Mark 4:26-34
[Jesus] also said, “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. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. And when the grain ripens he goes in at once, with his sickle, for the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the Kingdom of God or what parable can we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown in the ground is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But when it grows, it becomes the largest of shrubs and it puts forth large branches so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With these and many other parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He didn’t speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything, in private, to his disciples.
I bought an edger a week or so ago for my lawn partly because I have a couple of neighbors with perfect lawns. I don’t have the time or the energy or the desire, even, for the “perfect” lawn, really. But I guess I kind of like the challenge of trying to make the border where my grass meets the sidewalk look as neat and tidy as theirs does – like a highly piled, wall to wall carpet, with lines that look almost decorative – like the outfield of a major league baseball field, or like a freshly vacuumed living room rug.
My father and my wife are rolling their eyes right now. See, I will use that stupid edger, because I paid for it. And because I should probably keep the sidewalks in front of my house passable for dog walkers and bike riders and whatnot. But I really don’t think or care as much about my lawn as some people do – or as some people think that we all should. You know who you are.
For some of you, this might be the most controversial, offensive, upsetting thing I could say out loud in the house of the Lord, but here it goes: I’m inclined to believe there isn’t much more unnatural out there in the world than what we’ve been convinced to believe is the “perfect” suburban lawn.
If our lawns were supposed to look the way our Homeowner Associations and Home Depot and that madman down the street have tempted us to believe they should look (you know who you are – and some of us are just jealous about it) – it wouldn’t be so hard or so expensive or so time-consuming to keep them that way – with all of the water, the fertilizer, the weed-killers, the mowers and trimmers and leaf-blowers, and the gas and electricity it takes to run all of that machinery, I mean.
Which, oddly enough, brings me back to Jesus and his parable about the tiny mustard seed, that enormous shrub, all of those birds, and the Kingdom of God.
Sometimes we talk about the parable of the mustard seed, and about how God can take even the smallest of anything and use it for good; how God can turn the smallest acts of faith into giant instruments of grace; how God can grow even the smallest seed of belief into a full and living tree of faithfulness; how God can take even the least among us and turn them into something bigger than anything we might expect to accomplish on our own.
And those are all fair estimations about what this parable might mean. But I suspect, when Jesus met privately with his disciples, he might have had a little more to say about the mustard seed than the rest of the crowds might have been ready or able to hear, just yet.
See, the parables aren’t supposed to be so easy or obvious or as warm and fuzzy as we sometimes make them. Parables are also meant to teach us about seeing the world differently. Parables are meant to be a challenge to our understanding of things. Parables are meant to upset us, even, to make us uncomfortable, to up-end our expectations and to transform our world-view when we let that happen. I think that’s why Jesus told them to the masses – threw them out into the world, letting them land where they might – but only unpacked and explained them for the disciples and his closest followers, in private. I think Jesus knew that not everyone was ready for the whole enchilada, perhaps.
So, a theologian named John Dominic Crossan said this about the parable of the mustard seed:
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. And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar[tree] of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [more] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses -- if you could control it.
(The Historical Jesus, pp. 278-279).
See, mustard seeds weren’t something the average farmer would necessarily want planted in his field, because they’re hard to manage. Once these pesky little seeds take root, they’re difficult to control and they would take over the wheat or the barley or whatever grain you were really trying to cultivate.
And not only that, but these giant shrubs attract birds. And in a parable Jesus tells just before what we heard this morning, birds are a nuisance. We don’t like birds, earlier in this same chapter, because they pick up the seeds the sower is trying to plant, and they gobble them up before they ever get a chance to grow. I don’t like birds because they’re creepy and crappy – literally, crappy – like, they make a tremendous mess when they gather en masse in the bushes just beyond my deck in the back yard.
So, you see, there’s nothing warm and fuzzy or easy about these parables when you read them differently. For 21st Century, middle-class, suburbanites, Jesus might as well have suggested that the Kingdom of God is like a patch of dandelions – a weed, a nuisance, something uncontrollable, something despised by others, something your neighbors might hate to see growing next door, something that would attract birds, perhaps – undesirables of some stripe – who are bound to make a mess of your good order, no matter what you do to tend it, to manage it, to control it, or to keep it for ourselves.
In other words, the Kingdom of God doesn’t always look the way we want it to look. It means there are weeds in the mix – saints and sinners are allowed and belong here. The Kingdom of God is a nuisance – God’s love asks things of us sometimes we’re not always comfortable with tolerating, let alone loving. The Kingdom of God and those God welcomes might be despised by others – what some would pluck up or mow over or zap with weed-b-gone, God tends to… God loves… God fertilizes, even… and lets grow in our midst until we learn to see them as worthy and beautiful and loveable, too. The Kingdom of God attracts birds – undesirables that we’re called to make room for, to feed, to tend to, to protect, even, with the shade of grace we proclaim so loudly and proudly for ourselves.
So let’s think of the mustard seed – and the invasive, obtrusive bush it produces – as more like a patch of dandelions in the middle of our carefully tended, perfectly edged, micro-managed front lawn that is the Church in the world. And let’s let it point to a doing away with control, maybe; an undoing of the rules, perhaps; a call to let the sinners mix with the saints; an acknowledgment that the mustard seeds and the dandelions are just as worthy and pretty as all the rest, if we can forget that someone ever taught us they were weeds in the first place.
Because what if we let those wild yellow weeds take over whatever perfectly tended lawns we’ve come to love and to cherish and to protect so carefully in the Church? What if we let go of what we thought the mission field of God’s Kingdom in the world would, could, or should look like, and really let those annoying birds of the air – the strangers, the outsiders, the sinners – come near, move in, make their home among us, and flourish, too?
That would take faith, wouldn’t it? That would take an ability to forget what the neighbors thought about our lawn? It would take a willingness to let God be God and to trust that if we just sow the seeds of grace, mercy, forgiveness, and peace – and mean it – that blessings will flow, that love will grow, that the Kingdom will come among us, that God’s will would be done – through us and for the sake of the world, in Jesus’ name.
Amen
