Word for Word

by Msgr. Ed Lechtenberg

Please read and pray over these Bible verses: Ezekiel 17: 22-24, 2Corinthians 5:6-10, Mark 4: 26-34.
When we pray the “Our Father,” one of our petitions is “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.”
What we are asking from God is probably impossible. We are asking that He make Earth be just like Heaven. On the other hand, Earth does not have to be the total opposite of Heaven either, does it? Perhaps what we are really asking for is that we would like life on Earth to be more like Heaven, and less like Hell. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?
The readings from Ezekiel and Mark tell parables about the Kingdom of God. And in both cases the parables echo the petition in the “Our Father” where we ask God to make His kingdom on earth more closely resemble His kingdom in Heaven.
Ezekiel is preaching to the Israelites while they are exiled slaves, working and struggling to merely stay alive in the foreign country of Babylon.
The parable tells how God is going to take a tiny, tender little shoot from a cedar tree and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. There it will grow and grow into a giant majestic cedar tree, bigger even than the cedars of Lebanon. (A little footnote here on the cedars of Lebanon: They are the sequoias of the Middle East. It is not uncommon for them to live for many hundreds of years and to have a diameter of ten feet or more to their trunks.)
Of course this tree represents the people of Israel. In their present state they were like a tender and tiny fragile shoot, but with the Lord on their side they would become like the mighty cedars.
Now, let’s consider the reading from Mark. Here Jesus tells two parables, both of them meant to be pictures, images of the kingdom of God.
It’s the second parable, the one about the mustard seed, that I want us to think about.
Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is like the mustard seed, which, when planted in the soil, is the smallest of all the earth’s seeds. Yet once it is sown, springs up to become the largest of shrubs, with branches big enough for the birds of the sky to build nests in its shade.”
There is a problem here. The problem is about the difference between a cedar tree and a mustard thing.
Jesus was well versed in Old Testament scriptures. He knew, quite well, what Ezekiel taught and the parable he used. As a matter of fact, his listeners, for the most part, did too.
Jesus was well aware of the parable of the cedar tree from Ezekiel. He must have intentionally changed the image, on purpose.
His listeners, too, must have been very surprised. Perhaps a better word would be “shocked” or “scandalized.”
There is no comparison between the mighty, humongous cedar tree and the puny little mustard thing. The mustard thing isn’t a tree at all - it’s barely a shrub. In a full-grown mustard thing a bird could build a nest, but probably only one, and it would have to be a wren or a hummingbird or a kind of dumb bird.
What is Jesus up to here? Well, this parable is consistent with other things He said. Jesus was fond of saying things to surprise people. “The first shall be last, the last shall be first,” things like that. Jesus was also fond of shaking people up, especially when he knew their thinking and knew that their thinking was wrong.
The cedar tree, especially on a high, lofty mountain, symbolized power and strength. It symbolized royalty and majesty. The wood of the cedar tree in those days was not used to build houses and other humble buildings; it was reserved exclusively for temples and palaces.
The mustard thing symbolized exactly the opposite. It symbolized humility and lowliness.
So... our message from Jesus is: Don’t go and compare the kingdom of God to the power and success, majesty and might of earthly things. The kingdom of God has nothing to do with power and domination.
Quite to the contrary, the kingdom of God is about humble service, not dominion and power.
If we think success is measured in terms of power, wealth and domination, we are wrong. Success is measured only in terms of love and concern, humility and surrender.
If we want God’s kingdom on Earth to resemble His kingdom in Heaven, we must surrender our lives to Jesus Christ, not capture the lives of others.
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What does a game of golf and a committee meeting have in common?
You go around and around for hours and you end up where you started.
“Some people use the church for just three occasions - baptism, marriage and burial. That means that two out of three times they have to be carried in.”