11th Sunday in ordinary time, cycle B : active passivity

Abstract

References to the Kingdom of God are always politically subversive in tone for they articulate a manifesto of a kingdom that contrasts starkly with our petty earthly ones. Take the irruption of the Kingdom of God in our world as described in the two parables Jesus recounts in today’s Gospel: The first tells of a man who plants a seed and then “goes to sleep”. The seed, “out of its own accord”, and without any further effort on the sower’s end, sprouts “immediately”. The various stages of the plant’s gradual but consistent growth from seed to harvest are vividly described. The second parable is of the mustard seed that, albeit small and almost insignificant, “becomes the largest of plants” with “large branches”.