First Reading: Ezekiel 17:22-24
22Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar and will set it out. I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. 23On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest. 24And all the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord; I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it.”
Psalm 1
1Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seats of the scornful! 2Their delight is in the law of the Lord, and they meditate on his law day and night. 3They are like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither; everything they do shall prosper. 4It is not so with the wicked; they are like chaff which the wind blows away. 5Therefore the wicked shall not stand upright when judgment comes, nor the sinner in the council of the righteous. 6For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked is doomed.
Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10 [11-17]
1For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened — not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. 11Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. 12We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. 13For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Gospel: Mark 4:26-34
26{Jesus} said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. 27He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. 28The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” 30And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” 33With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.
Little Start, Big Finish
For anyone who has read the gospels, or even sat in church for a few years, you’ve probably already figured out that the kingdom of God is a topic of importance in the Bible. In the New Testament alone, it’s mentioned at least 72 times. In the gospels, it’s the subject Jesus talks about more than any other. And oh, by the way, the second-place winner is money. No wonder Paul told Timothy that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:10a). But that’s a subject for another day. And yet, despite the fact that the kingdom of God is Jesus’ number one topic, we Christians tend to be unclear about what exactly is meant by this four-word phrase: The kingdom of God. As it turns out, there are a number of reasons for our lack of clarity.
The most obvious reason is that we don’t understand the concept of a “kingdom.” It’s not an idea that resides at the center of our mental map. In fact, to Americans, raised in a democratic republic, the idea of kings and kingdoms seems, at best archaic and, at worst, ludicrous to the point of being offensive. Being subject to another person simply doesn’t work for us. Individuality is something we prize and is something we’re taught from our earliest years. The bottom line is, we don’t do kings and we don’t do kingdoms.
Another reason we seem unclear on the subject is because it has been muddied by the ongoing battle between Christian fundamentalism and the scientific community, especially those scientists who insist that fundamentalism is the only real expression of Christianity. A great many fundamentalists insist that the kingdom of God is equal to heaven, that talk concerning the kingdom of God is talk about heaven and heaven is a physical, geographical place where God resides and where our “soul” or “spirit” goes to after we die. Scientists who consider themselves “the new atheists,” and who require tangible, testable proof of such things, reject, out of hand, the notion of a physical, geographical place called heaven.
And while these two camps wage war against each other, those who see no conflict between faith and science, are as ones crying in the wilderness, that there is another way, a viable and rational way of interpreting these passages, a way that doesn’t defy reason or scientific observation. So how do we Biblically approach this subject and decide on how to interpret these texts where Jesus talks about the kingdom of God?
First and foremost, I insist that the Bible itself, is the best source we can use to interpret the Bible. Therefore, it’s the first place we should start. So let’s start with the Bible itself. When we take all 72+ verses of the New Testament together, we see that the kingdom of God isn’t necessarily a physical place, neither is it solely a reality that comes to us only after we die. The kingdom of God is, both a present reality as well as a future one. The kingdom of God is both qualitative and quantitative. It’s as much about the depth of our life, as the length of it; it’s as much a vertical measure as it is a horizontal one. The kingdom of God is more about how we live now, than about where we will live in the future. One could even argue that if we take care to work in God’s kingdom now, our prayer “thy kingdom come”, will be answered in the future. Nowhere is this more evident than in the two little seed parables that Jesus used in our gospel reading for today.
When we say the word “parables” most folks usually think of stories Jesus used to make a point. Examples include the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. These stories have characters, plots, and so forth. But there’s another kind of parable that’s a cross between a simile (a comparison using like or as) and an allegory wherein the major characters or objects in the simile have a contrasting parallel in life. These two seed parables in our reading from Mark are of this second type. They are brief similes or allegories and the first compares the kingdom of God to a seed that is sown upon the ground.
One thing we do need to take note of is, that Jesus rarely defines the kingdom of God in the gospels. Instead, He usually describes it. In the case of our gospel reading from Mark, Jesus begins His description with “The kingdom of God is as if…” “The kingdom of God is as if someone scatter seed on the ground…” Jesus then goes on to describe the farmer going to his house after he has sown the seed then going to bed and getting up the next morning to find the seed has sprouted and grown. The first thing we need to pay attention to, is that Jesus isn’t concerned with the time it takes for seeds to germinate, He simply compresses that time to a single night. The point Jesus is making is, the farmer doesn’t concern himself with how this germination and growth happens; he’s simply content that it happens.
There are mysterious forces at work in this process and the farmer is perfectly fine with that. He doesn’t need to know how everything works, only that it does work. When the harvest time comes, the farmer doesn’t say, “Whoa! I can’t harvest these crops until I understand every aspect of how and why they grow the way they do.” Likewise, I don’t have to know why the value of pi is 3.14159265 and so forth, in order to find the area of a circle. I just need to know that it is, and apply it to the other numbers I have according to the formula. As far as I’m concerned, it works because it works.
Our lives are filled with wonderous mysteries that we usually accept as just that, marvelous, as gifts even. Think about it, why does a certain progression of musical notes or chords give us chills or bring a tear to our eye? Why does the sound of a child’s laughter automatically fill us with joy? Why do I breathe a little easier when I see my wife walk into the room and why do I breathe a little deeper when I first see my children and grandchildren from a distance? We live with mysteries every day of our lives and have come to love and accept them and even enjoy them.
St. Mark tells us in this parable of Jesus, that the kingdom of God is like those other mysteries, a gift, offered to us by God, and we don’t need to know the whys and wherefores of it. All we have to do is accept it and apply it to our lives just the way we accept the value of pi and apply it to the geometrical formulas, just the way we accept this or that piece of music and place it in our play lists. Life in the kingdom of God is comfortable with the presence of awe and mystery. And this mysterious, wonderful kingdom of God isn’t just someplace we go at the end of our lives. God’s kingdom is available to us right now, in the here and now, if we will accept it and apply it to our daily living.
The second simile Jesus used is the more familiar one because this is the part of the passage most preachers focus on. “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?” Jesus begins. Jesus then goes on to answer His own rhetorical question: “It is like a mustard seed which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet, when it is sown, it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” Of note here is the comparison, one of size and potential.
The point Jesus is making is that what starts out very small, can become very big, what starts out weak, can become strong, what starts out as insignificant, can become hugely significant, what starts out as unimportant, can become very important indeed. And when you see this happening, Jesus says, watch out, because you just may already be living in the kingdom of God.
Not every small thing becomes big, but, in the kingdom of God, every small thing has the potential to become big. When we live in the kingdom, we must never dismiss anything or anyone regardless of their size. No person is so weak, that they cannot become strong. No act is so insignificant, that it cannot become lifesaving. No idea is so silly, that it can’t lead to a problem being solved. In the kingdom there are no throw-away moments, no inconsequential conversations, no unimportant people. Every person who walks through the door is important. Every word spoken is a witness. Every life touched is a gift of God. And each of us has the opportunity and privilege of touching someone else in a profound way. And because of this fact, we must always be careful of what we say and do.
We all can remember times when someone has approached us and shared with us a time when we said or did something, that positively impacted another. On the other hand, we may not be aware of how an off-color remark or off-hand joke negatively affects another person. What we say, even in jest, matters, and we must be careful. As the writer of Proverbs reminds us, “The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit” (15:4). This negative impact aspect was driven home to me during my final year in the military.
During my last year in the Air Force, I had the privilege of serving as the Swing Shift Production Supervisor for the Component Maintenance squadron. As the CMS Pro Super, it was my job to work with both the aircraft maintainers and the backshops to ensure the aircraft were ready for the next day’s flying schedule. Because of my time on Seymour Johnson and my position, I was well known in both the backshops and out on the flightline. One evening I found myself in the Avionics backshop joking around with some of the Avionics folks. One of the people in the office at the time was a Tech Sergeant who I had also served with in the Middle East. As part of a lighthearted conversation, this TSgt shared an opinion with me and I jokingly remarked that since he didn’t matter to me, then neither did his opinion. The look of hurt on his face was obvious.
The off-color remark was meant to be a joke, not an actual reflection on how I felt about this person. Sadly, that one remark damaged our relationship and because I was retiring in just a few months, I was never able to undo the damage I had done. To this day, even though I apologized profusely, I must now live with the fact that in a single phrase, I negatively affected another person. I irreparably damaged a relationship. For me, this is a constant reminder that words and action have consequences, and we need to be careful to remember that what we do and say, does affect other people.
Maybe this is another reason Jesus warned us, “But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words, you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt. 12 36-37). The little seeds we plant, good or bad, twenty, thirty or even half a century later, never knowing and maybe even wondering if it was doing any good at all, has the potential to grow, blossom, and mature into something really grand and important, or can become weeds that choke out the good plants.
Here’s the thing — we had no control over the growth. We probably weren’t even aware if it was growing or not. That aspect of the process is out of our hands. The part we are responsible for is the sowing of the seeds. We must take responsibility for our words and deeds. The sowing of good seed is the part we play in the kingdom of God. In God’s kingdom, little things are made big. Seemingly unimportant things, are made important. The good seeds which we plant can help people grow into marvelous, active, Christian human beings.
There was a story on National Public Radio about a writer named Colin who was going through a creative slump a couple of years ago. One night he and a couple of friends decided to go out for pizza and as they ate, they began to talk about what was the best pizza they’d ever had, and what they thought was the best pizza in New York City. Later that night Colin decided to do some internet research and see if there was a “best pizza in New York” but since there are so many pizza joints in the city and no one had tried them all, the judgment had not been made as to which one was the best. Colin decided to take up the challenge.
However, since eating at all the pizza joints in the New York City’s five Boroughs was logistically impossible, he decided to focus solely on Manhattan. He would eat a slice at every single pizza shop in Manhattan and he would write a blog about his experience. He called the blog “Slice Harvester.” His standard for judging the best would be a pizza that he had eaten with his father when he was thirteen years old, a pizza that had grown to mythic proportions in Colin’s memory become that’s what he had always considered as the “best pizza in Manhattan.” It had been on a day when his father had taken him to Greenwich Village to buy a pair of combat boots.
Years earlier as he and his father shopped, they passed one particular pizzeria. The smell was so good that they both turned simultaneously and went back. They went into the place and bought a slice of pizza and enjoyed what they both agreed may be the best pizza they’d ever eaten. They got the combat boots and they had this really great dad and son day. Years passed, Saint Mark’s Pizza where they bought the perfect slice went out of business, Colin grew up and moved away from home to become a writer.
Two and a half years after beginning his project, Colin had eaten pizza at 362 places on the island of Manhattan, blogged about every single one of them and written a book about the experience (Slice Harvester: A Memoir in Pizza by Colin Atrophy Hagendorf, Simon and Schuster.) As he was writing the book, he realized that of all of those slices of pizza, there was only one place where he and his friends went back and had a second slice, so he decided this must be the best pizza in Manhattan. They just didn’t want the experience to end, it was that good.
He called the pizza guy and told him about the book. He asked if he could come down to interview him and the guy agreed. In the course of the interview, he asked the guy where he learned to make pizza. “Well,” said the guy, “I actually learned from the man who lived across the street from us when I was growing up because he always made pizza for the neighborhood for important events and whatnot. “What was your neighbor’s name?” Colin asked. “Well,” said the guy, “I don’t remember, but I do remember that, for a while, he had a little pizzeria in the city.” “Oh, yeah? Can you remember the name of the place?” “Sure, it was in the East Village right next to a church — a little place called Saint Mark’s Pizza.”
A father took his son into the city to buy a pair of combat boots and they stopped for pizza and had a moment together… and a seed was planted. A fellow made pizza for his friends and neighbors. They talked him into opening his own place. One day a young writer comes in and ordered a slice… and a seed was planted. You see how it works? Maybe the seed will grow. Maybe it won’t. But we plant, nonetheless. You and I are the farmers. For good or bad our words and actions have the potential to affect others.
Planting seeds is what we do. The seeds we sow for God’s kingdom are seeds of love, peace, kindness, joy, hope, and grace, and we sow them regardless of the conditions or of how long it will take them to germinate. Remember that aspect of the process is God’s concern. When the conditions bring hate, we still sow seeds for God’s kingdom. When the conditions bring tragedy, we still sow seeds for God’s kingdom. When the conditions bring despair, we still sow seeds for God’s kingdom. When the conditions bring pain and misery, we still sow seeds for God’s kingdom. The seeds may grow, or they may not. How they grow is a mystery to us and is the part of the process that’s in God’s hands.
As one of the lecturers of the Pro Ecclesia video conference I participated in this week reminded us, our business in God’s kingdom is to show love to our neighbors and share the gospel; it’s God’s business to instill and produce faith in the person. Our words and actions are the seeds we sow, and each seed sown has consequences. The seeds we sow may seem small and inconsequential, but they do matter. The work we do in the kingdom of God doesn’t have to be big, because in God’s kingdom, they all have potential — the potential to sprout, to grow, to spread out and become huge trees of shade giving, life-saving, trees of grace.
Amen
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.