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JULY 21 (16th Sunday, Ordinary Time)
Homily: Jim S. (Wis.12:13,16-19, Rom.8:26-27, Mt.13:24-43)

When I was a student in a small parochial school in the Arkansas in the 30s and early 40s there wasn't any question about what was meant by Kingdom of Heaven. We all had been made to memorize the answers to the catechism questions, and these answers were hardly real expressions of faith. I feel sure many of you have had a similar experience.

In fact we didn't have any questions about most items in the church's inventory of holy or sacred matters. If we did, all we had to do was "ask father."

Nearly everyone in this church today realizes that an enormous change has taken place in the last 40 years. Now we have learned--or rather let me say--now we are learning to ask questions on our own, and we are learning HOW TO ANSWER THEM TOO.

I see this principle at work at Journey. Last Sunday we gathered here and spoke from our own experience about the future of our community; we did not consult a manual of church law nor not did we "ask father." WE asked the questions of others and WE began to answer them too.

In our personal life, with the absence of authoritative answers, we can learn to ask and answer questions too. I am thinking of the rich store of material in the scriptures, and today particularly in the parables presented in today's gospel.

No one can tell us exactly what these parables mean; your reading is as valuable as any other, especially if you can let it show you some feature of your life.

What exactly are parables? Well, they are doors that open onto a new reality. They reveal Jesus' vision for an world reborn. They are make-believe stories and the action is usually quite simple, and the characters are ordinary people. The parables never set in the long ago and far away, involving far off empires or realms of gold.

In fact, Jesus' parables are not set at a time 2,000 years ago; they are new today still, even though we may have to adjust some quaint elements to see ourselves and our world in them.

Jesus must have spoken many, many parables, even hundreds of them, but only 30 or so have come down to us, and of those 30 many scholars regard about 20 as the genuine voice of Jesus. But twenty parables from Jesus is a bounty.

We will find that Jesus did not give advice in his parables, nor present moral tales showing us how to to be good and avoid being bad.

Most of the parables are, as we might say, catchy or tricky little stories built around a paradox--or reversal--even a contradiction. But Jesus does not tell us what these parables mean, but we must tease out the meaning for ourselves.

Here is a woman who takes leaven--or 'yeast' as we would call it--and places, or hides it deep within a huge amount of flour; she makes a dough and it rises and the result is almost explosive. She's made enough bread for 100 people to eat. We sense the power of the hidden leaven that breaks forth into this creative force. Such bountiful generosity is rightly a characteristic of the Kingdom. We participate in this graciousness when we give even a tiny portion to another. All will be fed--as we've heard elsewhere in these gospels.

Another story involves a farmer who plants his field with Grade A wheat seed; it sprouts, as he sleeps, but soon his servants run to him and tell him that the wheat in the south 40 is full of weeds--noxious foreign elements that threaten the crop--and probably his livlihood & so his life. "An enemy has done this, he cries." (He's like all of us--he blames someone he's never seen). His workers are ready to tromp into the field and pull up the offending weeds; but the landowner says 'No, wait until harvest time, and we'll separate the good wheat from the bad weeds.'

Are our lives like that field--our field of dreams? We expect the good to grow and prosper, and yet, suddenly, unexpectedly, the weeds--the sad and the bad--appear. A promise is broken, someone dear leaves us, we are financially stunned. Like the farmer, we must first believe we have the inner resources to figure out a solution. Does it matter in the long run to cry "an enemy did this"? We must make some plan, as this farmer does, for dealing with the bad and so come to a productive resolution.

The third of the parables today is that of the Mustard Seed. The paradox here is that the seed is the tiniest of all seeds and yet when planted it produces a bush that becomes a tree. In literal fact mustard trees do not grow large enough for birds to nest in them; but that is the way Jesus tells the tale; he wants us to envision a large tree.

So the first parable is involved with hospitality toward others--symbolically making bread for all. The second one is about our live's "balance sheet"--our livlihood, a consideration of possible losses And we may be able see here in this last parable hospitality not only to others, but to ourselves too. It is about birds and nests and nest eggs but these images quietly represent us. After all, we need to make our own nests, our homes where we can live and make ourselves comfortable too--a feather bed or two helps!