle B     June 16, 2024

Do you like rhetorical questions?  …  We have a lot of University type people here, being so close to the prestigious University of Texas, so I am going to assume that most of you like, appreciate, or at least are comfortable with rhetorical questions.  

That is good because in today’s Gospel Jesus asks a rhetorical question.  “He said, ‘To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it?”   A wonderful rhetorical question. 

Now if I had heard this question without knowing the parable, I probably would have chosen some large, grandiose, impressive, terribly dramatic and important image as a comparison of the Kingdom of God.  Isn’t that what you would expect, something magnificent and impressive and divine??

But Jesus gives a surprising answer, which is of course, the mustard seed.  The Kingdom of God, presumably something enormously grandiose and of the utmost crucial significance, is ….. like a mustard seed?  ¿ A tiny, insignificant, barely visible, mustard seed? 

Jesus admits that it is the smallest of seeds.   And because it is so small it seems insignificant and of little or no value.  And left just to itself, the mustard seed is pretty inconsequential and of little worth. 

But, “once it is sown”, … “once it is sown”, it then “springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” 

The important factor here is that little phrase, “once it is sown”.   Without being sown, that is, planted in the earth, it remains tiny and insignificant.  But once it is planted in the earth, and watered, and cultivated, “it springs up and become the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”

But it first has to be sown.  It has to be planted.  Otherwise it remains just a tiny, teenee, insignificant seed.  //

 

Brothers and Sisters, you and I have been given one of those mustard seeds.  Those tiny, little, insignificant seeds.  It is the gift of faith.  The gift of faith when given to us is small.  It is even tiny.  It is almost nothing.  Certainly not big and showy and impressive.

If you do nothing with that seed it remains insignificant, a nothing.  But if you take that seed and sow it, you plant it, and water it with prayer, and fertilize it with self-control, and tend it with generosity and care of others, that faith will grow.  It will develop and blossom, and your faith will do good things, and other people will be blessed by it. 

If you take the faith that you have, even if it is pretty insignificant and tiny, and you put it into practice, you let it guide you, and you start prioritizing your time according to your little bit of faith, then it will grow. 

Then you will have the faith to reach out, to start offering shade and rest to those who are weary and tired and ready to give up.  And as your faith is used it will grow and become a beautiful plant that harbors life and harmony. 

And then Kingdom of God will truly be within you.   AMEN.