11th Sunday – Where the Birds come to Shelter

Mark 4:26-34

What is the purpose of the church, of the parish, brothers and sisters? Why do we go to Church? Or perhaps to put it differently, what do we hope to gain by going to Church every week? Can it make a difference in our life this week? How we view the Church is intimately tied to how we understand ourselves, where we are going and what difference the Church makes in our lives each day.

There are several images for the Church from the Scriptures and Tradition. The Church is the Barque of Peter. It’s a powerful image; a boat which is able to traverse the stormy sea and get to the shores of heaven. If we are caught in a storm, in the sea, we are powerless. We will drown, however good we might be as swimmers, if a boat doesn’t reach us in time. Then there is the image of the Church as a military outpost; one of the names of the Church on earth is the ‘Militant Church’.  This is intimately related to the suffering souls in Purgatory called the  ‘Suffering Church’ and the ‘Glorious Church’ (those in heaven, glorified and enjoying the vision of God). But the militant church, so called, immediately makes us aware that there are battles to fight against the dark powers of evil and the wickedness that abounds. Again, it’s a powerful image, one of action. There is a job to do and dangers at hand, but we can be victorious and not alone; we are never far away from our brothers and sisters gone before us. But today we tend not to like this image of militancy too much, especially after suffering two World wars. That’s okay, but we also tend to lose the truths that those images bring to light.

I wonder how we would vision the Church for ourselves today if we were given a sketching pad and colouring pens to draw an image? I’m just back from a five-hour long drive up north, for a conference on parish renewal. As you do on a long drive, we stopped at a service station. It’s a chance to fuel up, stretch your legs, get some snacks and be on your way. I couldn’t help but think whether this is the default image of how we relate to the parish church. You don’t enter a service station hoping to meet anyone or have any kind of community; you don’t even expect great customer service. It’s of course, nice if you’re treated well, you don’t want someone to bark at you, especially as you’re wearied from a long journey; but the virtue of a good service station is that you can get what you want and be out quickly! You’re not delayed for where you’re going. If our destination is heaven, there is some redeeming quality in this image: the Church provides the food we need for the journey. But today, we don’t really think too much about heaven, it’s not in our daily consciousness. The Church becomes a kind of drive-through. We are about our own life; for some reason we are not always sure, we do make the effort to come, as long as its quick and perhaps some good customer service won’t be bad – the priest doesn’t bark at you and someone smiles, but we don’t expect to have any commuity or meet friends. If the priest can finish Mass quickly, that’s a good deal! This image is not very rooted in the Scriptures as you might have guessed. But today’s gospel does give us a great Scriptural image of the Church. A beautiful tree providing shade for the birds of the air.

There is a seed which falls on the soil and produces this large, beautiful tree which becomes a shelter for the roaming birds. This soil, this field, is our life. And if we look at any field and start digging it a bit you’ll find rocks, gravel, creepy crawly things, pieces of scrap metal, human waste, rubbish and more rubbish. But there is also within it, good soil, which can nurture a seed which has life, from which something can grow. This seed is the Word of God. When it meets the mess of our life, new life can emerge from this very mess which we try to carefully manage. We would rather keep hidden, covered up, so many things that are messy in our life, things that smell, things we would not want to dig too much into. And we can put up a picture of a beautiful, landscaped garden in our Instagram post, but behind that we know what is in our life. And we think we have to clean ourselves as we come to God too, but the gospel says the opposite; we just have to allow this seed to touch the soil of our life for this new life to emerge. Did we hear a promise in the Word proclaimed? A word, small as a mustard seed which we can so easily miss, but a seed which has the power to bring life where it falls. And the larger soil where this Word can take root is the Church, the parish. We all have our brokenness and mess but God brings us together as a body for a reason; somehow, here in this soil, we can be healed and transformed and for some reason we need each other in our lives. And in the process of finding our own healing, being changed in our own mess, there is suddenly a place, where others can find a place of refuge, of healing. Birds of the air are wandering creatures without a place to rest. This tree which appears suddenly provides a home for these different birds; and they find that are brought together when they would have been wandering by themselves. They find a place of refuge, of comfort, of shelter from the storms of life.

This tree is not simply a building, brothers and sisters. This is you and me, the body of Christ, the Church, which as a community becomes this place of safety for the wanderers outside. A place where our lives, messy and broken can encounter the power of God and be changed – and become this channel of grace for those looking for help, meaning and shelter in the wilderness of life. That’s the Church we are, we are called to become – and its one worth coming to, every week.