Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Proper 6, Pentecost + 4, June 17,
2018
Mark 4:26 -34
26Jesus also said,
“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and
would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does
not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then
the head, then the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain is
ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30He
also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will
we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon
the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet 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.”
33With
many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34he
did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in
private to his disciples.
Mustard is
not indigenous to Northern California.
Yet if you drive through the region north of San Francisco—especially
the valleys: Napa, Sonoma, Russian River—you will see fields festooned in
brilliant yellow, from just before the plentiful grapevines begin to bloom
until after the harvest.
Historians
of the area agree that all that mustard was likely brought by one man, Father
Jose Altimura, a Jesuit priest.
Altimura was
part of the first Spanish expedition to explore the Napa Valley, an expedition
led by Don Francisco Castro, whose name now adorns a street you might have
heard of.
Altimura was
an intrepid explorer…with a bad sense of direction. So, the legend holds to this day, slung over
his shoulder as he walked was a canvas sack full of mustard seeds, with a small
hole in the bottom corner. As he walked,
he left a trail of mustard seeds wherever he went. If he ever became terribly lost, the
fast-growing mustard would send him home, like the lights down an airplane’s
aisle.
It didn’t
hurt that he also liked mustard.
And it
doesn’t hurt today that mustard turns out to be a natural insecticide, which
has for decades protected the delicate vines which generate a multi-billion
dollar wine industry in those beautiful valleys.
In fact, if
you drive through Napa on a Spring morning, you are much more likely to notice
the mustard, rather than the still dormant vines preparing to bring forth
grapes. Mustard
is a powerful plant. I’ve never seen it
grow as a shrub, but apparently it did when Jesus was a boy. He liked to use it to talk about the power of
the kingdom of God.
The kingdom
of God is like someone scattering seed.
It just grows—lucky for Jose Altimura. And for us.
The kingdom
of God grows. We might not see it or
understand it. That’s okay. It’s there for us when we need it.
Kinda like
all that mustard that Jose spread across the wine country. It was years before agronomists realized how
deep their symbiotic relationship with the grapevines went. In addition to keeping the vines free of
nematodes—which are just as nasty as they sound—the vines provide essential
nutrients at the end of their blooming season, when grapes are coming into full
ripeness. And vineyards provide a safe
growing space for the wide-ranging mustard.
Many years
passed before anyone fully understood that.
And even more years passed before somebody thought to make a condiment
out of all of those plants. Now you can
buy dozens of different pricey mustards from the region. There’s even a Mustard Festival held each
year.
The
missional imagination takes a while to develop.
But that’s
okay. As Jesus reminds us this
morning—the kingdom of God just grows, even when we don’t understand it. The kingdom is strong, and consistent, moreso
even than the Bible. Notice that Jesus
doesn’t tell this parable about scripture.
Because he knew that the relationship we would have with scripture would
be more tricky than our relationship with God’s kingdom. Scripture is not always consistent. Heck, even Jesus argued with scripture. He knew that you could find bits of scripture
and twist them to justify all sorts of things.
Men were
justifying the abandonment of their wives with Moses’ words about divorce. People were strictly interpreting the
teaching on love to love those close to them and ignore their neighbors further
away. They were valuing the teaching
about right worship and ignoring the teaching about care for vulnerable
neighbors.
Heck, we’re
still doing it, aren’t we? There was a
firestorm this week, after powerful persons in Washington and beyond tried to
use scripture to justify separating children from their parents.
“It’s
biblical,” said one. “Look at Romans 13,”
declared another.
So, in the
spirit of attempting to understand that mystery known as the kingdom of God,
and how God is calling us to live in the kingdom, let’s look at Romans 13.
The part
that gets quoted to justify unjust laws all the time is the first verse: Let every person be subject to the governing
authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities
that exist have been instituted by God.
That is the
part quoted this week to justify this draconian practice.
We don’t
read scripture a verse at a time, though, do we?
Of course
not. We read scripture in context. And the context for these verses is a
doozy! If you read just a few verses
down, you will see an admonition to pay taxes—haven’t heard any of those same
folks mention that one. And then this,
starting at verse 8:
Owe no
one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has
fulfilled the law. 9The commandments, ‘You shall not commit
adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet’; and
any other commandment, are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as
yourself.’ 10Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love
is the fulfilling of the law.
Look. I don’t expect us to understand exactly what
the kingdom of God is about. Jesus didn’t
expect us to understand what the kingdom of God is all about! It is a powerful thing. It grows without our understanding, and
sometimes without our help. It is
growing all around us today, even as horrifying deeds are being done in our names.
We will
regain our moral center—sooner if we choose to speak out, and slower if we
don’t. The kingdom of God has been
growing all around us, even in the midst of a time when so many forces are
rebelling against God’s call to love and serve all people. We may not see the kingdom, but we know, because
Jesus tells us that it is growing, and it is prepared to make shelter for
those who are flying and those who are fleeing.
Our task is
twofold:
1. Train our eyes to
see the kingdom. To see God at work in
our midst. To see the entry points God
has created for us to enter into God’s work.
This moment, while not created by God, per se, is an opportunity for us
to find our voices as Christians—to stand up for the least of these, and it
doesn’t get more “least” than the vulnerable child of an undocumented
immigrant. Make phone calls. Sign the letter your pastor has written to
our senators. Stand up for the fulfillment
of the law: love.
Number 2 requires imagination. Each of us should imagine that we are carrying
the seeds of the kingdom of God with us.
We have a virtual seed bag which never runs out of seeds. There’s a little hole in it, so the seeds of
the kingdom spill out and begin to grow wherever we go. So we should go to places where the kingdom
should be growing, and we should recognize that we are planting those seeds,
and we should even water them with other nourishing deeds of love for neighbor.
God is
planting a kingdom of love and justice all around us. God is planting a kingdom of love and justice
right within us.
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