Losing Control and Finding the Kingdom
We have a lot of baggage associated with the word "kingdom". On the positive side, King Arthur comes to mind with all of the associated virtues of chivalry and knighthood; on the negative, we see feudal oppression, paranoid brutality, and hedonism. For the Jews, kingdom meant one thing: God's reign on earth in the line of David. The reading from Ezekiel is a prophetic utterance in exile. As a priest in exile, Ezekiel cannot offer sacrifice at the Temple, which is over a thousand miles to the west, but Ezekiel does become God's voice to his people promising them a return and a vision of the future in which a messianic ruler will unite God's people again and usher in a new age of prosperity. The image of Israel's new life from a cedar branch becomes "a majestic cedar. Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it, every winged thing in the shade of its boughs." In Mark's gospel, Jesus picks up on this imagery in describing the mustard "tree"(it is more of a bush) that "'becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade'". For Ezekiel, cedar grew from a single branch; for Jesus, a tiny seed.
Jesus' kingdom, though, wasn't to be realized through the establishment of a theocracy (this was a constant source of tension among his disciples). Jesus' kingdom is a people who are directly animated by God's Spirit and called to a high ethical standard (love your enemies, justice for the poor, etc..). The branches in Jesus' kingdom go out rather than up, and it would be a mistake to associate (as many have and do) the Church with God's kingdom. While the institutional Church is part of the kingdom, we still pray "Thy kingdom come". In John's gospel (unlike Mark, Matthew, and Luke), Jesus announces "My kingdom is not of (from) this world" when questioned by an anxious Pilate about the nature of Jesus' "kingdom". This is echoed in Luke's gospel when Jesus replies to the Pharisees "the kingdom of heaven is in the midst(among) of you". Jesus' presence defines kingdom while he walked the earth, and we have inherited this presence at Pentecost with the sending of the Holy Spirit. The "branches" that have sprung are not royal lineages, but the profound ethic of sacrificial love. The sacrifice of Christ made real and present at each Mass, becomes the "mustard seed" of our faith that finds roots among ourselves initially, but then branches out to the world. We also find seeds of faith in prayer and reading of sacred scripture, each seed sprouting and growing in many different and splendid ways.
This image of the sprawling tree/bush can be complemented with what we usually do in response to wild, vegetative growth; we want to manage it. In a world that has fallen in love with control, this bush breaks out of its fences, defies pruning, knocks down walls and seeks to embrace the world. I think of women religious who are struggling against Rome's heavy-handed treatment, and the response of a particular sister who was referred to in an essay quoting a lay worker: "The Eucharist will live only if we find a way for it to live outside the Mass." Spot on. Jesus' parable is one of distributive, expansive justice, of inclusion set prophetically against the "kingdom" of royal lineage, palaces and "trickle down" justice. Ezekiel's prophetic vision of a greater, supreme kingdom arrived with the birth of Jesus and continues in its many "royal" lines at every baptism when the candidate is given the powers of priest, prophet, and king by the Holy Spirit.
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