Appendix I: Homily for the Convention Eucharist – Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time: Cooperating with God’s Subversive Abundance

The first spring our family lived in Boston, to our great surprise, flowers began to sprout from a still-frozen hill in our backyard.First the brave crocuses, then scattered hyacinth and daffodils, undeterred by an April Nor'easter.Next came elegant tulips, a vibrant forsythia bush, delicate lilies of the valley, bleeding hearts, lilacs, on and on throughout the season.Peering through the kitchen windows each morning in anticipation, we would inspect what new, mature perennials had miraculously appeared.We eventually learned one of our home's previous owners had been a botanist.My favorites, fuchsia peonies, tend to bloom late, in early June.Their lifespan is so brief I pray I'm not away at a conference lest I miss their lush abandon.This spring symphony unfolds as sheer gift, reemerging annually through no real effort of our own.It offers stunning signs of rebirth, of hope, and abundance.So too in today's parable of the growing seed (or the seed that grows of itself), which appears only in Mark's gospel, we are reminded of how God initiates the reign's ongoing growth in our midst: quietly yet vividly, scarcely depending on our hard work or theological insights."Of its own accord the land yields fruit" (Mk 4:28).Academic formation and professional culture reward careful, concerted effort according to metrics of individual productivity.We are trained to "verify" rather than to trust with the patience of the person scattering seed, even as he or she "knows not how" it grows (Mk 4:27), or to linger in the mystery of God's reign not yet present in its fullness.Jesus' parable invites us to attend to the stealthy and surprising ways God is at work in and around us-to plant seeds with our very lives for future blooms we may not ourselves wake up to enjoy, for harvests we may never reap.The vocation of teaching offers regular reminders that we plant seeds without knowing whether or how they may bear fruit down the road.Amid our wider results-driven, instant-gratification culture, what might each of us be invited to clear or prune-or simply take time to notice-in order to allow God's transforming love to be planted in our lives and our communities?