HOMILY FOR THE 16TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A
Rev. Fr. Peter Onyekachi Ezekoka
Wisdom 12:13, 16-19 Romans 8:26-27 Matthew 13:24-43
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us three parables about the Kingdom of God. The Parable of the Wheat and the Tares explains God’s patient delay of the time of judgement, and His permission for the co-existence of evil and good as a mixed crop of saints and sinners is grown. The wheat is almost overwhelmed as it grows alongside the tares, but it will be liberated with rejoicing at harvest-time. The Parable of the Mustard Seed is about the surprises of the final outcome of God’s Kingdom. The diminutive mustard seed sprouts and continues to burgeon until it becomes the biggest tree of all. The Parable of the Leaven reveals the quiet transforming power of God in achieving in us His desired end-product. The transformation may well be slow, but nonetheless it is taking place and the result will be extraordinary. The yeast acts in the flour, and the finished loaves come out of the oven with only the effects of the yeast visible. The action of the yeast within the flour is essential to produce the desired end-product. These parables do not only reveal God’s patience and transformative power working in each one of us, but they also emphasise that change and challenges are invariably associated with achieving - with getting to - the final victory. While this trio of parables serves to remind us that difficult situations have to be endured during the process of the building-up of the Kingdom, they also help us to appreciate the need for patience with the human will while the Kingdom is established.
Let me tell you a story to illustrate what I mean. Once Upon A Time, during a lockdown, when the Government pleaded with citizens to stay at home in order to stop the spread of a pandemic, Morag and her husband Hamish found themselves all alone at home and bored, bored, bored. Hamish was getting increasingly unsettled about the situation in which he found himself. ‘Let’s DO something,’ he said to Morag. ‘Anything. How about a game of Monopoly?’ Morag agreed. She went and put the kettle on to make a pot of tea while Hamish got the box out of the cupboard and set out the board. As the game progressed, Hamish became first depressed and then furious that the game was not going his way. Morag had the upper hand in the game from the start, and she revelled in it. She smiled insouciantly, sipping her cup of tea as Hamish lost a ton of Monopoly money and property. Worse, she turned the knife in the wound by taunting Hamish repeatedly about his lack of success. Hamish was so bagged-off with her provocative antics and his own dire performance in the game that he was tempted to slam down his cards on the table, finish the game there and then, and just walk away … but then realising how much he wanted to win, he recovered himself, took a deep draught of tea and got stuck back in. Patiently, doggedly, determined not to give up, he battled on in the hope of winning despite the dire situation in which he found himself. The reading from the Book of Wisdom today reveals the goodness of God who always gives us good reasons for hope.
The game was not yet over. Hamish muttered to the excited Morag that ‘the chips may be down, but he who dares, wins’. He concentrated on getting to the end as well as he could, the end which he hoped would see him victorious. So, let me ask you: how come you and I are so often tempted to give up, even though the final whistle has not yet gone? After all, where there’s life, there’s hope! Or, with reference to the words of the servant to his master in the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, why do we tend to view or perceive events only in the present, rather than looking towards the horizon, towards the future, towards the Kingdom, with present and eternal hope? The present difficulty in which we find ourselves is just a single episode in our pilgrimage of life. No one who sees only an episode, a part, an element of a thing is in a position to judge the whole of it. We need to dig in, to battle on, to work away, and to wait patiently.
Finally, at the end of the game, to Morag’s surprise, it was Hamish who was the winner. Life is, as they say, full of surprises! Hamish won because he refused to give in to the posturing and taunting of his wife, and because he beefed up his determination. Surprises do happen, don’t they? That faith in your life that you regard as minimal, as tiny as the mustard seed in the parable, can develop into a magnificent tree the strength and size of a Californian redwood if you let God be God. Remember too how the yeast changes the character of the whole batch, transforming the flour to make the bread soft, spongy, porous, tasty and good to eat? Like the action of yeast upon flour, the yeast of grace causes an extraordinary transformation in our lives and in the world if we let it. Indeed, we should battle on and not give up because we can be confident, as St. Paul says to the Romans, that the Holy Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. He abides in us and He continues to abide with us. Victory is assured. Thanks be to God, goodness always wins in the end, one way or another. Amen, God bless you.
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