Sunday the 16th of June 2024 - The Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Ezekiel 17:22-24/ Psalm 91(92)/ 2 Corinthians 5:6-10/ Mark 4:26-34

What can we say the Kingdom of God is like? What do we mean by the Kingdom of God? The images we are often presented with are of cherub like beings floating on clouds and playing harps, of pearly gates guarded by St Peter reading names from a book of those deemed worthy to enter, a long stairway leading up into a bright sky. All very fluffy and cuddly but what is the reality?

A kingdom implies a domain ruled over by a king. If God is the king, then the domain ruled over encompasses everything, everything within the physical creation we reside in but also everything beyond the physical. The kingdom of God is of heaven but encompasses everything inside and outside of time and space.

Trapped as we are in this physical creation we are limited in our understanding of the true wonder and extent of the Kingdom of God. Jesus talks often of the Kingdom of God, and it is the relevance of that kingdom to humanity on earth that he is trying to explain through parables today. Parables are imaginative ways of portraying abstract truths to people living in a limited physical world. They can be understood and interpreted by people of any educational standard and living in any time or place.

The Kingdom of God is not like an earthly kingdom, it is not like a country with borders and limitations. Extending from God and heaven the Kingdom of God is brought into our physical world by the person of Jesus. Through Jesus, his humanity, his presence, his teachings, God is made present to us and along with him his Kingdom also.

The Kingdom of God, brought to us by Jesus, is not a place but is real and resides within us. We see this to an extent in Paul’s letter to the Church in Corinth. Paul longs for the homeland to come, to reside fully in the Kingdom of God. Paul considers his life on earth as a limiting factor in gaining full admission to the Kingdom for which he longs. We live our physical life in exile from the life we are destined for. While not seeing our human life in a negative way it is restricting and impedes our total union with Christ which is what Paul, and every Christian, yearns for. Our understanding of God and his kingdom is lacking while we are trapped in this physical domain. Paul yearns to leave this body and go to Christ, but this will not be before we have lived out our human life, a life which will be subject to the merciful judgement of Christ when we come before him. We pray for the coming of God’s Kingdom every time we say the words of the Lord’s prayer. Like Paul we are yearning for the day when this kingdom that already exists within us will come to fulfilment.

From our earthly perspective we cannot hope to understand what it will be like to enter fully into the Kingdom of God. There, we are assured, we will see God as he really is because we will be like him. This is an overwhelming thought but is what we aspire to. The existence to come will be so different to our current human existence that we cannot possibly hope to understand it in this life. We are left only with mere glimpses of what our true destiny will be like. We glimpse it through the scriptures, through the life and teachings of Christ, through the faith and lives of the martyrs and saints, and those around us, and through the wonders of creation through which the nature of God is revealed.

The Kingdom of God is present to us now, it is here in and through the Church founded by Jesus. In our current existence the kingdom is not a full reality to us and will only reach perfection at the end of time when we are fully united with the kingdom of heaven. On earth the Kingdom of God is still the seed sown by the sower or the tiny mustard seed germinating in the ground. The growth of the seed is determined by God independently of human actions or intentions. From the apparent inauspicious beginnings there will be an abundant harvest. From small beginnings great things can be created. After the death and resurrection of Jesus the motley group of uneducated simple people he chose as his Apostles hid away before something happened that filled them with the confidence to come out of hiding and spread the message of the Kingdom of God to all. This was the germination of the seed of the Church, the Kingdom of God growing on earth, that has continued growing ever since. The Kingdom of God is conveyed to the earth by the church, which is the cedar tree of the first reading, bearing fruit and providing shelter for all within its branches.

We look with confidence on the steady and sustained growth of the Kingdom of God on earth. It is God’s work and like the seeds sown in the ground it grows at his pace and not ours. This seed resides within us, and it is our duty to nurture it as it grows so that it will bear fruit and provide sustenance and shelter for us and others as it grows. Like Paul we look forward to attaining the Kingdom of God in its fullness, but this can only be achieved after we pass through this life into the next. Paul often wrote about his desire to be on his way to his heavenly home. We can be overly centred on the passing things of this world whilst loosing sight of our ultimate and inevitable departure from it. It would not be appropriate to live only for the next world as it is not to live only for this one, but it is our true and lasting home and one we should look forward to and prepare for. Paul never showed the slightest fear of death, he longed for the great moment of attaining his heavenly life and so should we.

God Bless Brendan.