Imagine you have a dream to be an entrepreneur who builds a multi-national mega business.  You hope that you become wildly well-known and successful.  So you go to the bank for a $1 million loan and tell the loan officer your business plan is to take the money and invest it in 1,000 different operating locations all at once, then sit back, and just see how it goes.  The banker would probably look at you and say “That’s crazy!” and show you out the door. 
                 
Maybe not so great a plan for business, but it sounds similar to Jesus’ descriptive parables in today’s Gospel for how God plans to build the kingdom of God.  It involves scattering seed and then simply watching, confident everything needed to grow is provided.  The seed will take root and thrive.  In fact the smallest mustard seed will grow into the largest of plants, so large birds can dwell in its shade.  It happened and is happening still.  Does anyone doubt God’s track record in growing things?
                 
These seed parables tell us about God and about our participation in growing and making visible the kingdom.  When the Word of God entered the world initiating the kingdom of God, the seed of the new covenant was planted in each of our souls.  Jesus tells the crowds and us that we don’t have a God who micro-manages, nor is that His intention for our Church.  We baptize babies who cannot make their own profession of faith.  We marry couples who are not practicing Catholics.  We risk borrowing a huge sum of money to build a Church worthy of God’s desire for us to worship.  We are all sinners who sin over and over again, and yet are forgiven each time. 
                 
We must recognize both that it all depends on God, and that we carry within us the potential, through the smallest of things, to contribute to the greatest.  As we heard in today’s First Reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, it is God who tears the tender shoot off the crest of the cedar and plants it on the top of the mountain.  It is God who provides the soil and the water as one day moves to the next.  Why do we suffer so in anxiety, frustration, and crippling self-absorption that stymies any growth?  We need to look beyond ourselves and commit our gifts and talents in those places where, nourished by our courage and leadership, they can flourish; even courage and leadership the size of a mustard seed and talents and leadership that seem as unlikely to thrive as scattered seed.
                 
It is a crazy plan.  But lives lived with trust-filled love are the scattered seeds God has every confidence will take root.  Our partnership in building the kingdom fulfills for us who and what we are created for.  It is happening.  Maybe, maybe not for those who invest only in banks, but This is how it is with the kingdom of God.