Coffee With God

Reflection: Mark 4: 26-34

Today the liturgy honours the memorial of Saint Thomas Aquinas, “the Angelic Doctor,” for both his innocence and his brilliance. He is also remembered in the Catholic Church for his mystical graces and his profound devotion to the Eucharist. In the Gospel today, as a gifted teacher, Jesus transforms complex concepts into a lesson we can easily understand. In the Gospels we do not find a time when Jesus teaches some hard-to-grasp theories or dogmas. Parables were his unique style of preaching. In the gospel today, Jesus uses the parable of the mustard seed to help his listeners visualise the kingdom of heaven. He seldom gave explanations for his teachings, instead used parables that were self-explanatory. The word ‘explanation’ comes from ‘planus’, a Latin word that means ‘flat’. To explain is to flatten out. Jesus did not do a lot of explaining; he did not flatten out the meaning of our existence; instead, he gave it a new dimension. In today’s reading he says the Kingdom of God comes in ways too subtle to detect or control. Thank God there are things that are not subjected to human will and control! When you pick up your bible today, use the word “presence” in place of “Kingdom”. Then read it again. “The presence of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” The seeds of awareness of God are innate in us, in everyone. But those seeds will not suddenly leap into the air, bypassing all stages of growth. Instead, they will lie in the dampened earth, lost and forgotten, seemingly dead. But the miracle of life is happening there where no one can see and no one can understand or explain. Then the most vulnerable part appears just above the ground. It has no defences; it doesn’t find itself in a glasshouse; it is exposed to everything that could happen to it. That’s life. Only love could take such risks. In this parable Jesus says that the presence of God is like that. God appears slowly, humbly, tenderly and so tiny…. Our part is to wait, to listen, to have the humility of the earth, and to have faith and hope and love.