June 13, 2021
Kingdom Inevitability?
Mark 4: 26-34
The simplest of parables seem to give me the hardest time.
I keep hearing one of my professors’ warning me about preaching parables
“The more you explain it the more you kill it!”
We are back in Mark’s Gospel after an Easter season detour into John
And it is parable time!
Specifically…parables about SEEDS
Today we have Mark’s 2nd and 3rd parable
The first one is so pivotal that Jesus says
“Do you not understand this parable?
Then how will you understand all the parables?”
A quick revisit:
It centers around a Sower + Seeds + Soil
It is the one where the sower tosses seed everywhere
· Some lands on the side of the road where the birds swoop down and make a meal
· Some lands where it is rocky, and the soil is thin
it sprouts but can’t make it for the long haul
· And some lands among the thorns where it actually grows…but is choked before it can bear fruit
Then comes the BUT
But some seed fell on good soil
And became fruitful
Fruitfulness…that is the goal
Fruitfulness is the call of the Kingdom
That’s the quick set up for today
For now, let’s skip to the parable of the mustard seed.
The all too easy interpretation focuses on the size of the mustard seed.
And so we might conclude with such familiar sayings as
Good things come in small packages
Or
Don’t judge a book by its cover
Or…to echo the David story in our first reading
Greatness sprouts from humble beginnings
But more interesting things are going on here.
Most scholars see this parable as a comic strip…a joke even.
Imagine the hearers laughing as they heard about the “greatest of all shrubs” (wink, wink)
What! A mustard plant!
Nobody out there is sowing mustard seeds!
Maybe in a pot out on the deckor a small patch with firm boundaries
But sowing? Never!
Sowing mustard seeds would be like striving for a lawn of dandelions, or violets, or mint.
They can take over!
So…if the Kingdom is like that
Well…BEWARE;)
It’s going to get into your face
Under your skin
and into your stuff
And you won’t be able to rid yourself of it!
It was our first parable today that captured my imagination this week.
The parable about the in-evitability of this thing called the Kingdom of God
It is a parable of pure trust and hope…
I love the line in today’s first parable
“He does not know how”
“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”
So if you, are at all like me,
and have a tendency to worry about what kind of soil you are turning into
Am I too eroded or shallow or thorny???
This parable offers us a different take…maybe even a corrective
It speaks directly to my urge to control
Why is this such a hard lesson?
I WANT to understand! What’s wrong with that?
I want to measure effectiveness!
How about an impact study?
We. Need. Data!
This parable turns the Kingdom of God
A good quarter-turn
In order to ponder it from a different angle
It offers calm
I don’t have to DO anything
I don’t have to UNDERSTAND how it is all unfolding
But then a gnawing question arises:
How will we know that what we do here week after week matters?
Well…We know because Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to a seed growing in secret.
We don’t understand and we don’t’ know how.
So …that probably killed the parable!
Don’t worry…I have another:
…a man sowed seed in his field
And every day he uncovered the soil to see how the seed was doing.
He simply could not help himself.
He wanted to catch each moment in the interaction between seed and soil
He was hoping to improve upon their natural love-making.
He did not trust the seed and soil to produce growth without his expert assistance.
And surprise! NOTHING GREW![1]
There is a pattern to how the seed and good earth work together
“first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head”
Finally though…there will be ripeness!
Eventually, with our patient and un-controlling human cooperation
There will even be bread!
The Bread…and the Grain…and the Head…and the Stalk…
Each of these is mysteriously present in that oh-so-tiny seed
It was Martin Luther who said that if you could understand a grain of wheat you would die of wonder!
Sometimes we don’t get to know the fruitfulness of our actions
Or the actions of the greater community/the culture/the country or world
But every now and then we doJ
This week I came across a penetrating reflection on today’s parable that used,
as illustration, last years’ unfolding events that began at the corner of 38th street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis.[2]
Dr David Jacobsen wonders about the optimism of Mark’s story
with its portrayal of the inevitability of the reign of God.
And he sees a parallel in the words of MLK Jr when he said
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Whatever the Kingdom of God is,
it is like a seed that grounds our hope
a hope that eventually things can and will change.
Hope in Mark’s world didn’t come naturally
It was a world of Roman imperialism and crushing occupation
A world of religious chaos in the aftermath of the destruction of the great Jerusalem Temple
HOPE…would have been anything BUT automatic
What good is hope in such a context?
Dr. Jacobsen reflects on these questions in light of the events that unfolded after the killing of George Floyd.
I quote from Dr. Jacobsen’s reflection:
As I wrote these words,
the court testimony of the sidewalk bystanders
in the George Floyd killing seemed empty of hope.
In their cell phone videos, you too can see them:
the EMT, the youth, the martial arts expert,
and the convenience store cashier
lined up pleading with the white policeman kneeling on the black man’s neck
to stop and render assistance to George Floyd.
As you watched their own videos,
it seemed…even to the bystanders themselves…
that all they could do from the sidewalk was to cry out and plead…
[cry out and plead…]
but effect nothing.
One teenager on the sidewalk even testified in court
About how she apologizes
over and over again
to George Floyd at night.
She asks herself whether she could have done more.
She asks… why, why did her pleading or their yelling not suffice?
Her haunting words make Jesus’ mysterious parable hard to hear.
What about Mark’s seedy hope of an automatic Kingdom of God can survive her tearful testimony?
And then came the verdict on April 20th.
As many said, while justice did not come that day, accountability did.
How did the prosecutor put it?
“the bystanders were a ‘bouquet of humanity’”
The very people who cried out from the sidewalk and made videos with smartphones were a surprise flowering of what it means to be human
The bystanders did not save George Floyd’s life,
But they were a mysterious, living, testifying, bouquet of humanity.
And in a moment, something of our view of Mark’s seed parable changes
What it offers now is a glimpse of change,
A germination that flowers right there on a cracked sidewalk at 38th and Chicago.
Most likely we will never know exactly how our thoughts, words and deeds will specifically contribute to the bending of the moral universe toward justice…but we trust that they do.
On occasion…we will notice the bending
And we will feel our hearts full of joy
And we will be surprised at ourselves…
Each of us…and all of us making up the mustard seed community of St. Stephen’s…
We will be surprised at ourselves
flowering into a mysterious, living, testifying, bouquet of humanity!
THAT IS THE PROMISE
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