FINDINGS III By Harry T. Cook

Proper 6 - B - June 17, 2012      

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
6/11/12 

 

In the way the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) is set up, we find ourselves in the second Sunday in Ordinary Time beginning with the sixth set of readings for that period in Year-B. (No wonder some people just throw up their hands in resignation.) As if to complicate matters, there are two tracks of Hebrew scripture to follow in the RCL. Track II connects the first reading wherever possible to the gospel reading for the day. I shall choose again to follow Track II. It would seem to me an act of mercy to take any opportunity offered an exegete of the Sunday readings to assist homilists and their auditors in making thematic sense of ancient texts that are supposed to mean something for today.

It would make sense, of course, to start a gospel at the beginning and work through it to the end. Alas, even as carefully laid out as the RCL is, we are plunked down at the start of the second half of the church year today (in Year B) in chapter six of Mark, in Ezekiel at chapter 17 and a little less than midway in Paul's correspondence with his flock in Corinth.

The gospel passage at hand (Mark 4:26-34) is mostly Markan, though Matthew 13: 24-30 uses the same imagery. We will assume Mark or one of Mark's sources thought it up first.

We are advised not to apply the understandings of modern botany to this text. In the first century the idea of germination and growth was not understood as it is today. The idea that the sower would sow, go to sleep and awake to the βλαστα or sprouting of the σπορος or seed would be considered a work of the gods, i.e., beyond human understanding. That is why Mark's sower "knows not how." He also knows not why. But instinct and need drive him to know what to do when the βλαστα has ceased; he goes in with his cutting tool and harvests the crop.

Mark's Jesus clearly wanted his hearers to understand that "the kingdom (domain or rule) of God" -- that is, of the most just and universally favorable life -- operates in just such a way. It has already been planted -- we might, say in the human DNA. If not interfered with, it will sprout and grow. Withal, that is a fairly optimistic appreciation of human nature, suggesting that human beings really do know how to behave toward one another, and if only they operated consistently out of that knowledge all would be well, or at least better than it usually is.

The "rule of God" or of that just and favorable life is, further, like the seed of the mustard tree: small to begin with, but once βλαστα has occurred its resultant size turns out to be out of proportion to that of its seed. The suggestion is that the possibility of realizing that rule is almost second nature to human beings. Let it be, this narrative is saying. Do not lay a straw in its way. Aid and abet it if only by not fighting it. Above all, don't plow it under.

See further the reading from Ezekiel appointed for Proper 6. Note its horticultural motif, not unlike the agricultural one of the gospel. Ezekiel's cedar will grow even on the side of a mountain and there produce branches and bear fruit -- making it "a noble cedar" in the eyes of the prophet, yet with the warning that Yahweh can make a big tree small and a small tree big, a green tree sere and a sere one prosper. Human initiative is pretty much left out of Ezekiel's scheme and makes his vision of Yahweh a pretty arbitrary, utterly pre-Darwinian force.

For Spinoza it was the freedom of thought: "the true end of government is liberty." For Henry David Thoreau it was "simplify, simplify." For Karl Marx it was "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." For Jeremy Bentham it was "the greatest good for the greatest number."

In a way each of the aforementioned more or less settled on a formula that in his mind would best suit the human condition and that could be the basis for living decently to well in practical, economic and social ways. None of them was in strict terms a utopian, but each seemed convinced that the validity of his analysis would, if applied, be proven.

Surely freedom of thought and deliverance from the dead weight of religious and political authority are desirable. But then a world of individuals operating on their singular convictions might be a messy situation in its own right.

Surely such simplicity as Thoreau advocated and tried to practice is quaintly attractive, but if everyone lived in a wilderness redoubt and shunned commerce and social intercourse, it would be a drab and unmanageable world.

Surely economic egalitarianism is preferable to the great gulfs that exist between the super-haves and the really-have-nots, but by what set of measurements is a division of resources to be effected and by whom and on what authority?

Surely the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number is appealing, unless one is not part of that greater number. One of the ideas of genius embedded in the U.S. Constitution is the protection of the lesser number from greater number.

The conventional theist would react to all of the above by saying, "There, see! All you need is God's will and word to govern, and all will be well." Well, no it won't. It won't because "god" and the will and word of any such entity are beyond human ability to apprehend and account for in any objective or rational way. The preponderance of evidence suggests that gods are formulations of human need or speculation.

The "rule" of God as variously set forth in Christian literature often goes to human behavior, as in the several sayings attributed correctly or not to Jesus of Nazareth, e.g "turn the other cheek," "walk the second mile," "give up your shirt as well as your coat," "love your neighbor," "love your enemy," "forgive as often as necessary" and "what you would have done to yourself, do unto others."*

Can it be that such a "rule" is like Mark's sown seed? Ah, but sown by what or by whom? The suggestion is that a human being sows such seed by, well, being human. By those random acts of kindness that people sometimes just go out of their way to do. The persons thus acted upon are so astonished that someone has done them good that they are as likely as not to be motivated to pass it on, to pay it forward.

Is that the βλαστα of which this gospel speaks? Can human beings save each other one at a time? Is it in us to do?

It may be the singular task of the church and the measure of its relevance to attempt to enable its constituency to look within itself collectively and individually to perceive and then to bring forth the possibilities of "peace on earth, good will toward men."

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* This saying is more or less universal:

• Zoroastrian sacred literature: "Human nature is good only when it does not do unto another whatever is not good for its own self."
• Buddhist sacred literature: "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful."
• The Greek historian Herodotus: "If I choose I may rule over you. But what I condemn in another I will, if I may, avoid myself."
• Philo, the great Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria: "What you hate to suffer, do not do to anyone else."
• Hillel, a great Jewish rabbi who lived toward the end of 1 B.C.E, taught, "What is hateful to thee, do not to another. That is the whole law and all else is explanation."