The Sánchez Archives ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME Year B

By
Patricia Datchuck Sánchez

Yours the Kingdom, Yours the Power, Yours the Glory!

EZEKIEL 17:22-24
2 CORINTHIANS 5:6-10
MARK 4:26-34

British New Testament scholar, Charles H. Dodd (1884-1973 C.E.) has given the church its most classic and enduring definition of a parable: “a metaphor or simile drawn from nature or common life, arresting the hearer by its vividness or strangeness, and leaving the mind in sufficient doubt about its precise application to tease it into active thought” (The Parables of the Kingdom, Fontana Books, London: 1961). Both the first reading (Ezekiel) and gospel (Mark) for today’s liturgy engage the gathered assembly in a consideration of the form and function of the parable.

Parables are specific literary forms, told for a particular religious or ethical purpose in order to provoke thought and challenge their hearers to decisive action. Every parable has two levels of meaning, the literal meaning and the tropical or figurative meaning. Whereas the literal meaning is direct and forthright, readers of the parables must allow themselves to be “teased into active thought” so as to deduce the true and deeper, less obvious lesson of the parable.

For example, at first glance, both Ezekiel and Mark appear to be offering their readers some agricultural or horticultural information. But, as is the character of the parable, there is further, yet to be discovered meaning beyond the images of trees and seeds. Those who, in faith, accept the invitation of the parable to look beyond the words and images will find therein a message about the reign of God.

Ezekiel describes the lopping off of a tender shoot from the top of a cedar. Planted on a high mountain, it struck roots and grew into a majestic tree. The Marcan Jesus relates the manner in which a farmer goes about the task of sowing and cultivating seed. “Without his knowing how it happens,” the seed grows, steadily and surely, until it has become a great crop, ripe for the harvest. The key to understanding this Marcan parable and Ezekiel’s imagery is to realize exactly who is responsible for the growth of both tree and seed, viz., God. Perhaps these parables are intended to tweak and challenge the attitudes of those who labor for the sake of the kingdom. While each has a definite contribution to make, no one person is so absolutely necessary that the kingdom will fail in his/her absence. The kingdom will grow and develop “without our knowing how it happens” and in spite of all our faults and foibles because it belongs to, originates in and is ever attended by God.

Paul (second reading) understood this very well and was content to give of himself, without stinting, for the sake of the reign of God. Nevertheless, as important as he was in establishing a network of churches, Paul did not think that the success of the kingdom depended solely on him. Content to do his best, he left the rest to God, and rather than pray for a longer lifespan so as to further develop his ministry, or fret at the fact that he wouldn’t always be around to “call the shots”, he longed to be at home with God.

Closer to our own times, another great minister of the reign of God has offered us his balanced perspective concerning his respective role in God’s great plan. Pope John XXIII who initiated the process of putting the church in touch with the twentieth century once said, “The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness have always kept me good company.” After John XXIII called for a Second Vatican Council, the enormity of the task at hand began to weigh upon him and rob him of sleep. . . So many people, so many issues, so many concerns, so much work to be done. Peace and restful nights finally came to the pontiff when he admitted, “Listen Lord, this church is yours, not mine. I’m going to sleep.”

EZEKIEL 17:22-24

Great trees, massive living giants, deeply rooted in the earth, their boughs stretched wide across the horizon offering leafy shelter to myriads of birds, have been a favorite subject of poets and artists for centuries. Dendrochronologists (scientists who can discern the age of trees and the climate they have endured by reading growth rings) continually fascinate the public with their discoveries. For example, the oldest living tree, a bristlecone pine called Methuselah, has been estimated to have lived for 4,600 years in the California White Mountains. A redwood tree, 364 feet tall with a girth of 47 feet is reputed to be 3000 years old. A recently felled Sequoia was calculated to have been a seedling 271 years before Christ. Damaged by a forest fire 516 years later, the tree was fully healed and healthy again within a century. Because of its strength and endurance, the great tree, with birds in its branches, became an apt symbol for the great empires which held sway over the world (Daniel 4:10-12; Ezekiel p: 17:1, 31). The toppling of a tree or the lopping off of its branches was a way of describing the demise of an empire; the rooting of a tree or a branch signified the ascendancy of another power.

In order to understand today’s first reading, its literary and historical context warrant some consideration. Literarily, these verses form the conclusion of a longer symbolic description of the approaching downfall of Judah ca 590 B.C.E. Historically, Babylon had taken Jehoiachin captive. As king of Judah, he was symbolized by the topmost twig of the tree, snapped off and carried away by a great eagle, Nebuchadnezzer, king of Babylon (Ezekiel 17:3-4). Within approximately thirty years, Babylon’s power began to wane. Ezekiel saw this as a sign of hope and added a coda (vv. 22-23) to his previous poem (vv.1-21)

No longer a decapitated tree, grown rotten by abuse, Judah was envisioned by the prophet as being given another chance to flourish. Ezekiel promised that God would take a shoot from the old rotten cedar and plant it on Mount Zion. There, under the watchful care of God, the shoot would grow into a mighty tree and extend its branches in welcome to “every winged thing.” Later in his career, Ezekiel would return to this vision to encourage his contemporaries not to lose hope in the future (Ezekiel 31:3-9). Daniel, also, would use similar imagery, a few centuries later to strengthen his correligionists in their resistance to the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes III, ca. 167-164 B.C.E. (Daniel 4:11-14).

As Thierry Maertens and Jean Frisque (Guide For the Christian Assembly, Fides Publishers, Inc., Notre Dame, IN: 1970) have noted, other prophetic traditions compared the king and also the messiah to a tree (Judges 9:7-21, Daniel 4:7-9, Ezekiel 31:8-9), thereby personalizing the theme and introducing the notion that all the people may derive benefit through the life of a single person.

The tiny shoot from which a great tree grew has also been compared to the remnant or anawim, the poor ones who would survive all of life’s difficulties (war, exile, etc.) because of their faith in God. Through them, God would raise up a people to welcome the messiah. In them, would be preserved the Davidic dynasty because God’s promises do not go unfulfilled (2 Samuel 7:14).

As a prelude to today’s gospel, Ezekiel’s words plant the seeds of hope and prepare his readers for welcoming and understanding Jesus’ parables about the reign of God in the gospel. Regardless of all obstacles, the reign of God will flourish and grow, “without our knowing exactly how it happens,” because God is a faithful and fastidious caretaker.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:6-10

Statistics taken recently purport that 80% of American women and 60% of American men are dissatisfied with their bodies. People regard themselves as too fat or too thin, too wrinkled, too grey, too pale, too dark, too short or too tall, out of shape, etc. etc. etc. On the market, there is a plethora of corresponding remedies for each and all of these real and/or imagined conditions. The Corinthians, and others of the ancient world, influenced by Greco-Roman philosophy and anthropology, were also dissatisfied with their bodies, but for an entirely different reason. . . and for them, there was no remedy except death.

Recall the Greco-Roman notion that the body was a valueless piece of corporeality, weighing down the soul. According to one ancient thinker, “The body is a tomb.” Plotinus, the father of Neoplatonism, professed to be ashamed that he had a body. Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher said of himself, “Thou art a poor soul, burdened with a corpse.” Seneca, a Spanish born Roman stateman and tutor of Nero wrote, “I am a higher being and born for higher things than to be the slave of my body which I look upon as only a shackle upon my freedom. . . In so detestable a habitation dwells the free soul.” Amid all this gloom and doom, Christianity injected a positive message. Again and again, Paul would refute those who would negate the value of the body by reminding them that Christ became incarnate, taking on flesh and blood to redeem humanity, soul and body. Christ gave his body as a loving sacrifice for sin and has risen in the body to everlasting glory. Therefore, those who are baptized into Christ’s dying and rising have become not corpses, slaves or detestable habitations but temples of the very Spirit of God - holy people, holy places, holy bodies.

In this short pericope from his Corinthian correspondence, Paul reminds his readers that, at the end of this life on earth, God, who will replace our earthly tent or body with a heavenly or spiritual body (2 Corinthians 5:1), will also hold each person accountable for the life they have lived “in the body” (v. 10). Therefore, rather than live in shame of the body or foolishly waste energy attempting to escape it, believers are to thrust themselves, body and soul into the task of committed Christian living. Then, when all is revealed before the tribunal of Christ (v. 10), those acquitted by the blood of Jesus will be welcomed home by God.

The Greek word for tribunal is bema which means judgment seat. William Barclay (“Corinthians”, The Daily Study Bible, St. Andrew Press, Edinburgh: 1974) explained that Paul may have been thinking of the tribunal of the Roman magistrate before which he himself had stood, or he could have been thinking of the Greek system of justice. In Greece, all citizens were eligible to sit in judgment of their peers. When called for judicial duty, each person was given two bronze discs. Each disc had a cylindrical axis; one axis was solid and stood for acquittal. The other was hollow and signified condemnation. On the bema stood two urns. The first one was made of bronze and was called the “decisive urn”; into it, the juror dropped the disc that stood for his verdict. The other, made of wood, was for collecting the other disc. Since the discs looked exactly alike and since each juror dropped a disc in each urn, no one knew how anyone had voted until the discs were examined and counted.

But, whereas the Romans system of justice was meted out by magistrates and the Greek system was managed by peers, Paul assures his readers that there is only one decisive tribunal for believers, viz., that of Jesus Christ. Until the time we are called before Christ’s tribunal, each of us is “free on bail”, as it were; having been redeemed body and soul by Jesus, we are to prove ourselves grateful by living upright, moral and responsible lives.

MARK 4:26-34

In addition to the parable of the sower (vv.26-29) and its lesson that the reign of God will develop and flourish (even without our knowing how it happens) because God gives and sustains its growth, Mark has offered his readers as second parable today. When he compared the reign of God to a mustard seed that grows into a large shrub, Jesus borrowed an example from the everyday lives of his contemporaries. Mustard seeds were small seeds and, when planted, could grow into a healthy shrub standing six to ten feet tall. Botanists may argue, and correctly so, that mustard seeds are not the smallest of all seeds, nor do they grow into the largest of shrubs. Moreover birds probably would not build nests in a shrub, but they are fond of perching momentarily in the shade of the mustard plant so as to pluck and eat its seeds. As Daniel Harrington (“Mark”, The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs: 1990) has suggested, “Concern for literalism should not obscure the basic point” of the parable. With the images of the mustard seed and large shrub, Jesus assured his followers that even though the reign of God among them seemed to have a small and insignificant beginning, it would surely and steadily be fully developed and realized.

The reference to the birds of the sky building nests (v. 32) is reminiscent of the first reading from Ezekiel and a similar text in Daniel (4:20-22). As C. H. Dodd (op. cit.) once explained, such images signified the universal scope of the kingdom, in that all of humankind, saints and sinners, Jews and gentiles, are embraced by God’s saving reign. Therefore, this parable could be likened to that of the great banquet (Matthew 22:1-13, Luke 14:16-24) to which absolutely every person is invited.

At its first level of development, during the ministry of Jesus, the mustard seed parable probably served to encourage the disciples in their efforts for the reign of God and to defend the fact that Jesus chose to associate with sinners and outcasts. At its second level of development, the parable assured the Marcan community of the sixties that even persecution by an antagonistic power (Rome, during Nero’s reign) could not squelch the realization of God’s reign and, that gentiles, as well as Jews, would find a welcome (build their nest) therein.

Like all parables, the mustard seed continues to speak to the contemporary church, reminding us that the reign of God, proleptically present (here, but not yet finalized) will one day be definitively and universally realized in every believing heart and acclaimed by every faithful voice. . . because it is God’s reign, and God, who calls all things into being, gives the growth. . . “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. . .”

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