ELEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY
(Ezekiel 17:22-24; II Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)
You cannot see the human embryo in its beginnings. This is
because it’s microscopic. Even after a week it is only the size of a grain of
sand. Only after four weeks has the embryo grown to the size of a grain of
sand. At this stage you can notice different features of the body such as the
head and the heart. It continues to grow and develop mysteriously throughout
life. In the Gospel today Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is something like
that.
Jesus helps people understand the Kingdom of God with
parables. As we have just used comparisons like a grain of sand and a grain of
rice to understand the smallness of the embryo, Jesus uses comparisons like a
seed in the ground to understand the dynamics of the Kingdom of God. He always
takes his comparisons from people's daily lives.
Jesus says that the Kingdom of God begins as something as something
small like a mustard seed. The Kingdom is genuine love that seeks only the good
of the other. Such love begins with friendly words to a person of another race
or community. Soon we see the person as not very different from us. He or she has likes and dislikes, values and
hopes more or less the same as our own. In time after conversations with
several people of the same race or community we learn that we can trust some of
their kind and cannot trust others. In short, people of other races or
communities are more or less like people of our own race or community.
African Americans become irritated when whites judge them not as individuals but as other people of their race. Of course, they are not judged as the best of their race like Barack Obama or Oprah Winfrey but as the crudest. In other words, we have a sinful tendency to generalize about the vices of people of other races. In contrast, we view the worst of our own race as individuals. With virtues the dynamics is reversed. We see the good of other races as individuals while generalizing the virtues of people of our own race.
We are describing racism which is a serious sin. Racism is defined as holding some human beings as inherently superior and others as essentially inferior because of their race. Although not all or even most of us are guilty of this sin, it is difficult to free ourselves from its effect. We want to think well of ourselves, be it our nation, religion, or race. This is not bad as long as we do not think badly of other nations, religions, or races in the process. We must recognize that there are good and bad in all kinds of people, including our own.
Pope Francis made a parable to describe racism. He said it
is like a virus that is always mutating. He added that it does never disappears
but hides itself while waiting to attack again. As in the case of Covid, we
have to be vaccinated against the racism virus. We can get the vaccine not only
at a pharmacy but also at school, church, and other places. Like the Pfizer and
Moderna vaccine, it must be received in two doses. The first dose consists of
reaching out to a person of the other race with friendly words. The second dose
is to include some of the other race among our trusted friends. In this way we
will avoid the sin of racism. In this way we will also begin to experience the
Kingdom of God.
