Mark 4:26-34 6-16-24
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| Mustard Seed Jen Norton |
22Thus says the Lord God:
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out. . .
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.
to talk about how
God will grow the nation.
God would take the
little twig and from it,
and it would grow into
a big and impressive tree.
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 impressive.
Jesus and everyone listening to
him
would have known this imagery
from the book of
Ezekiel.
So when Jesus started out saying:
“To what should we
compare the kingdom of God?”
I’m sure they
expected something
tall and equally
majestic,
maybe something even
bigger than a giant tree.
compared to . . . a
mustard seed”
I’m sure there was
some scoffing.
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,
So then the moral of
the parable is
from the tiny seed, the big impressive tree grows.
But that’s not what people would have thought
hearing this parable
in Jesus time.
The mustard tree is more like a
bush.
It’s scrubby and short.
It can grow big and wild,
but no one really wants that to happen.
Mustard plants were the invasive
plant
of the middle east,
the kudzu vine, or poison ivy, 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.
Once
it starts growing, it easily gets out of control
and
goes everywhere.
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.
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, love, and forgiveness.
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.
So when is the
Kingdom of God going to take over?
Because I think it
seems like
things are getting
worse, not better.
I think that’s the
prevailing mood.
Things are worse
than they were before.
More divided, more
violent, more poverty,
more hunger, more
everything, more bad.
But remember what Jesus said,
the Kingdom of God is sneaky.
It’s not just going to
come in a dramatic,
swooping change that
everyone would notice,
it’s a mustard seed.
A small seed that just shows up
and before you know
it, your whole yard is filled.
It’s a quiet
invasion.
There was an article in Forbes
magazine
a few of years ago,
it was called
“Why the world is
getting better
and why hardly
anyone knows it”
It said that every country that
was surveyed –
Sweden, the UK, and the US, overwhelmingly –
said that the world
was getting worse.
I think that’s what
most people would say.
That the golden
years were 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.
100 years ago, women didn’t have the right to
vote
in
the US or in the UK.
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.
The article suggested that the access to media
might be to blame. Because now we can hear
about
horrible stuff happening everywhere,
not just in our own neighborhood or town.
And I think that’s probably true.
I also think that 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.
The kingdom of God has grown in the world in
that
sneaky, invasive way and many people have
grown
more compassionate.
So now, even if they’re half way around the
world,
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.
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,
we’re more 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.
And that’s how the mustard seed works.
Once the seed is planted, it slowly creeps in
changing hearts and minds.
Before we know it, we’re sensitive to every injustice,
to every person who is hungry or poor,
every violent act. Our collective hearts are
broken.
And then the mustard seed turns
that heartbreak 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? until all of us;
Christians, Jews, and Muslims, atheist and
agonistic are all moved by our compassion.
We can see that invasive mustard plant is creeping in,
in the people of the
World Central Kitchen,
who have been
keeping people fed in places
of war like
Palestine and Ukraine.
It’s in people who work for the Innocence
Project
getting those who are wrongly imprisoned
freed.
it’s in the volunteers who work at shelters,
it’s people who volunteer in food pantries,
for Volunteers in Medicine, Habitat for
Humanity,
Deep Well, Backpack Buddies, it’s in justice
work,
it’s in protests, it’s in financial gifts,
it’s in letters to congress
it’s in our prayers, our voices, our tears and
discomfort.
As terrible as it may seem now,
we know that once that once that we feel
that compassion for others that we don’t know
get into our hearts, that God’s will
is bound to be done eventually.
Because that’s how the kingdom of God works.
It’s like a mustard plant, a weed
that invades and slowly takes over.
I believe, eventually, one day, so many people
will care about the
things that God cares about,
that the world will be remade in God’s image
until one day, God’s will will be done,
and before we know it, the kingdom of
will be here on earth as it is in heaven.
It will take a long time.
I know it won’t all happen in our lifetime,
but we can live in hope because we know
that mustard plant is taking over,
we know that 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 it 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,
God’s kingdom will take over and
we will reap the harvest that God has created.
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