This Is How It Is With the Kingdom of God – Part 1

By Fr. Christopher Foeckler, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

There is an ongoing discussion between Protestants and Catholics about whether the Church and the Kingdom of God are one and the same. Protestants do not believe the two are the same with some even saying that Jesus came to establish the Kingdom of God but what we got was the Church with all its problems and scandals and thus justify their rejection of the Church. Catholics, on the other hand, affirm that the Church is indeed the Kingdom of God on earth with, however, an important qualification. Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic Constitution on the nature of the Church, says in #3: “The Church or, in other words, the kingdom of God now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.” The Church is a mystery. The parables of the Lord help us to understand this better.

In the Gospel of Mark, Our Lord uses two parables about seeds to introduce to His disciples “how it is with the kingdom of God” (cf. Mk 4: 26 -34). The first parable is about the mysterious growth of the seed wherein the farmer scatters the seed and then sleeps and rises night and day while the seed would sprout and grow, and “he knows not how.” Lumen Gentium takes its cue from this saying how the Church grows mysteriously – “he knows not how.” It is by the power of God and not by the prowess or ability of the members of the Church. Yet, it has grown visibly to a billion plus members today. 

The second early parable about the kingdom of God is the mustard seed. It is the smallest of seeds and yet becomes the largest of shrubs. “Shrub”? Where is the image of the mighty cedar of Lebanon that Israel is sometimes compared to? The mustard tree is small, like a citrus tree, a big bush. It is not very pretty and yet it grows rapidly, and the birds of the air can nest in its branches. The Lord’s kingdom in this world is not described as the dominant empire over all the other kingdoms of the world but as a lowly shrub
that spreads rapidly.

When we reflect on the diminutive nature of the Lord’s imagery of the kingdom of God in the world, another parable should come to mind – that of the field of wheat and weeds growing up together until harvest time. This image is most appropriate for accounting for the problems and scandal that plague the kingdom of God on earth in the Church. And so there must be another step in understanding the nature of the Church which we will explain in next month’s update article.