Hear the words of Jesus:
"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."
God is the just-in-time God.
He watches us sow ideas and possibilities and real seeds, too.
He encourages us to do this very thing.
The seeds take root and grow in ways that we don’t understand,
but which we marvel to watch.
Our part was only to plant the seed; it’s not like we really
did anything powerful ourselves.
God does the real, and sometimes mysterious, work.
Yet, even though we don’t understand how it happens,
when the time of need comes, the time of harvest comes.
Then we find that God has transformed the seed into a harvest
that provides just what we need.
God is the just-in-time God.
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."
Remember, when earlier this week we spoke of the cedar tree
which God would form from the sprig of an old tree?
Doesn’t this language about the mustard bush sound familiar?
Is Jesus taking an idea that is literally king-sized and making it
more the size that a real person could understand and feel
comfortable with?
Jesus compares the kingdom to something that
doesn’t seem significant to world, does it?
Does the kingdom of God seem significant to our world today?
Feminists scoff at the power structures that the word kingdom
even implies as being irrelevant now.
The rugged American individualist laughs at the need for
a community or kingdom, because doesn’t everyone know
that the existence of the individual is all that is truly significant?
Atheists ridicule the idea of God, much less that a group of people
should think that they are being gathered together as a people.
Yet this seemingly insignificant thing has a strange power,
and even attraction. Mustard adds a spice to life,
a unique scent and flavor not found elsewhere.
This bush provides sustenance, too.
The leaves of the mustard plant were used to prepare
delicious meals, even in the time of Jesus.
And in this plant, there is again the hope of peace
in the natural order: the differing birds finding a place to nest.
The kingdom brings all of these things.
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.
May we spend time with God’s word in meditation and prayer
so that God may reveal to us how his word can shape us
as it shaped his first disciples.
Grace and peace,
Ron
Mark 4:26-34 – NRSV
