The Kingdom of God Is As If Someone Would Scatter Seed on the Ground. .

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Proper 6B/ June 19, 2016

Mark 4:26-34

"The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground. . .,"

The Kingdom of God "is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;"

"Summertime, and the living is easy" is how the old lyrics go.

But the week just past has been unbearably hard. And the hard parts are far from over. Certainly not over for the friends and families who lost loved ones in a bloodbath in Orlando. Certainly not over for the husband and children of the British Member of Parliament gunned down on a street corner in her constituency. Not over for the LGBTQ community who insist on standing their ground. Not over for frightened American Muslims who have been made targets of hate and suspicion. Not over for any of us. More overwhelming in how new tragedies carry echoes of older ones: an elementary school in Connecticut; a Christmas party in California; a community college in Oregon; a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The list goes on and on.

Like many of you, I have spent the week on an emotional roller coaster. Shock and grief, then anger that moves to rage;shame and sadness for utter senselessness of it all,and my own fears – I find I am more afraid of my fellow Americans than I am of ISIS.

On this parish picnic day we decided to use scriptures appointed for Rogation Days – days set aside by the church in the spring when the Church has traditionally offered prayer for God’s blessings on the fruits of the earth.

An encounter with Jesus’ green and growing gospel stories seemed to fit with our outdoor gathering. The prospect of summer with no school for the children, and vacation plans for the grownups puts us back in touch with the vagaries and the wonders of the natural order as a fitting locale for our persons and pursuits.

But are these green and growing parables up to it, when neither living nor dying is easy? When we are lulled into thinking that Jesus is talking about something we understand, even as we live in times that we cannot understand.

There is something in these gospel tidbits that tells us that we are not in control.

And more disturbing, that God’s way of being in control is not nearly so logical, respectable, efficient and obvious as we would like.

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?’ cries God out of the whirlwind. Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?

Like Job, we have again learned this week that the mystery of life and death is not ours to simply command.

The parable premise is that there is a power for life planted within the creation itself -- a power that we try to tinker with, but ultimately cannot control; a power that persists despite much evidence to the contrary.

"The Kingdom of God is like. . . "

These messianic sound bites are maddeningly unconcerned with any human or even any obvious divine attempt to help or hinder the goals of the kingdom seed. The seed takes care of itself. Soil, weather, or sleeping farmers are not the point. "The earth produces of itself."

Theological gadfly and NT scholar, Robert Capon puts it in his own inimitable way.

"Just put the kingdom into the world, Jesus says in effect; put it into any kind of world -- not only into a world of hotshot responders and spiritual pros, but into a world of sinners, deadbeats, and assorted poor excuses for humanity (which, interestingly enough is the only world available anyway) -- and it will come up a perfect kingdom all by itself; It takes its time, to be sure, but the time it takes is entirely its own, not anyone else’s. There is not a breath about crop failure, anymore than there is about the depredations of the devil or the knuckle headedness of humanity. (Robert Capon)

Jesus makes it sound so easy here, and we know all too well that it is not. After last week, after lots of last weeks, the coming to be of that Kingdom often seems too little, too late.

Jesus tells us today that the Kingdom is hidden in plain view, in the workaday world of ordinary people.

With a mustard seed, he shows us that the tiniest of beginnings have in them a capacity for a surprising ministry.

But where does the lovely vision fit in all the nooks and crannies, the cracks and dents of the world we know we live in, that only available world?

How do we touch the Kingdom of God in the tedious or ordinary pattern of our days, or in the dark nights of our souls, when the diagnosis is difficult, when the demons of addiction haunt us, when a job is gone, when a loved one is lost?When the politicians ponder if mass murder is an act of terror or a hate crime. As if they are mutually exclusive categories.

How does this mysterious Kingdom change us and charge us in the midst of the mess?

So now I wonder if that blasted mustard seed is not more peculiar than we knew. Not so much a useful source of spice or a medicinal ingredient, rather something at the very least pesky and often somewhat dangerous.

As another provocative NT scholar, John Dominic Crossan puts it:

The point, in other words, is not just that the mustard plant starts as a proverbially small seed and grows into a shrub of three or four feet, or even higher, it is that it tends to take over where it is not wanted, that it tends to get out of control, and that it tends to attract birds within cultivated areas where they are not particularly desired.

And that, said Jesus, was what the Kingdom was like: not like the mighty cedar of Lebanon and not quite like a common weed, [more] like a pungent shrub with dangerous takeover properties. Something you would want in only small and carefully controlled doses -- if you could control it (The Historical Jesus, pp. 278-279).

"The Kingdom of God is like. . . "

Is that blasted mustard seed a threat or a promise then? With its capacity to take over, grow out of control, and its tendency to attract undesirables?

For those who long for something better, something more holy and whole for themselves, for their children, for all humankind, there may be good news to touch here.

For those who can imagine something more than the status quo of scarcity and fear and hate and limited justice and the endless bloody assault of mass shootings, and all the rest we're regularly offered, then maybe Jesus is saying that God's kingdom is infiltrating the kingdom of the world we know, that it is taking root and will ultimately take over the domesticated fields of our lives and worlds.

It may be out of our control, but yet within our experience. The tiny seed of promise that more is possible, even that newness is already coming to be in our midst, however dangerous or discomforting it might be.

There are those hints, the graced moments that break through. It is a tired old tale when a raped woman finds inadequate justice. It is a victory when thousands protest and an insensitive judge is removed.

On June 4th I attended an anniversary celebration – 97 years since Congress affirmed the 19th amendment, women’s right to vote. Now there are even women to vote for.

My daughter was married 9 years ago to her African-American husband in the commonwealth of Virginia; some of us remember when that was illegal.

A promise of newnessmightevoke hope – not something that simply might cheer you up, but a power that moves us to action. To live into and out of a vision of a world that works the way God intends. The hate that fueled last week’s murders emerged out of victories won by courage, and love and a passion for justice. And now a nation resolves to remember that.

My granddaughter has filled me in on the point of series of novels, then films calledThe Hunger Games.

President Snow, the totalitarian ruler of futuristic world of Panem, asks his chief Games-maker – the one charged with creating a spectacle as entertaining as it is barbaric – why they must have a winner.

He answers his own question. Hope.

He wants to give the oppressed people of Panem hope that maybe, just maybe, the odds will turn in their favor and they may win the Hunger Games and escape their life of servitude.

“Hope,” he explains, “is the only thing stronger than fear.” But for that very reason is as perilous as it is useful to a dictator: “A little hope,” he explains, “is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous.” So contain it, he says to his lieutenant.

Hope does things. Hope creates faith in a better future and therefore leads one to act, to actually do something that might bring about that better future. It might get you killed, but it still may change the world.

Those who take extraordinary risks, those who do extraordinary things, can act only out of hope, hope for a future both open and promised by a power beyond themselves. Because hope is stronger than fear.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk were martyrs and prophets and dreamers for the 20th century. Nelson Mandela and Rosa Parksand Rep. Gabrielle Giffordsand now British lawmaker Jo Cox, risked much for the sake of a vision of a new realm emerging in an old and tired world.

The Kingdom of God is like?

Dangerous hopeis what Jesus offers us in these green and growing parables – the dangerous hope of a kingdom coming, beyond our control, within our experience, and open to our presence.

Something new in our midst, fueling change in ourselves, our communities, our world.

Beckoning us to claim an as yet unknown future because more is possible, when hope overtakes our fears and spurs us to live in service of another realm.

The tyrant of the Hunger Games wants to measure out hope in controlled portions -- just enough to keep a people ready to endure the status quo, but not enough to fuel them for change.

I wonder if that is how political campaigns really operate. Contained hope to keep us in our place, rather than a dangerous hope that might change the world.

The Church itself knows something of such tactics; whenever we domesticate the Gospel in service of our own security.

A lot of hope is dangerous. Like mustard seeds it can take over and change the landscape of our lives, our world, even our Church.

Jesus plays the part of the Kingdom seed, himself. He dies on a cross and is planted in the earth.

A power for life transforms that death into Resurrection, into a surprising, mysterious harvest that feeds a hungry world with newness and with God.

A power for hope that moves us yet to God and moves us still to act.

A power that yields a homely, messy mystery like a Church, taking root, sometimes taking over, in time and space, at its very best an insidious, pungent weed, which attracts all manner of undesirables, even us.

Dangerous hope – known this month in the Pride of the LGBTQ community and a nation’s care for the vulnerable in our midst;

Dangerous hope -- seen in those who will comfort and protect our American Muslims in these troubled times.

Dangerous hope -- touched in our tears, our angers, our fears, and our passions for justice and for God.