Welcome back to Mark’s Gospel. In a sense it’s back to basics after the glory days of Pentecost and subsequent feasts.
Lockdown has dominated people in Victoria these past weeks and everything is not back to the ancient normal; for example, you can stand outside the perimeter fence at our premier football ground and watch the game but you may not enter and lean over the oval fence. And so it goes on…is it that ground that we are called to plant mustard seeds? Still, at early morn, a handful of sturdy volunteers were at the ground putting up the QR code and reminding passers-by, like me, that only 150 players and officials were allowed into the ground at any one time. Six teams to contest with all that accompanies and is needed, for the three games to proceed. (In a little aside, or perhaps with a touch of irony, I was told that the Government would pay the costs of the umpires!)
Pondering the encounter, I was reminded that the mustard seed which grows into a large plant was known to be a hardy and intrusive plant. Maybe that is the point of the parable for us in these robust and disturbing times. Perhaps we have been so well watered and cared for in the past decades that our mustard seed plants have been over protected, withered and we need to replant.
Before we do, let us recall another message of the Word today and repeated often in Mark Chapter 4, “Listen”.
Sometimes Mark adds phrases like, “You that have ears to hear” or, like today, “so far as they were capable of understanding”. Pope Francis is constantly urging our leaders to listen to their people, an alert for those running the processes of the coming Plenary Council.
Despite the varying climatic conditions surrounding the Sea of Galilee, the mustard seed prospered, hardy and invasive.
So too us.
That is what the kingdom calls us to be.
Mons Frank
