The Kingdom of God is Like… A Sermon for June 16 2024
GOSPEL: Mark 4:26-34
The holy gospel according to Mark.
Glory to you, O Lord.
Jesus frequently uses parables to teach ordinary people as they are able to hear and understand. Images of sowing and growing show the vitality of God’s kingdom.
26[Jesus] said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,27and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
30He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet 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.”
33With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
The gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
With what shall we compare the Kingdom of God
or what parable could we use for it?
Perhaps the Kingdom of God is like Edith’s blue flowers.
Edith was a member of my former congregation
who died about 5 years ago.
She gave me permission to share this story before she died.
Edith told me about this one time that
she had a strange plant growing in her yard.
It was NOT a weed, she said.
But she sure didn’t plant whatever it was
that was growing in her yard.
It was some kind of blue flower.
She didn’t know the name of it,
and we didn’t exactly have the luxury
of Google Images at the time
to figure out what kind of blue flower
was growing in her yard.
After visiting with the neighbours,
she discovered that her yard alone
was blessed with the blue flowers.
None of her neighbours had them.
Not long after this,
she learned about a friend of hers
who was to be married.
Her friend did not have a lot of money
for their wedding celebration,
but wouldn’t you know,
Edith’s friend’s favourite colour was blue.
She said to her friend
“Why don’t you come to my home
and take as many of the flowers as you’d like.”
So she came and picked flowers,
and they were perfect,
exactly what her friend had hoped for her wedding.
“I don’t know how they got there”
Edith said about these blue flowers,
“Maybe God sent them?”
I confess, I am no expert in things botanical,
I cannot tell a Delphinium from the Blue Angel
and yes I had to google names of blue flowers
but I am a theologian,
and I have some insight into how God operates,
and yes,
these random blue flowers came from our God.
Absolutely.
And I’m guessing it was a particular shade of blue,
the Advent blue,
Saram Blue - the colour of hope.
God gifted Edith with hope-filled flowers,
and God did this not so much for her own benefit,
not so that her yard could be randomly filled
with beautiful blue petals,
rather God gifted Edith with these blue flowers
so she could give them away.
That’s how God works.
So, yes, the Kingdom of God
is like Edith’s blue flowers.
Let’s see,
With what else shall we compare the kingdom of God?
Perhaps the Kingdom of God is like Norm’s raspberry patch.
He planted a raspberry patch in rows,
with room for the stalks to grow
and yield fruit that is easy to pick.
But the next summer,
many of the stalks turned brown and died,
while new, green stalks popped out of the ground,
not in the order that the farmer had wanted,
but in-between the rows
and all around the old brown raspberry stalks.
In time the new stalks produced fruit
and thrived
and spread.
Norm found it challenging to pick raspberries;
They didn’t grow where the gardener planned,
and with so many more stalks than expected
he invited others to help him harvest.
The yield was greater than Norm could have imagined.
So, yes, Perhaps the kingdom of God
really is like Norman’s raspberry patch.
Let’s see,
With what else shall we compare the kingdom of heaven?
Perhaps the Kingdom of God is like
Ada Limon’s poem “Instructions on Not Giving Up”
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
Copyright © 2017 by Ada Limón. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 15, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
My family in Christ,
the Kingdom of God
is often revealed to us
where it seems the least likely;
where it is the most hidden.
Like the widow giving her two mites,
or the Woman at Well,
or in Norm’s raspberry patch’s spread,
or Edith’s front lawn’s saram blue blossoms
or in the tree that comes to life
after the harsh winter
by God’s gift of spring,
or, most especially,
we see the kingdom of God in Jesus,
on a Roman cross
and an empty tomb.
The Kingdom of God is in our midst;
it is real,
but it is also hidden and mysterious.
It is now - and it is not yet.
We know how babies are made,
yet it is mysterious.
We know how to grow plants from seed,
yet it is mysterious.
We see and live in the kingdom of this world,
yet we strive for the kingdom of God
and God’s righteousness.
Jesus Christ, by the Holy Sprit
is ushering in the Kingdom of God in our midst.
The Holy Spirit plants the seed today.
Like blue blossoms in Edith’s yard,
the growth might be something
we’d never expect
but are gifted with to give away.
Like Norm’s raspberry stalks,
God’s Spirit might be planting for growth
in places that we don’t want.
Like a mustard shrub,
growth might not look how we want.
Like Ada Limon’s poem,
about the hope found in the tree
whose leaves spring forth
no matter what winter has done to it,
The kingdom of God
is about restoration,
Decay and growth,
new life,
resurrection.
The kingdom of God
is about restoration and new life
for you
and for all God’s creation.
What new life might be coming
to Christ’s church?
Where is the Spirit planing seed?
Where are hopeful flowers blooming?
Where is God making the dry tree flourish?
I remember picking raspberries with Norm.
It was challenging
with stalks everywhere,
It would have been so much easier
if the rows were perfect.
so many little scratches.
It might sting a little
when we join God’s harvest.
What we might think is perfect or complete
might not fit with God’s perfection
God’s completion.
Another farmer might have pulled the raspberry stalks
that grew in the “so called” wrong places.
But not Norm.
You harvest the fruit
wherever or however it grows.
When it comes to living in
- striving for - the kingdom of God,
I’m not sure you and I should decide
where seeds get planted,
let alone where they grow:
that’s God’s call.
Same with what kind of seed is planted
- that’s Gods call.
In the words of C. Clifton Black,
Christians with stained glass eyes
may want their kingdom of God
as a mighty oak.
The Second Evangelist,
hands them a head of lettuce. (…)
Nothing succeeds like failure.
If you believe that,
then who needs the kingdom dressed as a sequoia? A zucchini does the job a lot better.
Friends - if anyone is in Christ,
there is a new creation:
everything old has passed away
see, everything has become new!
This is the Kingdom of God.
This new creation
like a seed that dies in the earth
grows how and where God chooses.
God keeps planting good seeds
among the thorns and weeds,
the worn spots,
the thirsty spots,
and the healthy spots.
God doesn’t merely plant the seed
where we see fit,
but everywhere,
where God sees fit.
Wherever planted,
we trust that the new growth
is grafted to the Tree of Life.
Living connected, abiding with the Tree of Life,
May your new leaves spring forth
no matter what the winter has done to you.
May you join God’s work in the harvest
finding fruit in the strange places
that God sees fit.
May you find flowers of hope blossoming in you
so that you might give them away.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
