This great allegorical oracle...
Illustration
This great allegorical oracle, of the eleventh century B.C. prophet Ezekiel, was chosen to fit the Gospel lesson. The greatness of the cosmic tree symbolizing a mighty nation is even greater than anything in God's Garden of Eden. Even so a note of judgment reminds us it can come to destruction.
Since the Gospel is two growth parables, the similarity is the growth of Ezekiel's tree and the Kingdom of God growing like scattered seed, especially a mustard seed.
The Kingdom is given by God; historically we try to make it happen. A parody on the hymn, “Rise Up Ye Men of God,” says:
“Sit down ye men of God,
His Kingdom he will bring
Whenever it may please his will
You cannot do a thing.”
There certainly is a message of hope here. The world's rules would never have said a babe born in obscurity, who later taught on a hillside, was condemned to a shameful cross, and laid in an empty cave, leaving eleven scared followers, would begin a movement that led half the world's inhabitants twenty centuries later.
--Smith
