Sermon 6/16/2024 Scattering Seeds of the Kingdom Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
We heard two parables describing the Kingdom today, both about seeds. Seeds… As you have probably guessed, I know a lot about seeds, collecting them, storing them and of course, planting them. And I have a lot of experience with keeping vigil during the sprouting process. Right now, I have ___ flats of different types of seeds germinating in my greenhouse, and I check on them repeatedly every day, to see what is sprouting, and what isn’t; to make sure the soil doesn’t dry out; opening the windows or the doors if the greenhouse gets too hot, closing them as needed to keep the wind from drying them out, or from blowing in unwanted seeds from my yard, or from the empty field across the street… Germination is mostly waiting and watching, not always patiently, and trying various means of improving germination.
Some seeds need a cold period to germinate, some even require several freeze-thaw cycles over several years, while others need heat, and still others need fairly steady temperatures in a narrow range. Some need repeated freeze-thaw cycles. Some need to be scarified—meaning, I need to make cuts in the seed coat in order for the seed to open and let the tiny plant out of its protective wrapper. Some seeds need sunlight to stimulate germination and must be sown on the surface, while others are hindered by light, and need to be covered by dirt—but almost never planted deeper than the seed is thick, or it won’t be able to reach the sunlight in time, and will die, even if it does sprout. Since I like to grow wild, native plants that aren’t ordinarily grown by gardeners, sometimes the seeds I purchase are labeled with “?” because the germination requirements are completely unknown. Some seeds have specific soil requirements—pH, moisture, drainage, composition. Some germinate within a week or two, while others may take several months, even if the conditions are perfect, which they never are for everything in my simple greenhouse.
My greenhouse doesn’t have sprinklers or heat or A/C or grow lights. I don’t have a winter cold frame for the seeds that sprout in the cold, so I have to move a few trays at a time to the refrigerator in my garage for a week or two, then switch them out. My family loves that, since we keep food on the top shelves, and I put my trays of dirt on the bottom. And of course, I have to keep them moist, taking them out to water them occasionally. So, I put a layer of paper towels under them to try to keep the shelves from getting muddy. (Happy Father’s Day, Kevin. Thanks for being so patient and tolerant. You’re a saint.)
Sometimes, in trying to keep the seeds from drying out, mushrooms start popping up in the flats, and then I need to examine each flat and remove the fungi on a daily basis. And no matter how hard I try, I almost always get unwanted plants popping up in my flats. Sometimes they are weed seeds that blow in, or from the grass and weeds that grow uncontrolled inside the greenhouse, since it isn’t permanent, and doesn’t sit on a cement slab. Sometimes, no matter how careful I am when I collect seeds, I get contaminating seeds as well, and sometimes, as I plant the seeds, some of the really tiny ones get stuck to my hands, and then fall off onto other flats. Sometimes the wind (or the watering hose), blows or sprays some of the seeds from one tray onto other nearby trays, so they get mixed up. Sometimes I forget to label a tray, or label one incorrectly. And no matter what I use to label them—no matter how permanent the marker is supposed to be—after a couple months of watering them daily, or several times a day when it gets really hot and dry, the label wears off. And if I am moving flats in and out of the frig, then I can’t identify seeds by location, because that may have changed.
In spite of everything I have learned from books, from experience and from trial and error, I never really know what I’m going to have to transplant into my gardens in the fall. Some flats will be crowded, practically bursting with plants—far more than I need or have space for, while others will have very few, and some may not yield anything at all. After all, there are tons of variables, and I have very little control over most of them. I can never be sure why any flat yields what it does, and whether it had anything to do with how I treated it, or not. Like the person in the parable, I sleep and rise, water and pray, keeping vigil, but I’m really not in control of the process. That’s up to the seeds, the soil, the weather, and God, the Ultimate Gardener.
The second parable likens the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed that grows into a gigantic bush. Now, first of all, let’s be honest, mustard is not a tree or a bush, but an herb. It is not woody, or long-lived. It is, at best, a biennial—a two-year plant. My Bible translation software suggests we translate it as vegetable, which is much more accurate than bush. We have at least a dozen species of mustard in MN, only two of which are native to North America. The rest came from Europe or Asia. We know that mustard usually doesn’t get big enough to be called a shrub, or big enough to be suitable as a nesting site for birds. However, I looked up mustard plants on minnesotawildflowers.info, and one of these foreign mustard plants—black mustard, grows up to 8 ft. tall, even here. This same mustard plant also grows wild in Israel, and there it gets much larger than this—12 feet tall or more. In Israel, it grows in large clusters, and can form a huge, tangled mass of plants the size of an SUV or even an RV. I’ve seen pictures. And it’s true that the seeds are tiny, only 1-2 mm long.
So, what are we to make of these parables, these comparisons of the Kingdom of God with scattering seeds, sleeping and rising and keeping vigil, watching and waiting for them to germinate, to grow and yield a crop or to create a suitable site for birds to build nests?
First of all, I think that these parables point to signs we are to watch for—signs by which we can recognize the Kingdom when it appears in our midst. Both of these parables describe God’s incredibly generous providence—a tremendous crop ready for harvest, habitat suitable for housing, for resting, a place of safety where offspring can be raised and fed and nurtured—not just for people, but for all creation. This makes sense, since the Kingdom of God is a place where God’s will is done, here, on earth—a place where God’s desire that all life, human and animal and vegetable, is provided for and given an opportunity to thrive and flourish. That’s more than providence—that requires justice and mercy and nurturing by humans acting as good stewards and guardians of creation and as good neighbors to one another—in short, a divine miracle.
Second, the parables suggest, by the very nature of the plants described, that the Kingdom is not fully present, not permanent, but temporary, transient. These are crops that live a single season, maybe two. These are plants sown by scattering the seeds willy-nilly, with wild abandon, and entrusted to God, put at the mercy of the elements of sun, wind, rain, animals and insects, totally out of our control. Seeds that take root produce a single crop at times and places of God’s choosing. They may or may not self-sow and produce a second generation in the same place. These seeds are small, scattered by the wind, birds and animals. So, the Kingdom may crop up in unexpected places, near or far, seldom lasting long in any one place. That shouldn’t surprise us. After all, the human world is still riddled with sin, greed, hatred, fear, injustice, war and disease. We just aren’t good at doing God’s will and living as good stewards and good disciples of Jesus for prolonged periods of time. But we do manage, for short periods, once in a while, sometimes even in places where the Kingdom is most desperately needed and least expected to show up.
I think the more interesting, and more important thing these parables have to say about us, especially the first parable, is what they tell us about our role, our duty, our opportunity to help bring God’s Kingdom to reality on earth, if only temporarily. We are gardeners, and our job is to sow seeds—not just wheat seeds or corn seeds or mustard seeds, but seeds of faith, seeds of hope, seeds of love and generosity and compassion, seeds of justice, seeds of mercy, seeds of tolerance and forgiveness and seeds of human rights and liberty, seeds of reconciliation, conservation and restoration. We aren’t supposed to be judicious and stingy about how many seeds we scatter, or where we scatter them. We may prepare the soil, as best we can, but we sow these seeds even on soil that is hard, dry, untilled and unfertilized, overgrown with weeds, desert or swampland, full sun or full shade. We are to scatter seeds even on hardened hearts, poisoned and bitter with hatred and fear and selfishness, hearts of all people of all ages and persuasions and ideologies. We release both the seeds and the fate of these seeds to the care of the Holy Spirit, who is free to blow them elsewhere like the wind, or to breathe life into them, so that they germinate, grow and establish God’s Kingdom for a season, bearing whatever fruit they can. And we then help reap and rejoice in the harvest, however big or small. We watch and we wait, vigilantly searching for signs that the Kingdom is at hand. And when we see those signs, we run like the wind, and we join in, employing our hands and feet and voices and gifts to do God’s Kingdom work, to extend it as far as possible, and to sustain it as long as possible. When it appears, no matter how fleetingly, we celebrate it and point to it and exclaim, “Look! There is the Kingdom come! There is Christ in the midst of us, right now! There is the Holy Spirit moving among us! There is God’s love and mercy in action! There is abundant grace. Thanks be to God!”
We are called to continue scattering seed, watching, waiting, hoping, praying and trusting in God, our Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, to keep showing up, where and when the Kingdom is most desperately needed, and least expected, bringing life and salvation, liberty and justice. And we are called to go on laboring, fueled by the belief that one day, God’s Kingdom will come in full, and blossom into something lasting that will transform and restore all of creation.