Preaching Paths 16 June 2024 Proper 6B

Sally A. Brown, Professor Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary

Today’s Gospel reading, Mk 4:26-34 offers us two agrarian parables portraying the reign of God, followed by brief commentary on Jesus’ teaching methods with crowds and disciples, respectively. Both parables—literally,  sketches “alongside-thrown” (para-bole) widespread popular expectations about the reign of God—employ a popular Semitic trope: the marvel of a seed’s transformation into a full-grown plant. The first compares the coming of the reign of God to the hidden process, unaided by humans, by which scattered seeds become a harvest ready for reaping. The second compares God’s reign to the tiny mustard seed that grows into a shrub so large that birds shelter in its shade. The reign of God is not something we produce or control. It shall be vast in its reach and welcome.  

Jesus’ listeners expected a divinely-appointed, military and political leader to appear, one who would   throw off the Roman yoke and restore Israel’s political and religious integrity. Jesus’ first parable undercuts any notion that God’s reign will be brought about by military might. The scatterer of seed (this seed is scattered, not sown) contributes absolutely nothing to any stage of the process by which seeds become sprouts, grow tall, bud, and produce fruit ready for the sickle. The gift and its timing is God’s alone. The parable gives notice to saber-rattling Jewish Zealots, as well as Torah-enforcing scribes and Pharisees, that no amount of effort on their part will bring about the reign of God.

The second parable is so exquisitely ironic that it probably drew hoots of laughter. We need only lay today’s OT reading alongside this parable to be caught up in the hilarity. Ezekiel 17:22-24 pictures God’s restoration of the Jewish kingdom this way: God plants a tiny cedar sprig “on the mountain height of Israel,” and it becomes a towering cedar—a biblical trope for a flourishing kingdom (cf Ezek 31:3). Birds of all kinds (an idiom suggesting “Gentile nations”) will shelter under its vastness. Jesus conjures a “bait and switch,” mustard for cedar.  What are Jesus’ listeners to make of it? Mustard,  ubiquitous in Near Eastern landscapes, is unremarkable in the fields it is considered an invasive weed. Although not actually “the largest” shrub, it can be capacious enough to shelter birds. The point is clear: God’s reign will not impress, like a stately cedar (or a tower-building empire).  Yet, almost unnoticed in its ordinariness, the reign of God will thrive and shelter people of all nations.

Both parables are acutely relevant in our time. The market is flooded these days with advice on post-Covid congregational recovery and strategies for attracting members in a post-Christian world. Yet, useful as some of these tools may be in some settings, church participation and the progress of the reign of God in the world should not be confused; these are not one and the same. Jesus’ first parable asserts that scattered seed roots and grows, unseen and unaided, out of our sight and without our intervention. We are harvesters—midwives, at best—welcoming a reality not of our making. Worldwide, would-be autocrats peddle an unholy brew of authoritarian religion and totalitarian politics, vowing to disempower despised minorities and restore national “purity.” Jesus’ parables light a torch of hope in this darkness. The baptized machinery of empire is powerless to bring about the reign of God. To catch glimpses of God’s reign, we shall have to look in weedy, unremarkable, out-of-the-way places. There, those whom empire deems unworthy and unwanted help each other survive. Many quietly, courageously press for justice. Sharing bread, sustaining hope, they pray in many languages: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth, as in heaven.”