Reflection for North Balwyn Uniting Church
16^th of June 2024

Mark 4:26-34

What a relief is today’s reading from the Gospel according to Mark. Last week we had demons, and the difficult interactions between Jesus and his biological family; this week we have seeds. I much prefer preaching about seeds growing mysteriously in the ground to preaching about Satan rising up against Satan. But the reason Jesus is talking about the mysteries of botanical growth is because of that recent opposition he had experienced from his family, who worried that he was out of his mind, and from the scribes, who accused him of being in league with Beelzebul.

Today we hear two tiny parables about the kingdom of heaven and about growth. They are parables that draw on the common agricultural practices with which the crowds around Jesus would have been familiar; these are not stories for the scribes who have come from the Temple in Jerusalem. Both begin with the smallness of the seeds, which leads to abundant crops. The first of the two parables is the only parable unique to Mark. Presumably Matthew and Luke, when drawing on Mark’s material, decided that they had enough ‘seed’ parables in the story of the seeds sown on four different types of ground (Mark 4:3-9, Matthew 13:3-9, Luke 8:5-8) and the parable of the mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32, Luke 13:19). This is a pity, because Mark’s story of the seed is remarkable.

Anyone who has ever had a garden, let alone anyone working in agriculture, knows that putting a seed in the ground and then doing nothing else to it, is not usually going to result in a bumper crop. Unless, of course, the seed is of a weed that you do not want to thrive – then leaving it completely alone may lead to a bountiful and unwelcome harvest. The story of the seeds sown on four diverse types of ground is more realistic. That parable talks about the dangers of birds, thorns, rocky ground, the sun. There is obviously work there for the sower to do to ensure a crop: watering, weeding, protecting the seed from the birds. But in today’s story Mark is clear that once the seed has been sown the sower has nothing else to do with it. He sleeps and rises night and day, with no idea about how the seed sprouts and grows. The earth produces of itself. It is only when the grain is ripe that the sower has a role again, at the harvest. What does Jesus mean by this unlikely tale?

Then we have the story of the mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds, which produces the largest of all shrubs, a shrub so large that birds of the air can make nests in its shade. ‘Really?’ we can imagine the crowd pondering. ‘Do mustard bushes really grow that large, Jesus?’ They do not, but they are hardy bushes that, if not watched, can take over a garden. If the contrast is simply between the smallness of the seed and the might of the plant produced from it, why does Jesus not compare the kingdom of heaven to the seed of a cedar of Lebanon, which grows to one hundred feet?

The Prophet Ezekiel compared the kingdom of Israel to a mighty cedar.

Thus 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. On 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. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.

Israel considers its kingdom to be a mighty cedar, under which every kind of bird will live. Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a hardy and intrusive shrub, practically a weed, but under it, too, the birds of the air will be able to make nests in the shade. The kingdom of heaven will not look like the kingdoms of the world. It cannot be compared to a noble cedar on a high and lofty mountain. Human beings may think that that is what the kingdom of heaven should be like. They might even try to bring it about through the powers the world uses: military might; laws that impose a particular religion on a population; laws that give special rights to people of one religion, or that forbid inter-religious marriages or conversions. But that is to misunderstand the nature of the kingdom of heaven. We must always remember that it is a mustard bush, not a cedar.

In the same way, the first of today’s parables reminds us that it is God who will bring about the kingdom of heaven, not us. We may be able to plant a seed, but we cannot determine how that seed will grow. That happens, we do not know how. The earth produces of itself, the kingdom of heaven comes about in God’s mysterious ways and in God’s own time. Some of us are lucky enough to be present at a time of harvest when seeds that others have planted produce a bumper crop. But at other times we are the ones who plant the tiniest of seeds, hoping with faith that they will, in God’s own good time, begin to sprout.

Jesus is telling these parables in the context of the rejection that we heard about last week, his family trying to restrain Jesus because people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind,’ and the scribes from Jerusalem claiming that, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ Jesus is the one who is stronger, the one who has come to defeat Satan, the one who is inaugurating the kingdom of heaven, but he, and his disciples, and his teachings, are being misunderstood and rejected. It is in that context that he tells stories about a bumper crop that comes without any work on the part of the sower, and an astonishingly large mustard bush. Jesus’ first followers, Mark’s community, are not going to see a bumper crop. Jesus will be executed, his followers will be rejected and persecuted, expelled from synagogues and possibly even as misunderstood by their families as Jesus is. But despite this, the things that are as insignificant in the world as tiny seeds, Jesus himself, his word, and the faithfulness of the disciples, will produce abundantly. There is no reason to feel discouraged when there is no sign of growth. It will happen, in God’s own time, because God will have the last word.

We are both the product of other people’s sowing and those sowing seeds in the hope that God will enable them to grow. The very fact that we are here, listening to these stories, two thousand years later, on the other side of the world, is a sign that the seed Jesus sowed was not sown in vain. We are part of the harvest. On the other hand, the church in Australia is currently contracting, becoming older and smaller, losing the status in society that it has previously had. This is undoubtedly discouraging for the people who remember full churches, vibrant youth groups, and Sunday Schools of hundreds of children. I occasionally get discouraged about my own absolute and utter failure as an evangelist. I am many atheists’ favourite Christian, which is not a title I take lightly. Often I have been told by people that if they believed in any God, they would believe in mine. Which is nice, but sometimes I wish they would consider a belief in God to be more than hypothetical. Elenie Poulos, who was for many years the National Director of the Justice Unit of the Assembly, once told me that when she participated in justice campaigns other people would say, “Oh, the Uniting Church. If I went to any church, it would be yours.” Again, that is lovely, and much better than if people said, “Oh, the Uniting Church! I want nothing to do with it!” But I think that Elenie, like me, would be thrilled if people occasionally took that one step further and did actually come to see what we do in our buildings on Sundays.

But we keep planting seeds. We keep preaching and teaching, we keep creating communities whose members care for each other, we keep serving the world for which Jesus died, we keep working for social justice. Doing all these things, planting our small seeds, means that when the Uniting Church participates in the activities of Australian society, people are glad that we are there. We do not know whether or how our seeds might sprout, what other harvest our seeds may one day produce, but by planting them we are doing our part. The rest is up to God. Thanks be to God. Amen.