Mark 4:26-34, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17
When Jesus appears in Galilee at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, proclaiming the Good News of God, the first thing Jesus says is this. “The time if fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.” In his ministry Jesus talked a lot about the kingdom of God, trying to help those who would listen understand that God’s kingdom was like no earthly kingdom that they had ever known. Instead, it was something much more astounding and wonderful. Many of the parables of Jesus are about the kingdom of God, including the two that we just heard read from today’s gospel.
In today’s gospel from Mark, Chapter 4, Jesus is teaching beside the sea, and there’s such a big crowd around him that he gets into a boat to teach. During this teaching, Jesus tells parables.
Everyone gets to hear the parables, but Jesus doesn’t explain the meanings of his parables to the crowd. He saves the explanations for the insiders, his disciples and followers.
Mark doesn’t record the explanation that Jesus must have shared about these two parables about the kingdom of God. As Jesus’ followers, we get to prayerfully draw our own conclusions about what these parables might mean. So let’s dive in and hope that God will help us out.
Remember, parables are like doorways that appear in our understanding. The door swings open, and we see something new, maybe even revelatory and life changing as we dwell on the words of the parable. I think that Jesus meant for the meanings of his parables to be open ended, so that we can always learn more about the kingdom and its arrival every time we engage with these two stories and others that Jesus told.
These two parables that we heard in the gospel reading today about the kingdom of God help us to understand how the kingdom of God will be revealed here on earth.
In the first parable, Jesus tells in today’s gospel, someone scatters seed on the ground. Time passes. And then, surprise! One day the seed has sprouted and is growing, not by any effort on the sower’s part. Out of the life giving earth comes the stalk, then the head of tiny grains of wheat bundled together, and then when the wheat is ripe and ready, that glorious day when the harvest can take place.
So what if the earth represents the followers of Jesus? More specifically, for our purposes, the earth could be us, here at St Peter’s. God scatters the seed in the hearts of this community of followers. Time passes. We followers of Jesus are trying to understand what Jesus wants of us and we try to do his will and to love one another. Days and nights pass, time goes on, and one day! Surprise! The seeds of the kingdom start sprouting—we see the green blades of God’s kingdom rising fresh and new out of the soil of our community, our love springing up like a field of green wheat. Through God’s grace, God’s love unfolds in our lives more and more richly and deeply, God’s love and light becoming more visible in the world through us, love so rich that it ripens to provide sustaining love to our neighbors—and this is the natural progression of God’s graceful love growing in the community of believers. And then the time for the harvest comes, and God brings us home.
In this time of transition, how have we seen this parable at work in our church? Think about how God has scattered the seed of the kingdom among us, how the natural progression of the growth of the kingdom has unfolded as we’ve tried to be faithful followers and to love one another and to witness to God’s love in the world. And yes, it is about what we have done together, but even more importantly, as Jesus reminds his listeners, it’s God’s grace at work in us—in the end, we know that we can never have done all we have done on our own–the spirit has blown where it will, and the kingdom has grown in our midst in ways that we could have never foreseen simply because we have offered ourselves as the fertile soil in which God’s kingdom can grow.
Now this growing season is coming to an end and it’s time for this harvest, for reflection on how the kingdom of God has grown and matured here over the past fourteen years we’ve shared together. I hope that God will delight in this harvest.
Now it’s time for God to scatter more seeds on the ground of this church, and for a new crop to grow up, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. And the new harvest of God’s kingdom, green and growing and producing the fruits of God’s love for the use of the world will grow all over again, and once more you’ll marvel—how did we do all that, and remember, all that we did was through God’s grace, we know not how, but the kingdom of God has become visible right here in our midst.
The second parable compares God’s kingdom to a mustard seed which grows into a great shrub with branches so large that the shrub provides shelter for the birds.
In the parable this tiny seed does not grow into great towering tree like the tree that Ezekiel describes that God plants on Mt Zion, a tree so tall that it reaches high into heaven, connecting heaven to earth, a symbol of the restored House of David. The tiny seed in this parable Jesus tells doesn’t produce a cosmic tree. Instead, it produces a lowly shrub, because that’s its genetic makeup! Even though that shrub is the greatest of all the shrubs, it’s still a shrub.
Why on earth didn’t Jesus tell a parable in which the seed turned into a mighty tree, a tree which would unmistakably make obvious the restored kingdom of God here on earth, instead of a shrub that people might pass by without even noticing?
Jesus had to have been the most hopeful person who ever lived, but Jesus was also the most realistic. On this earth, until Jesus returns in glory, the kingdom will be a field of shrubs rather than a magnificent forest. Our job, as the church, and as individual Christians in the church, is not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think, not to think of ourselves in grand terms—we aren’t mighty trees, that’s not in the DNA of the tiny seed. Instead, we are the sturdy shrubs of the kingdom here on earth, in many ways unnoticeable because we are shrubs. And we can give thanks for being shrubs, for it is in the shrubs of this earth that the smallest creatures find shelter and protection and can build their nests and raise their young in safety.
As we look back on the last fourteen years we’ve shared, I can see how we have grown from the tiny seeds that God has planted into a sturdy shrub that provides welcome and shelter to anyone who would come through our doors—we have had people come and go, all of whom have needed shelter for a while, protection, a time of safety and healing. And when they are ready, they fly away, knowing though, that this welcoming shelter will still be here waiting should they decide to return. As Jesus points out, the birds of the air can make nests in the shade of a kingdom of God shrub—not just Episcopalian birds, or white birds, or heterosexual birds, or rich birds, or healthy birds, or law-abiding birds—NO, not just some birds, but ALL the birds of the air can find safety and rest in the shade of a this kingdom of heaven shrub here at St Peter’s.
Soon now, we will go our different ways. I find the future without you all hard to imagine. But these parables remind me that even though I won’t be here on Sundays, that along with you, I’m still the earth in which God will continue to sow the seeds of the kingdom, and time will pass, and new wheat will grow in me as it will in you and as it will continue to grow here in this church.
In his second letter to them, Paul told the Corinthians that we are always confident….for we walk by faith and not by sight…and we make it our aim to please God.
These parables remind us all to have the faith to let God plant the kingdom in us, and then have the confidence and the patience to leave the growth to God, to make it our aim to please God every day in our sleeping and in our waking, as we wait for everything old to pass away, so that we can grow into the new creations that God means for us to become, God’s kingdom here on earth, as it is in heaven.