Preached by Michael Cheuk
June 14, 2009, Second Sunday After Pentecost, Year B
Mark 4:26-34
I’ve got a question for you this morning. How many of you have a garden or a farm? That’s great! I admire people who can take simple seed and plant and grow beautiful flowers and tasty crops. As summer officially arrives next Sunday, we are at the height of the growing season. Farmers and gardeners are eagerly waiting for signs of a coming harvest – like tomatoes, vegetables, cotton and wheat. In Jesus’ day, since they didn’t have packaged and frozen foods shipped from half-way around the world, everyone eagerly awaited the arrival of the growing season because that meant that pretty soon, they would have fresh produce on the table and harvested grain to turn into flour for bread. Jesus used this familiar agricultural image of planting and growing to teach his disciples what the kingdom of God is like.
Do we really know what the kingdom of God is like? That term is mentioned 53 times in the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John, and the phrase the “kingdom of heaven” is mentioned 32 times in the Gospel of Matthew. Obviously, this is an important concept for Jesus and the early church. For a long time, I thought of the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven as a physical place – you know, hovering somewhere up there, lined with streets of gold with angels playing harps. But as I examined the Gospels closer, almost every time Jesus described the kingdom of God, he used earthly and earthy images, not to describe a physical place we go to when we die, but a realm in the midst of earthly matters that is under the reigning power and authority of God.
Do we really know what the kingdom of God is like? Well, Jesus gives us an answer in the form of two parables in our Gospel reading today. “This is what the kingdom of God is like,” Jesus begins. It is like a man scattering seed on the ground. And that’s all he does with the seed! He doesn’t water, he doesn’t weed, he doesn’t fertilize. The man just goes on with his life, goes to bed at night and gets up in the morning doing his own thing. Meanwhile, the seed sprouts and grows, and the man has no idea how that happens. The soil does all the work of producing the grain – first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel. When the grain is ripe, then the man comes back to harvest it.
Wow! That sounds like a good deal, doesn’t it? That’s the kind of job that I want! Wouldn’t it be nice to have a job where you do a little work sowing seeds at the beginning of the season, then you go home, take a nap, play golf, sleep in, take a trip and do whatever you want. At the end of the growing season, you come back and all the work is mysteriously done. You harvest the ripe crops and get your paycheck! Wouldn’t that be the life? But is that reality? All farmers and gardeners know that running a successful farm and tending a victory garden require more work and attention than what was described in Jesus’ parable. And I’m sure the farmers in Jesus’ audience knew that too. In fact, all of us know that running a successful business and having a successful career require much more work than what was described in Jesus’ parable. As they say, money doesn’t grow on trees.
But let’s remember that Jesus was not giving tips on how to run a successful farm or a profitable business. He was telling parables describing what the kingdom of God is like. In almost all of his parables, Jesus took images and scenarios familiar to his audience and gave an unexpected and surprising twist in order to teach a truth about God and those under the realm of God. Many times, those twists were so unexpected that even Jesus’ own disciples had a hard time truly understanding. What? The kingdom of God is like a sower who spreads precious seed on thorns, rocky places and hard roads as well as on good soil? What? God considers those hated Samaritans to be our neighbors? Jesus’ parables described the mystery of God’s kingdom in ways that challenged his disciples’ cherished beliefs and assumptions. And Jesus’ parables continue to challenge our cherished assumptions today.
In this parable of the seed, Jesus seems to be driving home the fact that the growth of God’s kingdom mysteriously takes place apart from any human effort and beyond human understanding. The seed carries its own future deep within itself and efforts to coerce and force growth are futile.[1] This parable invites us to trust in the growth of God’s realm. What may appear on the surface as dormant may actually be flourishing and growing inside. Instead of focusing on outward appearances, God often works in the hidden inner recesses of the human heart and soul.
Then, Jesus tells the parable of the mustard seed. For us, the parable actually seems pretty straightforward: a very small seed grows up to be a large bush. Application? God can make small things into big things. Right? Yes, but that’s not the whole story. For Jesus’ hearers who were farmers and gardeners, the mere mention of a mustard plant would send shivers up their spines. According to Pliny the Elder, who was born during Jesus’ lifetime, the mustard plant is a fast growing plant that “when it has once been sown, it is scarcely possible to get the place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.”[2] In other words, the mustard plant is a weed like our kudzu. According to one biblical scholar, “The point is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired.” Mustard seed plants are dangerous in gardens and deadly in grain fields.[3]
So, according to these parables, the kingdom of God is like a seed that grows mysteriously by itself to produce grain apart from human effort and like a mustard seed that grows into a big shrub that attracts hungry birds and then spreads uncontrollably to take over the rest of the garden or grain field. I don’t know about you, but that is so unlike my preconceived notions of what I think the kingdom of God is like. Is it any wonder that Jesus’ disciples also had a hard time understanding his parables and that Jesus had to explain everything to them?
I once heard about a man who bought a house with an overgrown garden. The weeds had long since taken over the garden and it was a mess. But slowly the man began to clear the weeds, till the soil and plant the seeds. He continued weeding the garden and kept the birds, the deer and the bugs away. Finally, he made it into a showcase garden. One day the minister came to visit, and when he saw the beautiful flowers and plants, he observed, “Well, friend, you and God have done a marvelous job on this garden.” To which the homeowner shook his head and replied, “You should have seen it when God had it by himself.”
This is a pretty amusing joke, but what if, just what if the kingdom of God is more like the overgrown garden when God had it by himself than the worked-over, man-made showcase garden all neat, trimmed, weeded and bug free? What if the kingdom of God during this mysterious growing season between Jesus’ first coming and His final, future judgment is an overgrown field where wheat and weeds coexist and grow without human effort and in ways that human beings cannot control? In all my years of studying the Bible, I had not understood the kingdom of God in quite this way. But after studying these two parables this week, I can’t help but wonder if that’s the surprising, unexpected twist that Jesus was going for in showing us what the kingdom of God is really like.
Frankly, I hope I’m wrong, because if I’m right, then these parables deeply challenge my basic assumptions about what it means to “grow the church.” For if I’m right, then these parables expose my human temptation to work hard to “grow a church” into a showcase garden, where everything is neat, with not a weed in sight, not a blade of grass out of place, where people can drive by and compliment, “Well, they sure have done a marvelous job on this beautiful church.” If I’m right, then these parables show us another way to “grow a church,” one that focuses less on working so hard to control outcomes regarding budgets and bodies, one that focuses more on spreading the seed of God’s word and allowing God to work mysteriously in people’s lives, and one that embraces the messiness of life instead of trying to hide it or weed it out. This kind of church would grow by being overrun by people from all walks of life, including some that our culture would consider as “wheat,” but also many that our culture would consider as “weeds.” This kind of church may not look like much in the eyes of the world, but in the eyes of God, it would be a beautiful instance and example of the mysterious growth of the kingdom of God. And when people visit this church, they would most likely say, “Well, they sure have done a marvelous job in being the presence of Christ in their community! I can so see Jesus in the lives of these people, and it is beautiful!”
I must confess that this kind of mysterious growth is both beautiful and scary to me. It’s scary because it takes me out of my comfort zone. This kind of growth is also challenging to me because it convicts me that I may be like Nicodemus, a learned man, but one who is still in the dark working hard to lead God’s church by the world’s standards and not by kingdom values. I think that’s why my participation in a prayer triplet has been so good for me. I’m so used to doing, planning, working and controlling, but now I’ve got the opportunity to just be in the presence of God, to share and to pray. Prayer is becoming God’s way to work in the hard soil of my soul so that I’m more receptive to the surprising and unexpected vision that He has for me. Prayer is God’s way to soften my heart so that I learn to love the people that Jesus loves. Prayer is God’s way to grow me more into the likeness of Christ, before I get busy doing things for Christ. Prayer is God’s way to mysteriously grow in my life the seeds of patience, the seeds of letting go, the seeds of conversion from following my will to following God’s will. Like the gardener in Jesus’ parable, I do not know how those seeds will grow, but I’m learning to trust that God will do His mysterious work in me and that, in time, God will reveal what I need to do.
As we enter into the summer growing season, will you allow God to scatter the seed of his kingdom within you? Will you allow the mystery of God’s wild and uncontrollable kingdom grow within you and give you a new vision for your life and for this church? As we prepare to receive communion, I pray that the presence of Christ may grow ever deeper and stronger in our lives in unexpected and mysterious ways. Amen.
[1] Fred Craddock, et al., Preaching Through the Christian Year, Year B, p. 311.
[2] Pliny, “Natural History” 19.170-171; Rackham et al. 5.528-529.
[3] Dominic Crossan, “A Closer Look at the Mustard Seed,” http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/2000/07/A-Closer-Look-At-The-Mustard-Seed.aspx.
