Spiritual Growth / Mark 4:26-29
In the Lenten Season the meaning of the parable, that Jesus told the disciples, is almost palpable, when he was saying that “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”
In the Lenten season there is, there should be a spiritual development when in every returning Lent we have to take the opportunity to take an account of our lives, communities, even humanity, but especially our inner ourselves.
A time for soul searching, a time for repenting, a time for renewed prayers, a time for renewed zeal to study the Scriptures. Actually, in the darkness of our sinking civilization, the Scriptures are the torch in the shadow of the night. Reading the Scriptures is not only a kind of religious duty but we must read the Bible out of mere necessity, if we want any guide in the surrounding and blinding darkness of this world, filled with corporate greed, immorality, warmongering blood-thirst, wars, ungodly occultism, slavery, exploitation, elitism and oligarchy.
It is a deep and profound need to read the Scriptures, but beside its expedient nature, it is also one of the most elevated pleasure of the soul as well, approaching God through his Word, letting God closer and closer to us by his Word, which is the Seed of God sown into the human hearts in order to create life, to grow life, to make the soul become fruitful and answering God’s call upon our lives.
From Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, but also everyday in the year, though particularly during the Lent, we are called upon by the Word of God to grow.
It is a 40 days Holy Journey reflecting the experiences Moses and Jesus had in the desert both spending 40 days with fasting and meditation. It is a Journey aiming the highest to meet God himself.
Whatever we learned, achieved, built, gained, earned in our earthly lives, these all almost completely do not matter, in the case we miss the presence of God, which is called in Hebrew, the Shekinah.
We have to look for God, we have to search for Him on Earth in order that we might be able to find Him after this life as well. Jesus told everyone that learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find peace for your souls.
It is an interesting segment of the spiritual world that the development aimed in Lent aka the growing personal holiness is learnable, or at least a major part of it is there to be learned. As the sages said the study of the Bible softens the heart. In order to have our hearts softened we must study the Bible. The Word of God is the seed in the heart.
The already mentioned parable of Jesus however also gives us the other aspect of this coin, the mysterious side, because of course that we have to study as much it is humanly possible, nonetheless the power for spiritual growing is given by God.
Thus a man in the parable had scattered the seed on or into the ground, left it for the rain and the sunshine, returning after a couple of days or weeks or months and he saw the seed developed, first having the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, when the time is ripe for the harvest. How the whole thing happened, the man did not know. It is a mystery how nature works, how life breaths all over, how the Moon orbits Earth, how the Earth orbits Sun, how the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, and so on. The nature is a mystery indeed, but behind its mystery there is God himself.
God’s presence is not only essential in maintaining law and order, balance and harmony in the universe, but it is also physically visible in the universe in the flawlessly maintained law and order, balance and harmony.
As The Apostle Paul says in his Letter to the Romans that “ For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known of God is revealed in them, for God revealed it to them. For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity, that they may be without excuse.”
Sometimes God’s presence is so visible in the nature and in the people in it that we admiringly watch it not only because of its orderly fashion, but also because of its breathtaking beauty what can be created by the Almighty Father only, who is a caring and loving God.
The size of the possible spiritual growth we should seek in the Lenten Season is characterized by Jesus, when he told the disciples the parable of the mustard seed, saying that the kingdom of Heaven, (which is among You and within You) starts with a tiny seed, one of the tiniest, still it can grow enormously big, though by classification it is a bush, a full-grown mustard bush is so big that people can think that it is a tree. The whole living being, called the mustard tree is sprouted from a tiny seed. Unbelievable.
However this is as much a fact and as real as Jesus wants us to believe in the ultimate goal and purpose of mankind, which is the Kingdom of Heaven, the sanctification of God’s name and the growing holiness of people who live in the presence of God, called the Shekinah.
In the eras when the first and the second Temples stood on the mountain in Jerusalem the very Temples were a manifested and visible sign of the presence of God among the people.
It was a kind of embodied metaphor like the exodus and the conquering of the Promised Land. By which God said that You learned that I am Your God who delivered You from Egypt, the house of slavery, thus you shall not have any other gods before Me.
As a simile it stated that as the Almighty God was able to free the people from Egypt, including the ten plagues , the opening of the Red Sea, the miracles in the desert, building of the Ark of the Covenant, etc., and at the end he gave them the Land of Israel, so God is able to free the souls of the people from the slavery of sin and finally helping them enter Heaven. This is happening not only because God is able to do that according to his almighty power, but because he wants to do it according to his Fatherhood, as a loving and caring father of Jesus and of us all.
In an other parable Jesus spoke about the leavened dough saying that:
"The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, until it was all leavened."
Again the process of leavening is well known since the early starts of the civilization or even before that, but the progress in the dough is proceeding according to the God given laws of the Universe. God gives the growth to the seed to become full grain in the ear, so the leaven makes the dough develop into bread by the growing process, and after that the bread will be finally baked. All in all, God is the provider of the bread in multiple levels.
The Yearly Making of the New Bread of the New Harvest was recognized as one of the major Blessings from God in Israel. Thus Year by Year the relationship with the God given bread must have been renewed. Among the Israelites the Feast of the Unleavened Bread is a full week long designated Holiday since the very first Passover, where the Passover is the 14th day of Nisan, the very day of the Exodus, and the Festival Week of the Unleavened Bread starts on the 15th day of Nisan, the next day after Passover.
The Festival of the Unleavened Bread is not only a Harvest Holiday but it is also a reminder of the Exodus. The Israelites must have left Egypt in such a hurry that they did not have the time to make their bread-dough leavened. As a commemoration every year since the Exodus, they have eaten their bread unleavened for a week, till this day.
Similarly to Moses, Jesus told us that although it is very important to give thanks for the bread, but "It is written also that, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.'"
So may we spend our Lenten weeks with mediation and prayer, studying the word of God, with awe and admiration toward the Almighty Father, who gives life to all, and may He give us spiritual growth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit whose full presence was manifested in Jesus.
Praise and Blessing be upon the Holy Name of God, now and always, AMEN.
