Pentecost 4B
June 16, 2024
Mark 4:26-34
INTRODUCTION
Pop quiz: what does Jesus talk about more than anything else in the Gospels? [kingdom of God] But describing something so vast and multilayered is impossible to do in a straightforward way. It’s like asking you to describe the color blue. “Well, it’s like the sky, but blue isn’t the sky. It’s like the ocean, but blue isn’t the ocean.” That is what we see Jesus doing today – describing the kingdom of God using little stories called parables that capture some aspect of the kingdom of God. A parable is more than a story with a lesson, more than an analogy or allegory. It’s a story or illustration that places side-by-side two unrelated things to challenge our expectations and make us think more deeply about things we thought we knew. So our first reading today from Ezekiel presents an image of God’s kingdom that makes sense to us – majestic cedar trees – but the parables Jesus tells liken the kingdom of God to an ordinary seed with an ordinary crop, which we would not expect.
I also want to say a little something about that phrase, “kingdom of God.” A kingdom sounds like a place, right? In fact, what place do you usually think of? [Heaven.] But the Greek word there is more dynamic. It refers to something active, more like a reign or rule, not a static location. So, the kingdom of God is not a place, but a reality, in which God is the ruler, rather than earthly powers. And so, when we act as God would have us do, and treat people with the love of God, we are living in God’s reign or rule. Lutherans like to talk about the kingdom of God as “already and not yet” – it hasn’t fully come to be (we know this because of how much pain still exists in the world), but already we can see glimpses of it, when we see people living according to God’s rule. As we will see in our parables, this reign is not something we can bring about nor prevent, but we can participate in it, live in that “already,” and in that participation, we just might make God’s reign more visible. Let’s see what we can learn.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
In the past couple years, I have become a voracious reader. At any given time, I might be reading or listening to 8 or 9 books, at least half of them fiction. Through reading, I have gained a richer sense of the power of stories to help us grow in understanding, empathy, and compassion, to open our minds to new ideas, and generally to inspire us to live better lives.
It is no surprise to me that Jesus preferred to teach about the kingdom of God through stories rather than facts. I have a good friend who is a committed atheist. She often posts anti-religious things on Facebook, and I like to engage her and challenge her. Pretty consistently I find that she pushes against religion’s lack of factual support, and the idea that if God is by definition a mystery we cannot understand, that must just mean humans are “too ignorant” to be effective. She cannot get on board with a way of life that lacks the certainty of facts and the scientific method. On the one hand, I get that – facts and science feel really safe and good to our post-enlightenment hearts and minds. For the most part, we can count on them, even as we can continuously strive to keep testing and learning and knowing.
But Jesus doesn’t use facts to describe the kingdom of God, the most central concept and purpose of the faith. Instead, he uses stories, just as the people of Israel had been doing for generations before him. Facts can be refuted and disproved – it used to be a fact that the earth was flat, and that the earth was the center of the universe. But stories – stories can continually be turned around and interpreted and seen anew with each passing generation, and because they never claimed to be facts, they can’t be refuted. New truths and understanding can emerge depending on who is reading it, and when, and why, and to whom. Stories are a much more dynamic lens through which to see the world – and a much better suited tool for seeking understanding about the dynamic kingdom of God.
Take our first parable today, about the seed that is planted and grows while the gardener sleeps. At first glance, it is fairly boring and benign. A gardener plants a seed, and it grows, and it is harvested. (Anyone want to jump on the movie rights for that epic tale?) But as is often the case with parables and stories, once we sit with them and in them for a bit, new understanding starts to emerge. Here is what happened when I sat in this parable this week.
First, it invited me into mystery. That’s a word pastors love to throw around – whenever I asked my pastor dad a question about faith to which he didn’t know the answer, he would respond, “It’s a mystery!”
But we like to know things, right?! And this day and age, we should be able to know things, to explain things, to understand them. God as mystery is a difficult pill to swallow sometimes. And yet Jesus says it plainly here: “the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.” At first, I skipped right over this line, because today, we do know how a seed grows – the words may seem no longer relevant. Presumably in the first century, those in Jesus’ first audience knew how to make seeds grow – plant them where they will get sun, cover them with dirt, water them, and other observable things – but not why that worked. They didn’t know the science of what went on underground that caused the seed to burst out of its shell, push up through the dirt, and day by day grow a head of grain. It just sort of… happened. Planting a seed was (and really, still is!) an act of trust, and the fruit it yielded was (and is!) a gift of grace.
Just because we now understand the science behind that particular process, does not make Jesus’ point any less relevant. It still invites us into the mysterious ways of God, and humbles us before them. There are still so many things in the world that we cannot understand, and never will. We can choose to be frustrated by that, or, we can carry on with learning what we can, but trusting that God is in charge, and give thanks for the many gifts of grace that come from God, in God’s own sweet time. This parable invites us to dwell in the mystery of God’s ways. We can (and often should!) participate in them, but in the end, it is God who makes things happen, not us. And there is freedom in accepting that!
The second place this parable took my heart this week was in the next line: “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain of the head.” Our first impression of this might be, “Uh, duh, we know, we have seen plants grow.” Again, it seems dismissible. But on further reflection, I actually found this line quite a comfort. It showed me, there is a process to things. We are a people of instant gratification and quick results and efficiency. I was watching The Sound of Music with my kids the other day and in the scene where Rolf first delivers a telegram to Captain von Trapp, I realized, “My kids have no idea what a telegram is,” that less than 100 years ago this used to be the most efficient way to get a message to someone quickly. Now, we can send a text across the world in less than a second, and this way of life seems to suit us.
But this parable says, “Faster isn’t always better. Efficiency is not always the best way. Getting quickly to the end should not always be the goal.” Rather, there is a process to things: “first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain of the head.” Boy, I think we are guilty of this all too often – skipping to the end result we want without giving enough time and energy to the process to get there. There is so much growth that happens in that process (first the stalk, then the head…), and skipping to the end also skips that holy growth.
A couple weeks ago at Synod Assembly, we were introduced to the synod’s ministry focus for the year: adaptive leadership. Often when we are faced with a problem, we want to skip straight to the solution – and sometimes that works. The pastor’s mic isn’t working; get fresh batteries. It’s a technical challenge with a technical fix. Done. But some challenges are more complicated than that, and require more than a one- or two-step solution. And so, when we apply a one- or two-step solution, hoping for that quick fix, we see no lasting improvement. These challenges require an adaptive approach, a look at it from the balcony to get the bigger picture. We need to slow down and ask questions like, “Why is this happening? Who are the stake-holders? What outcome are we hoping for and why? What will be gained, but also what will be lost if we achieve that outcome, and to whom will that matter? What difficult conversations do we need to have to get there?” First the stalk, then the head, then the full grain of the head, and finally the harvest: it is a process, and that middle period of growth cannot be skipped, not if we want to see life and nourishment at the other end. Not if we want to see the fruits of God’s kingdom come about.
And that is, of course, the point of all this: to find life and nourishment, to see the fruits of God’s kingdom come about, to grow in love and faith, to serve the world. That is the kingdom Jesus came to proclaim, came to bring about. That is the kingdom we can already see and participate in, and also for which we long and work. It is a kingdom that is at once mysterious, and also deeply known, a kingdom that requires us to slow down and engage in a process, where we will see the holiness of God emerge. It is a kingdom, a reign, a rule, of which we are already intimately a part. Thy kingdom come, O God, and compel us to participate in it.
Let us pray… Reigning God, your kingdom is all around us, already here and not yet to its fullness. Help us to dwell in mystery, to slow down and engage in the holy process, so that we would see, experience, and participate in the growth of your kingdom on earth. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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