Sermon for Time after Pentecost – Mark 4:26-34

Ever notice how Jesus talks a lot about farming? Seeds and fig trees and wheat and weeds. But it’s odd. What was Jesus’ job before he started his ministry? Mark 6:3 – some kind of builder or carpenter. Not a farmer. So why talk about farming? Who knows? But a lot of the people he preaches to were farmers. Jesus wants to be relevant. That means farming sermons. Like you do. But he’s not a farmer, so it shouldn’t be surprising that he says some odd things. In the parable of the sower, the sower sows seeds on rocky paths. Who does that? No one who wants to eat. What an odd example! Here, he talks about mustard seeds, and it’s just as odd, for three reasons. First, he says the mustard seed is the world’s smallest seed. But we know that’s not true. The farmers back in Jesus’ day had smaller seeds too. They knew better. Why would Jesus say such an odd thing?

Here’s the second odd thing. Jesus talks about sowing mustard seeds, but no one really did that. These seeds rapidly germinate and start growing almost immediately. And the plants were notorious for spreading. Ancient botanists wrote that once sown you really couldn’t get rid of them. More like an infestation than a crop. Reminds me of Georgia and kudzu. Someone sees kudzu abroad and has this bright idea that it would make a great ground cover here because it’s thick and spreads so easily. How’s that for a setup? Now we just laugh about it. If you start messing with THESE seeds that Jesus is talking about, you better know what you’re getting into. So it’s not something these farmers typically grew. It’s an odd example for them.

And here’s the third odd thing. Jesus talks about these growing into the greatest of all shrubs, where the birds of the air can nest. Of course, he also said world’s smallest seeds, so his scale is a little subjective. That’s fine. These shrubs can be big, like 10 to 15 feet tall. Maybe a few birds could nest. But Jesus seems to be imaginging an abnormally huge shrub full of birds. Remember, Jesus is trying to describe the kingdom of God. Well, this could be a peaceful image of these little creatures of nature finding shelter in the large branches of a tree, Except, I don’t think that’s what Jesus has in mind. What do you get when you have a huge flock of birds congregated in one spot? You get a lot of noise, and a lot of poop. Want to sit in the shade of THAT tree? If THAT’S the kingdom of God, I’m not sure I want any part of it. It’s a mess.

So what does this all MEAN? It feels like talking about all this odd stuff just derails anything good that Jesus has to say. But he does it in every parable. Listen closely, there’s always an odd detail that sticks out, and it’s the most important thing. Except we get impatient, and Jesus makes it worse – Jesus did not speak to the people except in parables. Why won’t he just come out and tell all of us the plain truth about the kingdom of God? Why leave us scratching our heads? But our problem is that Jesus isn’t derailing. He’s telling us the uncomfortable truths of the kingdom of God that we don’t want to hear. He didn’t have to say world’s smallest seed or biggest shrub, but he knows that deep down we want to prove Jesus wrong, almost like Pharisees. We’re so busy justifying ourselves that we don’t even notice a big old shrub in front of us, let alone the kingdom of God. Jesus doesn’t talk about tame plants. He talks about a wild mustard plant that no one wants to grow because we can’t control it. He knows we can’t stand to think that God doesn’t play by our rules. The uncomfortable truth of the kingdom of God is the uncomfortable truth of who we are, and we have fallen short.

But this is not the last word. Jesus finally tells us the plain truth – he IS the kingdom of God, come down FOR us, to save us from ourselves. He tells us about the tree that the birds of the air swoop down to consume and defile and abandon, and he means himself. He means his own body, defiled by the cross, defiled by willingly taking our sin upon himself, consumed by death, and even abandoned by his own disciples. But still, he rises, the dream and the hope of all who have ever been enslaved or oppressed, because THAT’S when you need to know beyond a doubt that the kingdom of God is arising in defiance of powers and principalities. The only way you can even recognize the kingdom in the first place is when you find yourself unconditionally welcomed into it, just as you are, because now you know there really is such a thing as true freedom and forgiveness.

When that happens, it’s hard to keep quiet about it. But that doesn’t mean trying to convert people or win arguments. We tried that. It didn’t work. Living in the kingdom is so much easier. It just starts coming out of our mouths – little words of hope, and mercy, and forgiveness. They seem like nothing, but these are the mustard seeds that sprout the kingdom in all fullness. That’s what happens when the Spirit does faith to you, not that you’d notice, but other people will hear it from you. Remember, the world will tell you every time that talk is cheap, but Jesus never had much use for worldly wisdom.

On the other hand, living in the kingdom is hard. You will start seeing injustice everywhere you look, and that’s hard to face. We look at empires and governments with a critical eye, and especially when they use scripture to defend divisive policies. This is kind of like the birds that roost in the mustard tree and make a big squawk. Maybe the same birds from another of Jesus’s parables, that eat the seeds that fall on the path and hinder the Word of God from taking root. This past week over in Ft. Wayne, it was Romans 13:1 to defend US immigration policies as some kind of top-down authority instituted by God over anonymous strangers. I know we probably have different opinions on it, but even still, now we know that’s not the kingdom of God. It never starts with laws or authority on high. Jesus shows us that the kingdom always sprouts up from the ground, where folks like you and me live. In God’s kingdom, strangers become real people with names and stories and families, and we have a stake in their lives. In this kingdom we tell those authorities to read the WHOLE chapter of Romans – Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Wow. There’s a lot of power in that. But before we let that power get to our heads, and it always does, let us remember one little thing from our Small Catechism. The kingdom comes even without our prayer, but we still pray, “come to us also!” The kingdom is God’s good gift to us so that we would truly live, right now. God is the one at work in us for the sake of the world. You know, God doesn’t have to do it this way. But thank God he loves us so much that he wants to.