The Wild and Invasive Kingdom of God

Mark 4:26-34
6-13-21

 So today, Ezekiel says:

²²Thus says the Lord God: 
 I myself will take a sprig
  from the lofty top of a cedar;
  I will set it out.
 I will break off a tender one
  from the topmost of its young twigs;
 I myself will plant it
  on a high and lofty mountain.
 ²³On the mountain height of Israel
  I will plant it,
 in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
  and become a noble cedar.
 Under it every kind of bird will live;
  in the shade of its branches will nest
  winged creatures of every kind.

 

Jesus and his audience would have known

this imagery from the book of Ezekiel.

God would take the little twig and from it,

A great nation would grow

like the mighty cedar of Lebanon.

Which are strong and tall and impressive.

Like the Sequoia or Redwood here in the US.

 

Actually throughout Ezekiel and in other books,

the writers compare the kingdoms  of Judah,

Assyria and Babylon to the great cedars of Lebanon --

strong and everlasting.

 

The Majestic Cedars of Lebanon

The people that Jesus was speaking to

would have known these metaphors well

and so, obviously, would have Jesus.

So when Jesus started out:

“To what should we compare the kingdom of God?”

I’m sure they expected something

tall and equally majestic, maybe bigger than a giant tree.

Maybe a mountain or the vast heavens above.

 

But then Jesus says: “The kingdom of God can be

compared to . . . a mustard seed”

You could almost hear the crowd going, “what?”.

Huh? They must have thought he was crazy.

 

Some preachers today want to believe that mustard

trees are tall and sturdy like the cedars of Lebanon,

And that the moral of the parable is

from the tiny seed, the big impressive tree grows.

But that’s not what people would have thought

A Wildly Invasive Mustard Bush

hearing this parable in Jesus time.

 

Mustard plants were the invasive plant

of the middle east, the kudzu vine or bamboo,

something you really don’t want growing in your yard,

because it is bound to take over.

It was actually so invasive that there was a Jewish law that you

couldn’t plant it in your own fields because it could infest your neighbor’s field.

It also grows so densely that it chokes other plants out.

 

So the kingdom of God is not like a majestic cedar,

a mighty oak, a towering sequoia.

No, it’s like mustard seed. Not a bad plant,

but a plant that just creeps and without anyone

even realizing it, it just takes over.

 

It’s true. The kingdom of God is not like other kingdoms.

It’s power is not in its physical strength,

or military, or financial strength.

It’s power is in its ability to sneak in

and change the human heart.
To choke out the forces of evil, apathy, hate, violence, and fear

and replace it with God’s values,

of compassion, mercy, and love.

 

Now I have to admit, sometimes as I preach

about parables like this, and about Jesus,

how his death and resurrection

has transformed the world, sometimes I wonder.

We’ve been at this for 2000 years.

Where is  Christ’s effect on humanity?

Where has Christ’s effect on history been?

Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is here,

where is the kingdom of God?

Where is the mustard plant that is supposed to take over.
Because I think it seems like

things are getting worse, not better.

 

But remember, the Kingdom of God is sneaky.

It’s not just going to come like a giant tree,

like a dramatic swooping change that we would notice,

it’s a quiet invasion.

 

There was an article in Forbes magazine

a couple of years ago, it was called

“Why the world is getting better

and why hardly anyone knows it”

 

Most people surveyed in any country

Sweden, the UK,  the US, overwhelmingly

said that the world was getting worse.

And I think most of us would say the same thing,

the golden years are always behind us.

People are worse off, the injustice is deeper, the violence is increasing.

It seems like the devil is surely winning this battle.

 

But, the article said, that our limited viewpoint

was misleading, if you pull back and look at the world

over a longer stretch of time,

on “virtually all of the key dimensions of human material well-being—

poverty, literacy, health, freedom, and education—

the world is an extraordinarily better place

than it was just a couple of centuries ago.”

 

A far lower percentage of people in the world

are living in extreme poverty,

more people than ever are able to read,

in 1800, almost 43% of children died before they were 5.

Now it’s down to only 4.2% of children.

In 1800 less than 1% of people in the world lived in a democracy,

a place where they could vote and have a say in their country’s politics.

Now that is up to 55% of the world.

 

Even in terms of violence, a statistic that we would

think is obviously worse than ever now.

Another article in  the Wall Street Journal says:

that Violence has been in decline for thousands of years,

and today we may be living in the most peaceable

era in the existence of our species.

ooh. It doesn’t feel like it at all. But it’s happening.

 

It’s slow progress, but that mustard seed is growing,

slowly it’s taking over. And I believe it’s because people

are growing in their compassion and empathy for others.

The devil is losing and Jesus plan of healing the world

is taking time, there is a lot to do, but it’s happening.

  

And maybe it doesn’t seem like things are getting better,

because we are more sensitive to things than ever before,

even if they don’t affect us personally.

We care about victims of violence,

we care about those in poverty,

we want to see all people educated,

we care that others are healthy and free, more than ever before.

God’s ways and vision are becoming our ways and visions.

And the younger generations seem outdoing

older generations in the caring and compassion department.

 

And, since we care, because we hold God’s vision

and we’re frustrated that things

aren’t good and just and fair for all people.

Maybe that’s why it seems worse than ever,

because the mustard seed in our heart wants us to see

a world that is just and safe for all people.

 

Like when we heard about children

of immigrants being taken from their parents.

When we hear about gun violence.

Or people who are homeless or hungry.

We may never meet these people,

We may not all be all on the same page on

immigration laws, or gun laws, or food stamps

and we might not agree on what should be done,

but we know that these things have to change.

 
And even though things seem terrible,

the outcry in itself is hopeful.

Because we know how the mustard seed is.

 
We know that heartbreak turns into action.

People start asking, what can I do?
How can I change this? Where can I volunteer?

Where can I send money? How can we change policy?

What can we do? Christians,  Jews, and Muslims,

atheist and agonistic all moved by their compassion.

As terrible as it may seem now,

we know that once that once that compassion

gets into our hearts, that God’s will is bound to be done eventually.

 

And that’s how the kingdom of God works.

It’s like a mustard plant, a weed

that invades people’s hearts, that slowly takes over

with compassion and empathy, mercy, and love

 

 

Slowly we are caring about things that God cares about,

Slowly, until there are enough of us,

and until we’re motivated to change one thing,

then another and then one day,

God’s will is done, and the kingdom of God is here.

 

The kingdom of God is in refugee resettlement groups,

it’s in the volunteers who work at shelters,

it’s in food pantries, it’s in justice work,

it’s in gifts of money, it’s in letters to congress

it’s in our prayers, our voices, our tears and discomfort.

 

It will take a long time.

It won’t all happen in our lifetime,

but that plant is taking over,

God is changing this world from the inside out

starting with the human heart.

 

The kingdom of God is like this:

Jesus is that one little seed,

The seed gets scattered.

And God’s will grows and grows

and grows in the heart of humanity.

Without our knowledge, without our permission,

without our even noticing it.

Just one morning it’s there.
We don’t know how it grows, but one day,

we will reap the harvest that God has created.