Turn Around
11th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By: Rev. Dr. Beverly Bingle
June 13, 2021
Way before the gospels were written—
before those four gospels
approved by the institutional church,
before John, and Luke, and Matthew and even Mark
wrote those texts—
there’s an earlier book of the good news
that was lost for nearly 2000 years.
It’s known as the “Sayings Gospel of Thomas.”
It’s not a narrative, like the canonical gospels,
but a collection of 114 sayings of Jesus.
It starts with this statement:
"These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke,
and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.”
This Gospel of Thomas was most likely compiled
before Paul wrote his letters,
two decades before Mark, and six decades before John.
The surviving text was unearthed in 1945 in Egypt
and found to match previously unidentified fragments
that had been found in archaeological digs in 1897 and 1903.
The 20th saying out of the 114 is this:
“The disciples said to Jesus,
"Tell us what the reign of God is like."
He said to them, "It is like a mustard seed.
It is the smallest of all seeds.
But when it falls on tilled soil,
it produces a great plant
and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky."
As in the passage from Mark’s gospel that we heard today,
Jesus is not comparing the SIZE of the mustard seed
to ALL the other seeds
but to the black mustard seeds
that a first-century Palestinian farmer would have SOWN.
And it was truly the smallest of THOSE seeds,
a seed that will produce a large shrub, about 12 feet high,
easily big enough for a bird to nest in.
So the surprising thing is not the size of the seed
compared to the size of the shrub.
It’s Jesus’ comparison of the reign of God
as growing from a small beginning
to spread everywhere.
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The reign of God starts tiny and grows,
just like our life, and our love, and our faith.
They start small and end up shaping who we are.
We all started with the union of a tiny egg and a tiny sperm,
then born as tiny babies, now grown up,
shaped over time to who and what we are...
and not finished yet.
We can look back and see that, all the way through our lives,
little things counted in ways we could not see at the time.
Remember 1963,
and that Dick and Dee Dee release “Turn Around,”
the song that tells how we don’t see life changing
as we grow through it?
We only see it after it happens.
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Like seed sowers, we scatter our activities—
our tiny acts of faith, and hope, and love—
flinging them out, near and far,
each of them landing somewhere,
taking root and spreading.
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Biblical archaeologist Fr. Robert Norther once said that,
in his opinion, the historical Jesus never intended
for his followers to be more than
a small percentage of the population.
"Christianity isn't working," Fr. Norther claimed,
"because we have too many Christians.
Only a small handful of people
will ever have the courage and faith
to LIVE as Jesus lived.
Though their numbers will be few,
their effect will be great."
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Like the scattered seed in the field and the tiny mustard seed,
you carry great potential,
not for grain harvests or bird nests in your hair,
but as people whose small, consistent actions bring about
the growth of love, peace, and justice in our world—
the signs that the reign of God is at hand.
It doesn’t happen overnight,
but your way of living begins in very ordinary circumstances
with apparently insignificant acts,
gradually maturing until it has spread itself far and wide.
It’s ordinary things that change the world,
like planting a tree;
like serving a meal at Claver House;
like baking a cake to take to welcome your new neighbor;
like donating to Compassion Health Toledo;
like driving a friend to the doctor;
like phoning just to talk with someone who’s housebound,
like praying for folks who need help.
You reach out to others,
and God lives for THEM
through YOU.
Because YOU have the courage and faith
to live as Jesus lived,
the reign of God is at hand!
I thank God for you!