11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In 1876 the US Department of Agriculture imported a Japanese vine named kudzu to United States to help stabilize eroding hillsides. The vines grow exceptionally fast and produce dense vegetation that protects loose soil from water and wind but also blocks sunlight from anything that tries to grow below it. Lacking any predators or natural competition, kudzu will rapidly smother shrubs, trees, rocks and even houses and cars. In the course of only a few years, Kudzu’s range expanded throughout the Southeast. Only the drier climate farther west and the colder winters farther north halted its expanse. It is, as one author described it, the “vine that ate the South.”

This is what Jesus had in mind when he compared the Kingdom of God to a mustard plant. A mustard plant, if planted in your garden and left untended, had a tendency to take over the garden and become a sort of a weed. It was this tenacity of the Kingdom of God that Jesus is trying to highlight in this parable. Now I’m sure that all of us have at one point or another fought a running battle with weeds in our garden, and no matter what we throw them, they keep on coming back – you just cannot kill them off. This is a wonderful metaphor for the resilience of the Kingdom of God – no matter how much we as humans try to thwart the plan of God for humanity, God’s Kingdom will survive and will ultimately triumph. But the Kingdom is not just a weed, it is also useful, as the leaves of the mustard plant were considered medicinal and of course the mustard seed served as a piquant condiment. Similarly, however undesirable, kudzu also served many other purposes apart from combatting soil erosion and was used as an animal feed, used in making soaps and lotions and was composted. The Kingdom of God may look like a scraggly mustard plant or overgrown vine, but it is both medicinal and useful.

This parable, along with the first one in today’s gospel, should give us enormous hope, because they both encourage us not to set store by appearances. The mustard seed is the smallest of seeds, and we might be inclined to simply dismiss it as an insignificant player in the flora of a garden. But the truth is that is contains hidden within its smallness and insignificance the power to take over a garden. It only takes a few good acts and good deeds for the Kingdom to arrive in our midst.

This hidden power of the Kingdom of God to simply arrive in our midst is what Jesus is alluding to in the first parable we hear in today’s gospel. Jesus describes a farmer who sows a seed that then grows in a mysterious and hidden manner that eludes the grasp of the farmer, who simply has to come along and harvest the fruit when it is ready. There is a certain type of Chinese bamboo that requires five years from the time of its planting to the time that it first sprouts a green shoot. However, from the time it first peeks above the ground as a green shoot, it only takes 6 weeks for it to reach a height of 30 metres. We might wonder what the seed is doing for five years before it sprouts its first shoot? Well it turns out that it is not just lying dormant underground. Rather it is establishing an elaborate and extended root system, which is precisely what enables it to reach a height of 30 metres a mere 6 weeks after having sprouted. The hidden power of the Kingdom of God has much to do with its root structure.

These parables challenge us as Christians not to lose hope when things look down and out. We need to remind ourselves that what we are seeing as a hopeless situation is only the top half of a tree. We are not seeing the roots, we are not seeing the silent, hidden work of the Holy Spirit who is quietly preparing a counter-attack on the forces of evil in this world that are thwarting the plans of God. This is why it is so important for us as Christians to be rooted in the Holy Spirit and in Christ. It is this root system that provides the growth and sustenance that we need when above the ground all seems lost and doomed. We would do well in these times to remember the words of the psalmist: “In vain is your earlier rising, in vain is your going later to rest, you who toil for the bread you eat, when he pours gifts on his beloved while they slumber,” Ps. 127:2. We are invited to be like the farmer, who can go to sleep at night in the confident knowledge that even while he is asleep, God is at work in his field, nourishing and sustaining his crop. This is the GOOD NEWS, we don’t have to do it all by ourselves, we can do away with the stress that comes with our messianic-complexes which convince us that we need to save ourselves and save the world. We can rest easy at night knowing that if God can bring out a huge shrub from the smallest of seeds, well then God can also bring about the transformation of my life and the lives of those around me through the small grain of hope and faith that live in me.

Questions for Reflection

1. Do I allow myself to get agitated when I feel that I am stuck in a rut, where I seem to be treading water and going nowhere?
2. Have I recently been surprised by the hidden work of God, gently showing me that I am not alone in my efforts to save the world and myself?
3. Where have I recently seen the resilience of hope, either in another person or in myself, a hope that simply refuses to die, refuses to be stamped out, like a weed that keeps on coming back?