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.
[Before we get into today’s message I need to acknowledge that this is mostly a sermon I wrote and used several years ago. Because of my eye surgery this past week and follow-up appointments I’ve had neither the energy nor the bandwidth to create anything new, but then I stumbled on this oldie, which actually is the lectionary reading for today, and which has an interesting link to our recent on-going discussion of reading scripture from different cultures and across the centuries.]
This is a familiar story, one of the many times Jesus used an agricultural reference, because in his time and place these were references that everyone who heard him would understand. We today get the general idea from Jesus’ illustration, but it is somewhat puzzling for those of us who live in the western U.S. where mustard is either grown for its greens and harvested early or else is a weed, used as a field mulch, growing wild and spindly - certainly nothing that would support a bird’s nest.
Let's stop a moment and see the way The Message translation tells this story. It’s not a literal translation but it is one that makes sense of the story for western listeners (and it fits in nicely with what we’ve been discussing lately):
Now, told this way, the story makes sense to us - we live surrounded by pine trees – and we eat pinoles (few things tastier than some lightly toasted pinoles scattered across a salad or a plate of pasta.) Told this way, the story gives us visual pictures to hold in our minds. This familiar little pine nut gives us this familiar huge tree. We get it. Living where they were, I suspect Jesus’ first listeners would not have gotten his message with this particular kind of illustration. Mustard -- the kind that grows there -- made much more sense to them.
The point being that Jesus wasn’t talking about the holiness of mustard - he was talking about small things growing, in time, into much bigger things.
I looked at Jesus’ actions among us through the light of this parable and realized that everything the gospels tell us that Jesus did was a relatively small action. Even when he fed the 5000, he didn’t cause a banquet to suddenly appear – instead he took a mere 2 loaves of bread and a handful of dried fish and broke them up and said, “here - pass this out” – and somehow everyone was fed.
He did not ever -- so far as we know -- announce a mass healing of all blind beggars - instead, he touched the eyes of one man and gave him sight, and we are still talking about it today. One crippled young man picked up his mat and walked home; one young already deceased girl, being prepared for burial, was told to get up – and did; one dearly loved friend, already buried, was called back out of his tomb. Just one – but we get the larger message.
Probably the single most visually spectacular thing Jesus ever did – that we know of – was the transfiguration on the mountain top - and that was before a severely limited audience - just 3 of his disciples. Later, when he was betrayed in the garden and some of his followers sought to defend him he told them to put up their weapons saying, “do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he would at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” He clearly understood that he had the power to do things on a large scale, but he chose instead to model small actions for us – presumably hoping that we could understand that, while we may be incapable of the big ‘ta-da’ moments, we can do the little things, we can take baby steps. And our baby steps, just like a little pine seed or mustard seed, can one day grow into something much bigger, and reach and touch many people.
We simply don’t know how far the ripples from our actions may extend. They may affect only one person or they may, in some way, reach out to touch many, many others.
Back in the days when we handed out bag lunches here in town we used to reach maybe 40 or 50 people directly, sometimes more. We fed the folks who were right there. We’d usually had several left over lunches and a couple of the regulars who were there every week liked to take the extras to give to others they met during the day – folks who hadn’t been at the distribution site. There was one gentleman in particular who found a special joy in being given the wherewithal to help someone else down the line as we were helping him. He told us a story once of a family he had met the previous week and the joy on the children’s faces as they dove into the simple pb & j sandwiches.
Ripples reaching out.
Did we change the world? Probably not very much, but we were allowed to create some joy and some peace in this world for a short time. Baby steps, indeed, but baby steps are where every journey begins. We are small - but God is the trail-guide here. Who knows how far the ripples from our actions may travel.
We can’t know how big those seeds we scatter may one day grow to be. We just keep on planting them.
* Sermon originally given, June 2015
This is a familiar story, one of the many times Jesus used an agricultural reference, because in his time and place these were references that everyone who heard him would understand. We today get the general idea from Jesus’ illustration, but it is somewhat puzzling for those of us who live in the western U.S. where mustard is either grown for its greens and harvested early or else is a weed, used as a field mulch, growing wild and spindly - certainly nothing that would support a bird’s nest.
Let's stop a moment and see the way The Message translation tells this story. It’s not a literal translation but it is one that makes sense of the story for western listeners (and it fits in nicely with what we’ve been discussing lately):
- “How can we picture God’s kingdom? What kind of story can we use? It’s like a pine nut. When it lands on the ground it is quite small as seeds go, yet once it is planted it grows into a huge pine tree with thick branches. Eagles nest in it.”
Now, told this way, the story makes sense to us - we live surrounded by pine trees – and we eat pinoles (few things tastier than some lightly toasted pinoles scattered across a salad or a plate of pasta.) Told this way, the story gives us visual pictures to hold in our minds. This familiar little pine nut gives us this familiar huge tree. We get it. Living where they were, I suspect Jesus’ first listeners would not have gotten his message with this particular kind of illustration. Mustard -- the kind that grows there -- made much more sense to them.
The point being that Jesus wasn’t talking about the holiness of mustard - he was talking about small things growing, in time, into much bigger things.
I looked at Jesus’ actions among us through the light of this parable and realized that everything the gospels tell us that Jesus did was a relatively small action. Even when he fed the 5000, he didn’t cause a banquet to suddenly appear – instead he took a mere 2 loaves of bread and a handful of dried fish and broke them up and said, “here - pass this out” – and somehow everyone was fed.
He did not ever -- so far as we know -- announce a mass healing of all blind beggars - instead, he touched the eyes of one man and gave him sight, and we are still talking about it today. One crippled young man picked up his mat and walked home; one young already deceased girl, being prepared for burial, was told to get up – and did; one dearly loved friend, already buried, was called back out of his tomb. Just one – but we get the larger message.
Probably the single most visually spectacular thing Jesus ever did – that we know of – was the transfiguration on the mountain top - and that was before a severely limited audience - just 3 of his disciples. Later, when he was betrayed in the garden and some of his followers sought to defend him he told them to put up their weapons saying, “do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he would at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” He clearly understood that he had the power to do things on a large scale, but he chose instead to model small actions for us – presumably hoping that we could understand that, while we may be incapable of the big ‘ta-da’ moments, we can do the little things, we can take baby steps. And our baby steps, just like a little pine seed or mustard seed, can one day grow into something much bigger, and reach and touch many people.
We simply don’t know how far the ripples from our actions may extend. They may affect only one person or they may, in some way, reach out to touch many, many others.
Back in the days when we handed out bag lunches here in town we used to reach maybe 40 or 50 people directly, sometimes more. We fed the folks who were right there. We’d usually had several left over lunches and a couple of the regulars who were there every week liked to take the extras to give to others they met during the day – folks who hadn’t been at the distribution site. There was one gentleman in particular who found a special joy in being given the wherewithal to help someone else down the line as we were helping him. He told us a story once of a family he had met the previous week and the joy on the children’s faces as they dove into the simple pb & j sandwiches.
Ripples reaching out.
Did we change the world? Probably not very much, but we were allowed to create some joy and some peace in this world for a short time. Baby steps, indeed, but baby steps are where every journey begins. We are small - but God is the trail-guide here. Who knows how far the ripples from our actions may travel.
We can’t know how big those seeds we scatter may one day grow to be. We just keep on planting them.
* Sermon originally given, June 2015
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