Mark 4:26-34
The Parable of the Growing Seed
26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Two Parables of the Kingdom of God
30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34 he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
The Kingdom of God
We have listened to two parables of the kingdom of God. The first parable tells us that just as a seed, the kingdom of God, once placed in the soil, practically grows of its own accord. Stick it in the dirt, provide a bit of water and sun, and mysteriously it will grow all by itself. Thus the kingdom of God will grow on its own.
I’m sure you remember, when you or your children, or your grandchildren planted a seed, usually a bean, in a little cup. Maybe this was a part of a Sunday School lesson. It sat in a window sill and was faithfully watered. Then one day, lo and behold, first a bent stem and then suddenly a leaf appeared. How did this happen? You didn’t do anything but wait. It just happened! It just happened according to God’s plan for beans!
This is a picture of the first parable that Jesus told in this two-fold lesson on the message of seeds.
The second parable indicates that the tiniest of seeds, again the kingdom of God, will grow into a shrub that will allow birds to build nests, and this scrubby shrub will take over the field if you don’t clear it out. It’s persistent. On the surface these two parables indicate to us that the kingdom of God is growing and will take over the earth.
But I listen to the news and I don’t hear anything about it. I hear over and over again about the violence, the hate, the selfishness, the bullying, the graft, the corruption that multiplies all over the world. The only good news is that Harry and Megan had a baby girl. Where is the evidence of the coming of the kingdom of God? Am I looking in the wrong place? Possibly. Probably.
Where should I look? Perhaps I should start with me. With my own heart. Am I the same as I was at 20? Have I been changed by the grace of God? Can others find refuge in my presence?
As I was beginning work on this sermon an old chaplain friend stopped in. It was such an encouragement. Even though we see some of the same curtailment of chaplain services to our larger community, we are still here, doing what we can to minister to those who need comfort, prayer, and a listening ear and even an encouraging sermon. And so, to each other we represent the seed of the kingdom of God still growing.
One writer has said that Jesus’ parables are “the lens that aligns human-seeing with God-seeing. They give us a glimpse into God’s kingdom even as we look at the things of this world. Parables ask us to see in a different way. They rarely give answers. Instead they sharpen our focus and cultivate a deeper vision. Parables ask us to let go of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get world and trust that what we see is not all there is. There is always something more going on than what we see. That something more is the kingdom of God.”
Because we can sit in our favorite chair and read the gospel of Mark it is hard to remember that Mark was not written in tranquil and good times. It was written shortly before the fall of Jerusalem. Things were bad and getting worse throughout Jerusalem and beyond. For both Christians and Jews there was continuous persecution. But the Christians could only be loyal to Jesus Christ and that displeased both the Romans and the Jews, so they were persecuted from both sides. It is no wonder that those who could emigrated to where they hoped they would be more safe.
Where did they look to see evidence of the coming of the Kingdom of God? I am reminded of Paul and Barnabas who rejoiced that they had the opportunity to suffer for Jesus. They were in Antioch Pisidia where they shared the gospel with the people, both Jews and Gentiles. There was considerable interest and they shared again on the next Sabbath. But then the Jews became jealous, spread rumors, and they were run out of town. “So they shook the dust off their feet in protest against them, and went to Iconium. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” In that place, at that time, it was not apparent that the kingdom of God was on its way, but they seemed to be trusting that God was in control.
We worry that the kingdom of God will never come. This parable may be telling us that the reign of God will take root -- whether in the world, in imperial society, or in someone’s heart, Jesus does not specify. It will grow gradually and automatically. It will grow perhaps so subtly that you won’t even notice, until at last it produces its intended fruit. It is the nature of God’s reign to grow and to manifest itself. That’s what it does. As a lamp belongs on a lampstand (Mark 4:21-22), God’s reign, like a seed, must grow, even if untended and even if its gradual expansion is nearly impossible to detect.
Then Jesus adds a second parable about a mustard seed. This is not the kind of crop most people would sow. Where Jesus lived, mustard was prolific like a common and sturdy weed. It could pop up almost anywhere and start multiplying. Some of Jesus’ listeners must have groaned or chuckled. Imagine him speaking today of thistles or ground-ivy. But bigger. And more useful, since mustard has a range of medicinal qualities. In any case, the reign of God apparently isn’t much of a cash crop. Yet it grows. It is not easily eradicated. Good luck keeping it out of your well manicured garden or your well manicured life. Better be careful what you pray for when you say, “Your kingdom come…” Let’s remember that when we pray later in our service. Let us give God permission to be disruptive if it will bring his kingdom to this place, on this earth.
Secondly, Jesus describes the full grown mustard plant as the “greatest of all shrubs.” Now this is funny because the full grown mustard plant is scruffy, nothing pretty about it. Nothing that would make you want it in your landscaping or in your cow pasture or your goat enclosure. I’ve read that if grazing animals eat too much of this plant it has adverse effects. And once you’ve got it, it is hard to get rid of. Jesus could have likened God’s reign to the cedars of Lebanon if he wanted to describe an in-breaking state of affairs that would cause people to drop everything and be impressed and in some places of Scripture he does. But instead, in this place, he describes something more ordinary, and yet also something more able to show up, to take over inch by inch, and eventually to transform a whole landscape. Fussy people might deem this uninvited plant to be too much of a good thing. Others might consider it a nuisance, but what about those who, like the birds, need a home where they can be safe? They will be happy. God is always on the lookout for the least of these.
The parable therefore depends on satire. Just as it reorients the image of birds and majestic trees in Ezekiel 17:23, so, too, it promises to upend a society’s ways of enforcing stability and relegating everyone to their “proper” places. The reign of God will mess with established boundaries and conventional values. Like a fast-replicating plant, it will get into everything. It will bring life and color to desolate places. It will crowd out other concerns. It will resist our manipulations. Its humble appearance will expose and mock pride and pretentiousness like a good burlesque show. As a result, some people will want to burn it all down in a pointless attempt to restore their fields or their pretty gardens.
So much of what makes Mark a theologically compelling narrative resides in the confusion and mystery that propel the plot forward. Jesus generates amazement but also misunderstanding. Apparent insiders like the disciples stumble along and abandon Jesus in the end, while some characters from the margins demonstrate an unlikely capacity for faith and recognition such as the woman with the issue of blood who touches his garment, or the Syrophoenician woman who argues with Jesus, the blind man crying out to be healed or the centurion who simply says, “Truly, this was the son of God.”
These two parables, therefore, exercise an important function when Mark creates a crisis of confidence among its readers. The parables insist that the reign of God will not remain secretive forever, nor does its ultimate emergence depend on humanity’s ingenuity, social engineering, pietistic intensity, moral virtue, or spiritual cleverness. It exposes and ultimately replaces systems of dominance and servitude not only in sudden and decisive instances, but also in any moment in which it merely puts forth a new leaf or shoot. In those moments, people come to recognize God’s reign, share in divine blessings, and join in God’s commitment to forge an alternate society that renounces the politics of fear and intimidation.
Lest we think we are off the hook, the reign of God will not endorse a passive stance on our part. While there is something inevitable about God’s deliverance, still other passages in Mark call would-be disciples to participate in Christ's activity.
The Markan parables do not promise a gospel of unhindered progress, as if God’s reign is guaranteed to be more prevalent and influential ten years from now than it was ten years ago. But the parables do insist that the new order Jesus declares through his words and deeds will not be relegated to certain spheres. There is no special biome to which the mustard plant is confined. With its seeds carried by the wind and stuck to hikers’ shoelaces, it will grow where it will.
Likewise, the reign of God does not carve out a separate sacred space; it claims all aspects of human existence. There is no such thing, not in Christianity at least, as an apolitical gospel. There is no economically neutral gospel. There is no gospel that dismisses the importance of embodied existence and interpersonal relationships. However our church conducts its ministry or however we conduct our lives, if we don’t provide sanctuary, hospitality, sustenance, and renewal to those who need it, like little birds in a field full of foxes, then we aren’t living the gospel.
In short, there is no gospel in which Jesus remains buried in the ground like a dormant seed.
We live in a universe and in a world with huge threats to existence and with sickeningly large social and geopolitical problems. There are meteors hurtling through space, many of which would wipe out life on earth if they struck us. There are dictators harboring or seeking weapons of mass destruction, many of which threaten our survival as a species. In the Middle East, but in so many other places, too, there are seemingly intractable hatreds and prejudices between and among various ethnic groups. There are diseases like Ebola and COVID19 that frighten us. Hunger and poverty loom up like a whole mountain range of daunting problems whose heights we don’t know how to scale.
Yet in the midst of all these threats from within and from without, in the face of great sin and evil, faced with maladies that are global in scope, we Christian people swing in with no more than that simplest of all messages: Jesus saves. A Jewish carpenter’s son from halfway around the world and from over 2,000 years ago is the one we hold up as some kind of solution. And not a few folks today want to say, “Give me a break!”
But we keep on repeating the old, old story because we believe that somehow, some way, it’s going to work. If we yoke these two parables now, we can see both the theme of how puny our efforts look and our ardent faith that, even though we don’t understand how these kingdom seeds grow, they do -- whether we are watching or not, whether we are tending them every moment or not. They grow silently and mysteriously in people’s hearts. The seeds don’t look like much to begin with and they grow without making much noise. If you go sit next to a corn field a week or two after the seeds have been sown into the earth, you could sit on the edge of that field all day and throughout an entire night and you’d never hear a blessed thing. But we noticed as we drove to another community an hour away, last week, that the corn is already a foot high. Looks like those seeds are doing what they are supposed to do.
I’m more encouraged than I was at the beginning of this sermon. I do see evidence that the seeds of the kingdom are growing in me and in others. My confidence is renewed. The One who rose from the dead will bring all else to pass and I pledge to play my part as He directs. Let’s trust together that the kingdom of God has and is coming. Amen.