Mustard Seed Kingdom

In Mark’s gospel the crucifixion of Christ comes with the crowd’s loud and frantic shouts of “Crucify him!” And Jesus’ despairing cry of "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Strangely, Mark tells us immediately following Jesus’ death that the centurion who witnesses Jesus’ death says, "Truly this man was the Son of God!" The witness of the world begun anew does not come with the triumphant fanfare of trumpets. The centurion seems humbled and with all his implied armor vulnerable. It does not come with crowds. Rather, the kingdom of God comes in the wonderment of a single centurion facing the crucified Christ. The centurion’s simple statement gives evidence that at the moment of Jesus’ death the light extinguished is not permanently gone. New life has begun. The kingdom of God is at hand. At the very point of Jesus’ death on the cross, comes life for all creation. But not exactly as we would have pictured it happening and this is the mystery. In the midst of the chaos and noise of evil, God’s creative force brings new life.

Mark’s gospel is all about this mystery of life hidden in death and revealed only slowly. It is about the hidden nature of the kingdom of God and its slow but ongoing revelation in the midst of a broken world still dominated but no longer ruled by evil.

When Jesus begins his teaching, he has already begun his ministry…In Mark, there are different reactions to Jesus’ ministry. There are crowds that continue to get bigger and bigger.

All this happens in Mark before we get the teachings of Jesus in chapter 4. His first parable is one that is probably familiar to you. It is the parable of the sower of the seeds….. It is important for us to take two themes from this parable because they will shed light on our reading for today. First, Jesus uses the seed as a metaphor for his teaching, or the “word”. The seed is Jesus’ message recounted in Chapter 1 v. 15, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel." The second point is Jesus gives three responses to the word that are adverse and only one that is a positive response. The responses are not sequential either, they occur at the same time.

What follows Jesus’ public parable are two other seed parables that he recounts to his disciples in private. Contrasted to the first seed parable, these parables only have seeds that grow. These parables demonstrate how the positive response to the word happens and what it looks like.

In the first parable, a sower plants the seed. This sower is both Jesus, the disciples and even us today. What is important in this parable is not the sower, but the seed itself and how it grows. Mark 4:26-27 Notice that the man’s only direct action is to sow the seed. After sowing the seed, he sleeps and rises only to find that seed has grown. The man does not know how the seed grows; it is a mystery to the man and to us as well.

Jesus explains this mystery in Mark 4:28 “The earth produces of itself” is a reference to God’s creative power that is a mystery to humankind. Through Mark’s use of imagery we hear the words of Isaiah in chapter 55, verses 8-11

When we share the word, we sow a seed. We are only the planters of the word. We carry no authority of our own; we hold no life giving power. When we preach the word, it is all God working creatively to accomplish the purposes of God in revealing the mystery of the kingdom of God

The second parable that Jesus recounts privately to the disciples is the Mustard seed parable...

In this parable, Jesus turns from the how the hiddenness of the kingdom of God is revealed to the contrast between the relative smallness of the preached word symbolized by the mustard seed to the greatness of the kingdom of God, which is likened to the mustard plant. The contrast is key to explaining the mystery of the kingdom of God, which comes in weakness and in power. Power and greatness is hidden in the smallness and insignificance of the mustard seed.

To the world, the word may be small and insignificant. To the world, the word in its vulnerability and weakness cannot defeat the powers of evil. To the world, God’s kingdom will only come in victory with loud fanfare. To the world, refuge will come in the shade of trees like the great cedar that lifts to the sky. Interestingly Mark avoids the imagery of the cedar tree and sticks with a mustard shrub with large branches. It is hard for us to imagine a mustard shrub being great or large. It is not so hard for us to imagine the cedar tree being great and tall, reaching to the sky. But the height of the cedar tree is problematic. If we turn to Daniel chapter 4, verses 20-24, we can listen to Daniel’s interpretation of King Neb’s dream.

We like the shade of that which is mighty and great. We like big and find our own greatness and security in the shade of that which is bigger than us. Think about it. From the tallest buildings, to the biggest SUV’s, from homes with five bathrooms, to megachurches, from double sized burgers, to people who in general are 15 pounds heavier than they used to be, from to wealth to average work weeks of 60 hours, from wide screen tvs to shopping malls the size of a town; from a Bush who sees himself as mighty cedar tree, protector of the free world to bigger bombs and four hundred mile long walls to keep us in and others out. We seem to be a culture consumed with size, and not just any size. We have adopted the Texan motto, Bigger is better. But does bigger, support life?

Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is like a grain of 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." From smallness comes greatness but in a way that we probably do not expect. …….hiking in CA….We can see all too easily how rising to the heights of God is often mistaken for being God. Remember the Lord’s warning in Isaiah 55: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

In comparison, the mighty mustard shrub, even in its greatness and ability to sustain, remains vulnerable and lowly. The mustard shrub can only spread outward and not upward. As the mustard shrub branches spread outwards so the revelation of the kingdom of God spreads through out the land, touching and bringing refuge to most lowliest of the lows.

The mystery of the kingdom of God, therefore, is not just that Jesus chooses the mustard shrub over a cedar or redwood tree to represent it, but that even the mustard shrub begins as a small seed. Jesus, in his teaching, reveals that the mystery of the kingdom of God is that its power is revealed in its weakness. The tiny mustard seed holds the promise of the greatness of the kingdom of God. When we preach the word, the world may ignore us, may scorn us, may laugh at us, and may humor us. However, when we preach the word, God’s creative powers are bringing life out of death. God’s creative powers are vanquishing the evil represented by the tall tree that would be God and replacing it with the greatness of the mustard plant, where life flourishes in the shade of its lowly branches.

My father raised me to be “great” and as I entered into ministry I expected great things from myself, however, I had a problem. This past year has been a personal torment for me as I try to deal with my lack of “greatness”. Until a couple of days ago, this was still a big struggle for me. However, what I realize now, I never understood the meaning of “greatness”. I was wrapped up in the world’s view of “greatness” and in my busyness; I had totally missed the real meaning of “great”. I had substituted life for death, evil for good, and left no room for God’s creative power to renew me. I was not living in the kingdom of God but in a kingdom that I had partially constructed myself. Even when my mother gave me the mustard seed charm, I still did not understand. I still did not see that living in the time of post-Easter, means that the word as proclaimed by Jesus, the disciples and all the preachers over the centuries is the ongoing revelation of the kingdom of God’s greatness. My responsibility is to share this word in a world, to sow the seed. I am not responsible for the success of my preaching or any other aspect of my ministry. It is up to God to create new life from the seed sown and in so doing reveal the mystery of the kingdom of God.

“Greatness” is not created by hard work. “Greatness” is not found in the tall cedar trees that reach to the sky. To be great is to be the smallest mustard seed that God miraculously changes into the mustard shrub. To be “great” is to be the centurion, standing at the foot of the cross, saying, “"Truly this man was the Son of God!"