| Readings: | Ezekiel 17:22-24 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 Mark 4:26-34 |
| Date: | June 16, 2024, Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B |
On behalf of Fr. Jeff and all the staff, a most blessed Father's day to all those who are fathers or who act as a father in someone's life.
Today's readings help us to understand the firm basis we have for hope and trust in God. Because we are also celebrating Fathers' Day today, they reminded me of something I have experienced as a father that I don't think I have ever shared with anyone, and that is being responsible for family car trips. Both Betsy and I are from New York; I am from the Bronx and Betsy from Tarrytown and we both have family in that area. So since we moved here to Stow in 1975, we have made that trip between Stow and somewhere around the Tappen Zee bridge area hundreds of times. I know this can vary from family to family but for us it just worked out that I was 'in charge' of all the car aspects of the trips: making sure the vehicle was properly serviced and fueled up, getting everything packed that we needed, and the driving. Betsy and I never discussed that, it just worked out that way in our family and looking back, I took great pride in that. When the kids were younger, we usually arranged things so that, especially on the trips home, we would travel at night. Tthat ensure a quieter, less stressful, ride because the kids would sleep, and most times Betsy would also fall asleep. She claimed that she would wake up if I went over 75 because the she could feel the blood draining to the back of her head. For some reason, driving north through the dark on I-84, often times with no other cars visible in either direction with my family asleep in the car gave me this very mystical feeling that was a mix of awareness of the responsibility I had in that moment, gratefulness that I somehow was able to fulfill that responsibily, and a wonderful feeling of 'fathering' because everyone in that car implicitly trusted me to get them home safely.
Today's readings invite us to put that level of complete trust in God's ability to bring to completion his plan for the salvation of creation.
That first reading from Ezekiel is God speaking to his people while they are exiled in Babylon for 70 years. God's promise that the Israelites would be his people and He would be their God seems to them to have been destroyed in the destruction of Jerusalem and their exile from the promised land. But through Ezekiel, God assures them that he has not forgotten them or his earlier promises.
Jesus speaks these two parables from Mark's Gospel to the Jews 600 years later. God had renewed the promise made through Ezekiel by bringing them home from Babylon to their homeland but now they are under the often brutal hand of the Romans. They are tired of always being subjugated and are impatient for God to remember His promise to make them flourish. There is a group of Jews called the Zealots who wanted to try to overthrow Roman rule now by any means, including revolution. They wanted to know if Jesus was the promised Messiah who would, in their understanding, free them from Roman rule. One commentator on the Gospel said that in pushing Jesus to lead an uprising now, they were speaking those words that no parent wants to hear on a trip: Are we there yet?
In answer, Jesus tells that first parable we heard today. It is sometimes called the parable of the Patient Farmer. Jesus is assuring them that God will fulfill His promise, but in God's time.Even though a farmer cannot speed up the harvest, he has to be actively patient, making sure that the ground is well prepared for the seed, that the crops are adequately watered and weeded, and ready to harvest when the crops are ready. Like that farmer, we are to wait vigilantly and actively for God's plan to unfold.
And together that first reading and the second parable from Mark remind us that God can bring forth the most magnificent, impressive things from the tiniest, most insignificant ones.
Two thousand years later, we see what God made grow from that tiny band of disciples from a backwater part of a tiny occupied nation on the fringes of the Roman empire. . Today the Church is in every part of the earth, consisting of 1.4 billion members from every country and language and status. And it is not done yet. Sorry kids, we are not there yet.
But on this Father's day, let us put all our trust in our heavenly Father. Let us be vigilant and do what we are called to do knowing all along we can be certain that with our Father in heaven at the wheel, we will get there, safely and securely.