Mark 4:26-34
This past Friday, I got a text from Ben about my garden. He had seen our neighbor groundhog investigating my herb garden. It’s honestly amazing that we haven’t seen him in there sooner, because he’s made himself two different entrances into our yard under our fence, both of which are protected from our dogs. He’s not gotten into the raised beds, but there’s not much in there yet worth eating unless he really wants some sugar snap peas. Every year that I’ve been gardening, we’ve had critters help themselves to what I’m growing. Birds have pulled up seedlings and pecked at tomatoes, squirrels have dug up seeds, rabbits have eaten the tops off of flowers and slugs have taken nibbles out of strawberries. Before we had a fence, the deer repeatedly razed all my plants to the ground, and they still snack on the beds in our front yard. We’ve started referring to our hostas as the deer buffet. Every morning I go outside with the dogs and inspect all my flowers and herbs and vegetables, looking for signs of critters and also celebrating signs of growth and flourishing. Sometimes in the evenings when Ben comes home from meetings, he will come to the backyard to find me still in my work clothes with my collar on, because the few minutes I had planned to spend in the garden became a few hours without my noticing. When I grab my garden gloves and head outside, Ben has started saying “See you when the sun goes down!” because we both know I will never run out of things to do or observe.
The gardener in Jesus’s parable is a much more relaxed and luckier gardener than I. He casts seeds onto the ground and then walks away to take a nap, leaving the seeds to their mysterious germination and growth. I don’t believe I’ve ever planted a seed without obsessively checking it every day. Actually, when I first started gardening I was much more successful at growing algae than the seeds I had planted because I was constantly overwatering. I wage a daily battle against invasive non native plants that threaten to take over my whole garden. I can’t imagine tossing the seeds out onto the ground and walking away. The few times I’ve tried that, I was not rewarded with much of a harvest. Even a less anxious and more experienced farmer will tell you that there’s a lot more to planting and raising food than just tossing some seeds outside.
Jesus’s gardener demonstrates a faith that I envy. Faith that the Lord who provided the seeds will also give the growth. Faith that even when he can’t see or understand exactly what is happening, God’s work continues. Faith that the natural outcome of sowing will be harvest. This farmer is able to rest in the promise of God’s good creation, and to rise when it is once again time to take his part in that creation. Jesus tells us that the kingdom of heaven is like this, like a harvest that produces of itself by the Grace of God.
And then there’s the mustard seed, that familiar image of faith. Only this time, Jesus is not comparing the tiny mustard seed to the size or strength of our faith. Jesus in this passage tells us that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, starting tiny when it falls to the earth only to grow into something miraculously big. Notice that the seed is sown, implying that some gardener or farmer chose to plant this tiny seed. Perhaps it was the same relaxed person who scattered seed and let it be until the harvest manifested of its own accord. Perhaps the mustard seed too grows to maturity and bears fruit without much intervention from anxious human hands. Perhaps the sower was not a human being at all, but one of the same birds of the air that would later nest in its branches and find rest in its shade.
Somehow, this is what the kingdom of God is like, a parable that Jesus uses to teach us about it. But what does it mean? If the kingdom of God is like a sleeping farmer and a seed sprouting and growing in the earth all by itself and a mustard seed that starts small but grows tall and birds making their nests, what does that tell us about God’s kingdom? What does all that tell us about God?
What I hope it tells us is that there is something of God to be found in the garden, in the field, in the natural processes that lead to harvest and allow us to survive and break bread together. Elsewhere Jesus speaks to the plight of the farmer and the field hand and the shepherd and the landowner. But here, in these parables, Jesus focuses less on the action of human beings and lifts up the ordinary miracles of seeds and soil, growth and change and new life made possible by a shrub’s shady embrace. The kingdom of heaven may be like a person sowing seed and harvesting, but it is also like the first sprout from the seed and the many stages that follow. The kingdom of heaven is like a seed doing what seeds are made to do, growing into a mature plant that exists not only for itself, but for the ecosystem of which it is one part. The kingdom of heaven is like birds who sometimes snatch up a farmer’s seeds before they can sprout finding rest and shelter for the next generation in the branches of a seed they missed. The kingdom of heaven is a system of life begetting life, of cooperation, of mutual need being met by mutual aid. The kingdom of heaven does not require the domination and constant intervention and interference we might think necessary. The kingdom of heaven doesn’t even require us to understand it fully, it seems.
This is what Jesus shares with his disciples, with us, in these parables. A deep breath in the middle of ministry, in the middle of the rush of life and the myriad ways we grasp to take control of the world around us. The kingdom of God IS, beyond and in spite of our control. The kingdom of God has no beginning and no end, just as the cycle of planting and harvesting continues on. In the kingdom of God, everyone will find shelter. In the kingdom of God, nothing is wasted and everyone is fed. Including us. It is God’s kingdom, not ours. We can trust that the harvest will come, even if we cannot always see the growth.
Mother A Writes 