Agents of change
Today’s readings: Ezekiel 17, 22-24; 2 Corinthians 5, 6-10; Mark 4, 26-34.
Mark’s version of the parable of the sower highlights a basic truth about Christianity, that it was not meant to be by nature a religion of the masses. Actually the aspect of Christianity mostly in crisis today is the idea that it is a culture or that religion can in some way be the basis of social cohesion.
Christian belief can hold ground in the soil of the individual’s heart and only as a consequence can it flourish as witness on a broader level. There was a time not very long ago when religion was the very basis of society. So religion is quite an important factor in studying how society in the past was brought together and in establishing the changing modes of its cohesion in history.
As Charles Taylor writes, whenever we try to come to terms with secularisation, we tend to focus on the decline of religious belief and practice in the modern world, the declining numbers who enter church, or who declare themselves believers. But it can also mean the retreat of religion from the public space or the shredding of the religious identity of our institutions and of society in general.
Today’s gospel focusses on the fact that the individual is not only reflective, but also an agent of change. We are agents not of a central intelligence unit, and so subservient to the rules of a man-made institution. We are supposed to be agents of change empowered by God’s grace, by His anointing. The gospel does not liken God’s kingdom to a big institution or empire but just to a seed which grows in the soil of the heart as long as that soil is cultivated.
The Church today suffers from amnesia and seems to have lost touch with its origins. Both on the global and local levels, it has lost the capacity for a deep and true reform of itself and is likewise incapable of grasping the complexity of the post-modern world with which it is called to be in constant dialogue.
I acknowledge this may sound a generalisation, but very few are those in the Church from top down who are really in touch. On a general level, it is still an alienated Church.
Alienation weighs down, and renders Christianity incapable of responding adequately to an interrogating society and, worse still, to questioning people who are in no way satisfied with the answers of the catechism and feel strongly that they cannot belong. This endangers and generates scepticism with regard to the metaphor of the sheltering branches which both the prophet Ezekiel and Mark use today.
The power of Christianity lies not in its widespread grip on society and culture as in days gone by. Tertullian, an intellectual and convert to Christianity who became a Church father in the second century, affirmed that it was not the coherence of doctrine that brought him to Christianity but the witness of martyrs.
As Ched Myers in his political reading of Mark’s gospel writes, “Against the cynicism of the economic determinism of the system, Jesus pits the revolutionary patience and hope of the kingdom”. The growth of the kingdom, according to the parable, will be neither obvious nor controllable. The kingdom cannot be imposed on culture. That is one of the historical mistakes of Christendom and it explains why the clear separation between Church and state is now here to stay, clearly attributing autonomy to politics.
The Church today is called to find other ways and means to sow the seed and prepare the soil so that “night and day, the seed can sprout and grow”. We cannot provoke the harvest. What instead we are urged to do is to tend to the sowing and have the wisdom of discernment to know the time of the harvest.
The way of the sower calls for patience and hope and the sheltering promised is no longer the cultural or social umbrella type of shelter, but the harmony and the wholeness that God’s enduring pedagogy can give back to those who are seeking and whose soil may be contaminated with all sorts of pesticides that weaken its potential.
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Pule' Carmel
Jul 13th 2012, 23:01
Most of us are agents of change in the wrong direction.
Thousands of years ago when Managment was restricted to the husband and wife managing a family, the productive work was divided amongst those who worked. In fact i would go as far as saying that the manager was in the worker and the worker existed in the manager and so the manager earnt his keep. They were one and the same person
With the worker generating a little more than he needed and he used, the agents of change introduced a concept where the manager and the workers separated and the managerial personnel, stopped working and became reflective on writing poems and philosophies and stories and this non working reflective class became so popular that the agentsof change enjoyed the managerial and vociferous individuals and the worker had to work harder to keep the reflective personnel with his food and shelter thorugh charity in a manner of speaking. It seems that in every institutions ranging from, governments, factories, religions, armies and courts, the number of additional reflective personel grows so much that eventually there were less workers left behind as the reflective manegerial, poets, writers and philosophers grow in numbers. I would say that there is a safe proportion , a critical percentage of reflective personnel to working personnel and many religious insitutions seems to have a larger number of reflective personnel rather than missionaries who go oversees to see to new flock. teaching seem to have gone in the same direction,, Most schools are full of reflective teachers rather than those utility teachers who teach children how to grow a sack of potatoes and how to fish. the agents of change seem to project a strong current towards become reflective than utilitarian.
I can relate t his to immigrants coming to Malta to join the reflective personnel who are outnumbering the utilities! In fact most illegal immigrants will have no problem finding utility jobs in refuse disposal carreers as many local people prefer the reflective professions and in fact do educate others for the utillities chores. while they reflect.
I often study these currents in the behaviour of agents of change. In Education we have no more winners and loosers because agents of change decided that no matter what students tackle, the success rate will be 100 %. One need not work so hard at being utilitarian as in being reflective one can take all the time in this world to express view and produce nothing except reflections. Europe has gone that way and if one notices carefully the workforce in Europe is becomeing ever more reflective and leaving very little missionaries to do the toil in the fields. I am aftraid that the agents of change do not always follow the right wind currents and being reflective seem to drug us into more reflections, till the reflections we see in our mind are only dreams which can never be attained but cause pleasures to others and earn u a good living through entertaining others and giving solace to those who cannot create their own reflections while working in poverty. Mny people seeking reflective professions bcome so affected with their own reflections that they become addicted to listening to their own voice, and if they cannot generate any more reflections of their own, what they public is inicitiated by reading reflective books and spending the next hour or two giving their own reflections on reflections thought about by other people. it is a sort of enjoyment that is becoming ever so popular and till the sons of the workers who work in utitities find our about it, where the whole community is unstabilized , well this new breed of reflectors will enjoy their new found lands at the expence of others.
Through the years those who reflect did better than those who worked and had no time for reflections.
THe agents of change are biased towards the reflectors rather than the utilitarians of basic requirements to live with only the essentials
Mr Emanuel Farrugia
Jun 17th 2012, 13:01
The Mustard seed, and the 'Already But not Yet ' Kingdom of God
Jesus taught in parables. Everyone knows that. He took scenes and objects from ordinary life
and he made them tell stories about the reign of God. The trouble for us is that the scenes and
objects were from the ordinary life of his hearers, not our ordinary life.
In the first parable, Jesus explains that the kingdom of God will spread similarly to how after a seed is planted, many different factors act on it to allow it to grow. Although we may be preaching the Kingdom of God, what Jesus is saying is that it is made a reality not through our actions but God's. So often in ministry, we get caught up in ourselves and think that it is us who make the Kingdom of God a reality. What Jesus reminds us of is that it is God who makes the Kingdom of God a reality. We are simply the instruments that God uses.
In the second parable, Jesus teaches us that the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. From something so little and insignificant, a huge tree emerges. During Jesus' time, the Church was nothing. It was made up of a small group of people who preached, healed, and served others. When we look at the Church today, we see something radically different. We see large institutions, millions of followers, countless numbers of art and literature all inspired by a poor Palestinian who walked the earth two thousand years ago. Truly, the Kingdom will be that much bigger.
Jesus taught in parables. Everyone knows that. He took scenes and objects from ordinary life
and he made them tell stories about the reign of God. The trouble for us is that the scenes and
objects were from the ordinary life of his hearers, not our ordinary life.
Emanuel Farrugia [TARXIEN] former student Faculty of Theology UOM
Alfred Hili
Jun 17th 2012, 12:20
The parable of the sower couldn't have been expalained better. Christendom must never be found guilty of spiritual adultery with the political system of the world.
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