Planting Seeds for God’s Kingdom

Every choice we make can plant seeds for God’s Kingdom.

Mark 4:26-34 for the Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time.

When Christ came to the earth, God’s people had been hoping for a messiah of earthly might to uphold them as God’s earthly kingdom over all others.

Then and now, God in Christ is indeed King on earth, but in mystery rather than in earthly might.

Today in his Gospel, he told two parables about how it is with the Kingdom of God.

God’s Kingdom draws near, unfolds, goes to work, grows with human help— but the human mind knows not how God’s Kingdom grows.

The mystery, as Christ teaches in today’s Gospel, is that God’s Kingdom is as the smallest of all for now, but it goes on and becomes the largest.

But when will it be the largest?

For now, God’s Kingdom is mysterious in seeming small.

Christ taught that at the end of time he will come in glory as King of all the earth.

And then the army of all his angelic servants will bring before him every nation for judgment unto either eternal punishment or eternal life. [Mt. 25:31ff.]

In eternal life, that is, when the marriage of heaven and earth lifts its veil, the righteous will be joined forever to God, and they will have the fullness of glory and joy in seeing, knowing and loving God.

Sin shall no longer have any pull, for God himself will fill every righteous soul.

He has not given us to know when that will come about.

With today’s Gospel, Christ calls us to work at holding fast and remaining open to God’s promises, even if things now seem small, even hidden.

But we would be glad if God were to step in now and drive off what is bad now.

We would be glad if God put right the broken now, and brought on all the best right now.

Yet it seems God’s mind is otherwise.

It shows itself to us and teaches us in the word of the Lord, the Gospel of the Lord.

We, because we are in God’s image and likeness, have freedom to make choices.

God gave us a world and choices to make in it freely on our own.

We have broken it through choosing sin and more sin.

We have broken things in the world, in the lives of others, and in our own lives.

Still, we are left with what we had in Paradise: a world of choices.

Each choice, no matter how small, can plant seeds of God’s Kingdom.

In the end, Christ the King wants each of us to see his face and to deserve to hear him say: Well-done, good and faithful servant! [Mt. 25:21]

Then the King will say, “Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” [Mt. 25:34]

Lord, thy kingdom come, thy will be done!

Turn. Love. Repeat.