Kingdom Seeds

Mark 4:26-34

June 17, 2018

            Whenever I am going out of town in the summer, as I did this past week, I try to make arrangements for my house, my cat, my mail and my plants. I figure that as long as the house and the cat are okay, the rest will take care of itself. I try not to get too stressed about my plants, but I hope that they will be watered – at least a little bit.

            I say that I try not to get too stressed, but that’s all relative. I have left home with plants that were blooming and thriving, only to return home to find them dead without hope for resuscitation. And I have not been happy about it. I’m trying to let go of that kind of stress though, because it’s just not worth it. Seeing how hot it was down here this past week, I didn’t have high hopes for any of my plants. When I checked this morning, there were a few that are on their way out, but hopefully my tomato plant will come back around with daily water and some TLC.

            That makes it sound like I really know what I am doing when it comes to gardening. But in reality, I have no clue. My gardening consists of planting, watering, and praying. A lot. Sometimes, that formula works, sometimes it does not. But every year, I convince myself that I will claim my mother’s green thumb gene that surely lies somewhere in my DNA, and make my garden grow.

            Considering my fingers-crossed-living-on-a-prayer approach to gardening, you would think these two short parables in Mark’s gospel would resonate strongly with me. But on first reading, the first parable especially frustrates me.

            “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

            Oh how I wish I could just scatter some seed, go to bed, get up the next morning, and repeat the process, and the seed would sprout without anymore effort or exertion on my part. Dr. Matt Skinner, professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary in St. Paul wrote that at first these parables seem kind of boring. This first parable has all the excitement, he wrote, of an elementary school life science book. The seed is planted. It sprouts. It grows. And we really don’t know how.

            The second parable is not much better. First, Jesus compared the kingdom of God to seeds that are scattered and they grow without any tending or care. Then he spoke of the kingdom of God being like a mustard seed. It is infinitesimally small – the smallest of all the seeds on the earth – but when it grows it becomes the “greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

            Surely, that was a joke, right? Jesus must have had a great sense of humor, because the mustard seed produced a weed. No farmer in his or her right mind would ever plant it on purpose. When the mustard seed took hold, it grew and spread and infiltrated every corner. It might grow to be a great shrub, but I suspect that most folks would dig it up, root it out and toss it aside before it got to that point.

            Both of these strange parables were used by Jesus as comparisons to the kingdom of God. What was Jesus trying to say about the kingdom of God? What point was Jesus trying to make about our relationship to God’s kingdom?

            What is a parable anyway? Is it merely a story? A fable? A tale with a moral twist? The word parable comes from two Greek words, para and ballein. Para means “along” or “along side,” and ballein means “to throw.” So digging into this etymology, a parable is a story that throws the listener alongside something. When Jesus told parables, he threw his listeners alongside something else. A parable was not meant as a neat allegory; it seems to me that it wasn’t even meant to be a perfect example. Jesus told parables to throw us alongside something else. They were meant to be unexpected. They were meant to make the people who heard them think and see and consider in a new way. They were meant to give us a glimpse into a truth that perhaps could not be described or explained in any other way.

            Surely, this would be true of the kingdom of God. One commentator made the point that this particular phrase is so common in our religious circles, that we take it for granted. We want to see it as a literal place, a geographical point on a map, a destination to be reached through God’s divine GPS. But perhaps “kingdom” would be better translated as “reign.”

            “The reign of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

           “The reign of God is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 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.”

            I like substituting the word reign for kingdom, but whether we use one or the other, what unexpected, twisting point was Jesus trying to make with these parables? What point, what message, was he trying to throw us alongside?

            The kingdom of God is like seeds that are scattered and grow, we don’t know how. Perhaps the kingdom of God does not just grow in a way we cannot understand, it grows in spite of us and our lack of understanding. It grows and sprouts and ripens whether we are involved or not. In verse 28, the word translated as “produces of itself,” is where we get our word automatic. It does it on its own.

            As seriously as I take our call to participate in kingdom work, it is good news to know that God works through us, around us and without us. God’s kingdom is not limited to our faltering efforts. God’s kingdom is like seed that is scattered and grows automatically.

            And what about that mustard seed? The kingdom of God is like a common weed that cannot be easily rooted out. It spreads and grows, and in spite of its small size, when it comes to fruition it is the greatest of all shrubs. Its branches are so long and so full that the birds of the air can make nests and take shelter in its shade.

            The kingdom of God, the reign of God, is rooted in our midst. It grows whether we contribute to it or not. The kingdom of God comes in the most unexpected ways and in the most astonishing and surprising forms. Jesus did not throw us alongside a description of a kingdom that is like the most beautiful and fragrant of flowers; Jesus threw us alongside a description of a kingdom that is like a flowering weed; unstoppable, unrootable. And in that weed’s branches, the birds of the air find a home.

            One more unexpected twist; even though the cover picture on the bulletin is a lovely drawing of birds in a beautiful tree, remember that in an earlier parable, the birds of the air were the ones who ate the seeds that did not find root in good soil.

            It seems to me that God’s kingdom is not just found in unexpected ways or manifests itself in the surprising forms; it also welcomes those people, those others, who are unexpected and surprising. It welcomes those who in other situations might be most unwelcome.

            Jesus threw his listeners alongside the unexpected and the unforeseen examples of God’s kingdom. We are thrown alongside them as well. Perhaps these parables are kingdom seeds in their own right. They are planting themselves within us, within our hearts, within our minds. May they take root, grow and flourish in unexpected, surprising and wonderful ways.

            Alleluia! Amen.