²⁶ He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷ and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸ The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”

³⁰ He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹ It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³² 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.”

³³ With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it;³⁴ he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.

–Mark 4:26-34 (NRSV)

January 17, 2016 Sermon Notes

This morning’s text, Mark 4:26-34, talked about the parable of the mustard seed. In the sermon I mentioned the way that the kingdom of God comes up in some of the most inhospitable places. It seems to spread in ways that we cannot control. Instead of mustard, I likened it to a weed with which the southern United States is far more familiar, kudzu. Spiritual growth both within the church as a whole and in the lives of individual Christians is much more weed like than it is steady, predictable and controllable.

Talking about the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, “the wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8 NRSV) In Sunday’s text we got a chance to see that in the first parable of a seed that sprouted beyond the control of the farmer and in the second parable of the mustard seed. While useful, the mustard plant was also considered a weed by the farmers of ancient Palestine. It grew in difficult places and was almost impossible to eradicate. So does, and is, the work of the Holy Spirit.

While Jesus’ parables do comfort us and remind us of the fact that God can do amazing things with just a little bit of faith, one of the questions that we wrestled with on Sunday was whether that let us off the hook. After all, if the kingdom of God is ultimately beyond our understanding or control, what can we possibly contribute? The parable helped answer that question by describing the farmer’s work in planting and planting and harvesting. God provides the growth, but we still have plenty left to do.

A final description of that work of the kingdom of God came in the form of the “Archbishop Oscar Romero Prayer” written in 1979 by Roman Catholic Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, Ken Utener. He describes the work of the kingdom of God this way:

A Step Along The Way

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith.

No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.