Someone would scatter seed ...

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

A noble cedar ...

When we were young, many of us learned a little poem to help us understand both the beauty of poetry, and its frequent subject, the wonder of nature:

Trees
Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

A tree, for Kilmer, is both substance and symbol of God’s power. Yes, only God can make this beautiful, powerful, worshipful form of life. And in both Kilmer’s poem and the pages of scripture, the tree stands as a symbol of God’s greater, broader, and deeper powers.

Yet there are powers opposed to the power of God. There are those powers that oppress God’s people, sometimes even from within those who claim to be the people of God. Have you ever been at a place where you couldn’t speak freely? You might not be in chains, or behind locked bars, but somehow you were at a place where you couldn’t say exactly what you meant? A place where saying what you meant might have immediate and personal consequences? That’s where Ezekiel finds himself.

Once again Israel has compromised itself. Instead of trusting in the power of God, the people of God have become attracted to the power of politics, the false security of military might, and the smooth efficiency of commerce. Babylon. Yet Israel has forgotten that their God is the God who raises nations up to the heights, and lowers them into the dust. It is as if the nations were so many trees in the woods. So Ezekiel speaks of the nations as trees:

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.

From this older cedar tree, one no longer useful, one dwarfed by its neighboring trees, God will take a sprig. This tree is from the root of Jesse, the kings of David, and after it has had enough years to bear new branches, God is going to take one of those distant branches to grow the tree of all trees. Jesus. Jesus and his kingdom.

In the limbs of this tree, Jesus restores life as he created it back in the tranquility of Eden: all kinds of birds live together in peace. His is a house of prayer and peace. The other trees, the other nations, belong to God. God will raise them up and lower them as it pleases Godself. But all in good time, all in God’s time, will God do these things. Tree work is slow work.

Peace and patience,

Ron

Ezekiel 17:22-24 – NRSV