When
you tell a joke and somebody stares blankly at you, you know they
haven’t got it; and you know that if you explain it, it might finally
provoke a smile but the fun has gone out of it. On the other hand you
might tell a story which illustrates a point, and it’s quite normal to
explain what you mean. Ezekiel told a story of a powerful eagle plucking
the top of a cedar tree and transplanting it to another place, and that
was meant to remind his hearers of what had happened when the king of
Babylon had exiled the king of Israel and brought him to Babylon; the
story we hear in today’s reading from Ezekiel is of God doing a similar –
yet really very different – thing: God takes a shoot from the top of a
cedar tree and plants it on a high mountain, and it becomes a noble
cedar which provides shelter to many kinds of bird. The explanation is
not a political one, though the hearers may well have hoped that it
meant that Israel would be exalted by God and not humiliated by foreign
kings. The point of the story (a story in the future) is that God is the
true sovereign, and God alone. It’s significant that the people of
Israel developed an understanding of God’s greatness precisely at the
point when they found themselves outclassed by political powers far
greater than themselves. Rather than moan about their defeat, or seek an
improved God, they came to see that the God they had always believed in
was greater than they had realised, and had purposes beyond what they
could comprehend. Note that the very high mountain on which God was
going to plant the new noble cedar does not have a name, like Jerusalem
or Zion; it’s beyond particular places and political systems, which
exclude other places and systems; the power of God is a power over all
of reality, including nature and politics; fundamentally it is a power
to make things (and of course people) flourish and find a home.
The parables of Jesus are not stories
which require an explanation, even though they’re sometimes presented as
if they were. Today’s two parables simply say something and leave you
to get it, or not, like a joke.
“This is what the kingdom of God is
like”. “What can we say the kingdom of God is like?” And Jesus goes on
to talk about everyday reality, nature doing what nature does. But this
is not “just” nature: it’s nature seen with eyes which can spot a
mystery: it’s not that the growth of the wheat or of the shrub is an
illustration of the reality of the kingdom, a kind of visual aid which
you could do without if you prefer to describe the kingdom in – er… -
real terms. But what real terms? What is more real than the miracle of
growth which Jesus has just been talking about? Just let the story of
growth be your way into the reality of the kingdom. There is a
transformation going on, and maybe we can learn a kingdom mentality by
hearing other stories of transformation, stories of hope; by becoming
ourselves stories of transformation and of hope; by sharing hopes of
transformation with others who long for our world to come alive, to be a
home for all. Do I mean we must work with others to build the kingdom?
No I don’t . No way. We do not build the kingdom; it’s not that kind of
reality. The kingdom is God’s kingdom, not ours. We will only get
energised to do useful and creative work if we first learn to welcome
the miracle of the kingdom over which we have no control.
What these parables make us think of is
life as a gift. (I’m not starting to explain them: I’m trying to sense,
with their inspiration, what the God of the kingdom is like). In many if
not all societies gifts are not really gifts at all; they are part of a
system of exchange – think of Christmas presents and cards. But we do
encounter people who simply give – and ultimately what they give is
themselves. The kingdom comes as sheer gift from God. The wise person
says thank you. (Colin Carr O.P. torch.org:here)
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