Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 13, 2021 – Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34

What was your favorite childhood story? When you were about four years old, able to read a little bit, but still rather having mommy or daddy read to you. What was your favorite story? I had two. “The Little Engine That Could.” (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.) And a little book called “The Weehawken, Hoboken, and Troy Railroad.” It might be because of those stories that I loved Lionel trains so much, when I was an older little boy. But, whatever your favorite was, it might have been “The Three Little Pigs.” Or it might have been “The Three Bears.” Or “Goldilocks.” Or “Little Red Riding Hood.” Or, for later generations, maybe “Good Night Moon.” Or “The Cat in the Hat.” But, whatever it was, you always wanted to hear that story. Tell me that story again. Read me that story again. Because those stories have very simple plots, easy to follow what goes on in the story. They build quickly to a climax. The climax is almost always delightful, pleasant. It sets off those endorphins. That’s why you tell them when it gets close to sleep time, because it puts you in the mood to go to sleep.
That’s one way of understanding the parables of Jesus. They are short stories that have a simple plot that meets quickly to a climax and a surprise ending that’s almost always a happy ending, or at least a surprise to the listeners. That’s what we have in today’s stories. I asked you if there was a farmer in the second story. The first story begins with a man who went out to sow some seeds. There’s the farmer right there. At the end of the story he wields the sickle because the corn has come to maturity.

Where’s the farmer in the second story? He’s not mentioned by name. But this is how the story begins. “The mustard seed that, when it is sown, is the smallest seed.” That’s called the passive voice. The seed is sown by ___ - fill in the blank. If the seed is sown, someone must have sown it. But it’s important to recognize that Jesus puts the second farmer in the passive voice, to push him even further out of the story. Because in both stories, there are two actors - the farmer and God. The one is obvious and visible, the other is invisible but it is God that is at work behind the scenes. We know now a lot more about the biology of farming than the ancients did. So, for them it was a great mystery. The mystery was put at God’s feet. You plant the seed, God just let’s it grow, and then you do your work again at the end. So what Jesus has done is create two stories in which there has to be some human effort at the beginning and end, but the whole rest of it is in God’s hands.

And that’s what our lives are all about. What do we do for a living, if we’re still working? How do we do it? Who do we do it for? Who do we do it with? If we’re already retired, then, what did we used to do? And who did we do it with, and for, and how did we do it? And whom did it benefit? And even those things that are not part of occupations - our hobbies, our interests - what got us interested in them? How well or poorly do we do them? Why do we do them? What joy or pleasure do we get from them?

This is the way that the seed is sown for the faith as well. Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, used to say, “Don’t worry about doing great things. Do little things with great devotion.” Almost a century later, another St. Theresa, Theresa of Calcutta, said the same thing pretty much. “Do little things, but do them with great love.” About four centuries before those two people, St. Francis de Sales said pretty much the same thing. “Do every day things with great devotion.” That’s us as well.

It’s interesting that Therese of Lisieux spent her young life in a cloistered convent, never really dealing with the outside world, but dealing with the politics of the cloister, and the rivalries between women, and then dealing with her own illness. She knew what she was talking about. The other Theresa spent most of her time on the filthy, dirty streets of Calcutta among the dregs of society. Both said the same thing. Both said the same thing.

I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. Back in 2015, when I was in the hospital, I had a very serious operation; it lasted hours and hours. And when I finally came out of the anesthesia, almost forty eight hours afterward, the surgeon came in to see me. And he was wearing a turban. And he is what is known as a “Sikh.” Their religion believes in one God. But they don’t focus on the worship of God. They focus on two things. Seeing the work of God in the world around them, and responding to that gift with the gift of themselves.

A number of years afterwards, I happened to bump into that same surgeon in a different context. And he said to me, “You probably don’t recognize me because I look different.” What he meant was, he had given up his turban for a cap, a kind of an American feature. And I said, “Oh no, I remember you. You’re the guy who saved my life.” He said to me, “Oh no. All I did was operate on you. God saved your life.” That’s what he does for a living. They wheel the patients in, they wheel the patients out. Who knows how he’s feeling. Maybe he had a bad night. Maybe he’s not really in tip-top form. But he does his job every day. He does what he does for people who need that particular service, and leaves the rest in God’s hands.

That allows us to turn to the second question I asked you. What is the creature that appears in the first reading and in the gospel. It’s birds. In the first reading, birds make their nest in the tops of the cedar trees that God has planted. In the gospel reading, birds make their nests in the mustard seed bush when it grows big and tall. Birds make their nest. For the ancients, birds were a symbol for people, because there were so many species of birds, they kind of liken that to all the different kinds of people in the world. So what the scriptures are saying is that, what happens when we do our part, is that everybody gets to understand a little bit better how God operates in the world.

St. Francis of Assisi used to say “Oh, preach the gospel at all times, but use words only when necessary.” Some of us have the misimpression that spreading Christianity means two different things. It means arguing with other people about how we’re right and they’re wrong, or it means aggressively trying to get them to join us. Neither of those two things is true. To be missionaries, to spread the gospel, we simply have to do what it is we do every day, to the best of our ability, so that people can see the goodness of God in us, and allow themselves to trust in God as well. Because, if these are parables of the kingdom, it is we who are that kingdom.