“What Do We Know?” – June 17, 2012 Sermon
June 17, 2012
Scripture: Mark 4: 26-34
Jesus said, “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.”
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.”
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.
Sermon: What Do We Know?
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
I would like to start with a little sentence completion exercise. I’ll start a sentence, and you finish it – together and aloud. It’s fine if you don’t all say the same thing, just blurt out whatever comes first to your mind. Where there’s a will…(there’s a way). Fool me once, … (shame on you, fool me twice shame on me). If you’ve seen one… (you’ve seen them all). God is still…(speaking). God helps those who…. (help themselves). No one said life…(would be fair/easy). No good deed…(goes unpunished). Everyone loves a…(winner).
Great, great. Most of you will have recognized these aphorisms, sayings that express a common belief or perspective. These types of things can contribute to feeling connected to one another, to share such common understandings, to share a sense of collective wisdom. But there are risks to it too. How often do we assume we know what the question or statement is before it is finished? How often do we stop listening so that we can form an opinion, shape an answer, defend our stance, without hearing the real question or statement, without taking time to mull over different possibilities? How often do our collective assumptions and knee-jerk reactions keep us from hearing each other in a new way? How often do they keep us from hearing God in a new way?
The first century Israelites had their common wisdom also. When they went to hear someone preach, when they went to worship at the temple, they thought they knew what they would hear. They had been worshiping and studying scripture for a long time. They had their rituals, their ways of doing things, and they thought they knew what was being said and what was being asked of them. They thought they knew what God wanted of them, and what God wanted for the world. And then along came Jesus. And he said the most startling things! Sure, they could anticipate his words about loving God, about loving your neighbor, but loving enemies? They expected instruction or affirmation about staying ritually clean – avoiding unclean things, people and behaviors. But they got a message that uncleanness is about what is inside a person that comes out, not something outside a person that gets in.
In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus is using agricultural metaphors that would have been easily relate-able to the people of that time. They weren’t new. Our reading from Ezekial is one of many agricultural metaphors in the Hebrew scripture. The people would have anticipated something like this from Jesus if he was talking about seeding the kingdom of heaven, the city of God, the New Jerusalem. They would anticipate a message about the growth of a noble cedar atop a high mountain, providing protection and sustenance for a variety of birds. But that is not where Jesus goes at all.
He talks instead about the mustard seed. Trees don’t grow from a mustard seed. No fruit is born on a mustard plant. Jesus talks about it growing into a mighty shrub. People listening to Jesus would have been scratching their heads. The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed? You see, the growth of the mustard shrub was not a welcome thing. The mustard plant was the 1st century version of kudzu. It was unwelcome growth. People didn’t plant the mustard seed, it was eaten and dropped by birds, and once it took root, grew and spread like crazy. It pushed other plans out of the way. It was a problem plant. If Jesus was going to talk about mustard plants, they would have expected him to include them with the weeds that get burned up in the fire, not as a good plant that is nourished, then harvested. Comparing them to the kingdom of heaven would have been provocative, certainly confusing and probably distressing to people. Where’s the nobility of a mustard shrub? How could such a weed honor God, be an expression of God’s way?
The reading says that Jesus explained all these things to his disciples, but frankly I wonder if that is so. Especially in the gospel of Mark, the disciples seem pretty slow in getting it, and Jesus gets quite impatient with them. Either way, we don’t get to hear the explanation. And how I wonder why Jesus talked about the growth of a mustard seed rather than that of say, an acorn into a mighty oak. I would imagine the growth proportion wouldn’t be that different, would it? At least not in such an obvious way that people would get it immediately. Yes, a mustard seed is very small, but it grows a shrub, not a tree, so it’s not getting all that big. I wonder if Jesus was trying to steep people away from images of grandeur and nobility, away from height – the cedar atop the mountain – away from loftiness.
I wonder if he was trying to get at something connected to inclusiveness. God’s kingdom is not just for those within the range of a cedar tree, but will spread all over the place, providing room for more and more birds. And he focuses on the smallness of the seed. I learned that plants that produce smaller seeds can generate many more seeds per flower. Small seeds ripen more quickly and can be dispersed in a shorter window of time. Plants that bear larger seeds normally produce few of them, and put more of their resources into nurturing them. To me, this again points to inclusivity. The kingdom is not a place where a select few are set apart and provided for. The kingdom grows indiscriminately, welcoming all who want to come. I wonder also if there is a message about who it is that sees to the spreading of the kingdom. It is not the good farmer, planting and tending the seed, weeding out unwelcome plants, figuring out for him or herself what will bear the best fruit, what is beautiful enough. It is God who will see to it, who will use means that don’t always make sense to us.
I also suspect that Jesus focused used the mustard seed and plant in his analogy specifically because it was provocative, because it was confusing and even disturbing. I suspect that Jesus wants to shake us off the notion that we know what God has to say to us, that we can anticipate God’s will with our own human wisdom, whether individual or collective. I suspect that Jesus was saying to his listeners, to us, “You think you know? You don’t know. You think you can control? You can’t control.” The first part of the parable talks about how the seed grows and the person scattering it doesn’t know how it does. The scatterer might think they know – water, sun, nutrients – but they don’t know how, what mechanisms are at work so that the plant stretches and unfolds and bursts forth flowers. There is so much more at work than we can possibly understand. Jesus wants to remind us of that – we don’t know. So much is unknowable by us, God is unknowable.
Our task is not to try to box God in – nor to spend lots of time forming our opinions, defending our stances. We are not to run with our assumptions. Instead we are invited to be present to the mystery, to let ourselves be confused and even disturbed at times. We are invited to listen more openly, to let go of some our own knowledge and perspective, our own wisdom, to make room for other wisdom. Because when we don’t know how the sentence ends, isn’t it just full of possibility, and doesn’t that sound divine? Open your mind to different possibilities and let’s see if there is a new lens to look through. I invite you to call out or just ponder it for yourself, trying a different idea. See if the Spirit speaks a new word. Where there’s a will…(pray on it). Fool me once, …(I’ll forgive you and me both). If you’ve seen one … (you probably haven’t seen the wholeness of it). God is still… (crying, creating). God helps those who …. (ask, help others, need it). No one said life… (could be this beautiful). No good deed… (is wasted). Everyone loves a… (celebration, good challenge).
And may God’s spirit continue to speak a new word to you.
