I preached on Mark 4:26-34 on Sunday June 14 (Second Sunday after Pentecost). This gospel reading is two short "kingdom of God" parables of Jesus to his disciples (that's us too!)
I'm still thinking about them...and about how/if/when the kingdom (working) of God is moving in our world. Here's my sermon.
PS- If you don't want to read the whole sermon, skip to paragraph 5, which starts with "there's a story." It basically captures the essence of my thinking on God's kingdom these days :)
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I’ve been thinking about these parables from Mark all week. This is the question I’ve been pondering: What is God up to in our world? Put another way: Where is God working? Or, on a more basic (honest) level: Is God doing anything in this world where people fight, kids don’t get enough food or love at home and those darn prices of gas keep going up? What is God up to in our world?
Sometimes I ponder these things late at night, when the sky is dark, or not, and I wonder what’s in God’s heart as God looks upon our brokenness? Sometimes it seems like nothing is happening. Even more, if people of faith struggle with these questions, how do we proclaim a God of power and might to a world that, I’m convinced, is truly desperate for something in which to believe?
I wonder if Jesus can speak to our questions when he speaks of the kingdom of God. These kingdom parables are all over the place in the gospels and two of them are in our text from Mark today. If you’ve hung around Lutheran churches long enough, you might have heard that we understand the kingdom of God not just as a heavenly home by and by, but a reality that breaks into our world now and then. The kingdom of God is more about relationship that a geographic location. We get little glimpses of God’s kingdom from time to time. We sense the presence of God, we receive the love of Christ through another or we discern the Spirit working. Yes, the kingdom of God is here now, but of course not fully here yet.
So if the kingdom of God is breaking into our world, God must be working. But why is it so hard to tell?
There’s a story (this one borrowed from Pastor Karen) of a group of friends who found a bunch of wild mushrooms, prepared a feast with them and spent and evening eating their fill. They also fed some to the dog. Late in the evening of good food and wine, they noticed the dog looking sick. The animal looked sicker and sicker and the friends began to panic. They rushed to the hospital and had their stomachs pumped. When the ordeal was over, they came home to find the dog was doing well and had delivered a litter of puppies.
Why is it so hard to tell what God is up to? Why is it so hard to tell when God is working?
Jesus uses the parable of the growing seed to speak of the kingdom. It’s a simple story, really, and many of us have done just the same. We scatter seed (or maybe more carefully plant in furrows) and sleep and rise to find that it has sprouted and grown. And we do not know how. Oh yes, we understand there are complex biological processes at work, combined with soil conditions, water, sun and fertilizer, but really, do we really know how it works? Isn’t there some part that still is a wonder, that’s still a mystery? I don’t know about you but I marvel every time something green sprouts from earth. I wonder at every new birth. I stand in awe when some life situation that looked dead suddenly comes alive once more. Maybe this parable reminds us that God is God and we are not. When it comes to the working of God in this world, we really cannot know, plan, predict or dictate. The mystery will always be there, ahead of us and beyond.
Yet. Yet perhaps you want more of an answer to where God is working. Me too.
So then, we turn to the mustard seed parable, a more well-known parable. Jesus says the kingdom of God is like this: a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, grows to be the greatest of all shrubs and birds make nests in its large branches. Jesus is no horticulturist, we might argue, for the mustard seed is not the smallest and its branches don’t really grow large enough to support feathered friends. So why a mustard seed? Maybe because in 1st century Palestine, the hearty mustard seed grew everywhere, a common, ordinary weed. Think of it as the dandelion of the Middle East. The kingdom of God is like a dandelion? Maybe we’re onto something now: the kingdom of God might very well be as plain but ubiquitous as a dandelion. Everywhere, persistently growing no matter how much Roundup we squirt. Perhaps we sometimes look for God’s kingdom in the wrong places. Are we looking up for trees with large branches for nesting, or shall we look lower, in places more ordinary and plain?
Whether we see the kingdom of God working or not, the good news is that God has promised to move in this world and God is working. God is moving and working in all kinds of ways that are just not obvious to us right now. In our text from Ezekiel today, God says these four words: “I will accomplish it.” God, not us. God is working. God is moving. God keeps God’s promises, even when things appear to be in shambles. As a friend of mine once said: when everything is an absolute mess in your life, you can be sure that the Holy Spirit is working.
So, thank God, our job isn’t to usher in God’s kingdom or try to coerce its growth. God works and grows and moves very well in spite of our willingness to play director. We might ask ourselves: are we wiling to wait for God to do what God certainly will do? We might also ask ourselves: what keeps us from growing? What keeps our congregation from growing? Are we hindering the growth God has planned for us?
One more story. Two men are shipwrecked on a desert island. They wait several months; no one comes to the rescue. Finally, the first man pours his energy into fashioning a house. He works for days to engineer wood and weeds into a remarkable shelter and the two enjoy their new home. One night, the second man starts a fire that gets out of hand. The entire shelter goes up in flames. The first man is furious and yells all sorts of unkind insults to the second man. About an hour later, a boat pulls onto shore. “Hi there!” shouts the boat captain. “We saw your fire signal. We’re answering your call for help.” Amen.
