The Parable of the Mustard Seed, Mark 4:26-34
The Rev. Canon John L.C. Mitman

In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark, we hear two of Jesus’ parables. The first a parable of the seed and, second, the parable of the mustard seed. Both are introduced as being somehow designed to help us understand what the Kingdom of God is like.

I was taught that the way you deal with parables is to understand that every character, person and actor in the parable is important. It’s rather like looking at a crystal which you hold up to the light and slowly rotate so you examine each and every facet. And then you take it to a different room, to different light where the surrounding, the ambient colors are different and again you look at each facet. Only then can you begin to appreciate the full and true beauty and complex wonder of the crystal.

We can think of our reading of the parables of Jesus in something of the same way. As we hold the first parable up to the light and turn it slowly, we see that the characters certainly include the sower of the seed, the seed itself, the earth, the ground on which the seed falls and takes root, the roots themselves, the time which passes while the seed grows and matures, the mystery of maturation, the harvester, the sickle and the full corn - that is, the harvested corn. Yes you see, this is a quite a short little drama, but with quite a large cast of characters. And hanging in the background is the idea of the Kingdom of God, the point of the whole story.

And that’s just one of the parables, the other being the mustard seed. I’m going to stop here for a minute while you look at the text of this Gospel, while you hold it up to the light. It’s right there in your bulletin. Go to the second part of the passage and look to see how many characters you can identify in the story of the mustard seed. See if you find that you can identify with any of the characters in the story. Go ahead, while I fulfill your dream of providing a totally silent preacher.

What have you got? You tell me.

OK, so where do we fit and where is God in all this? And what do we do with these parables? What are we called to do or be as a result of reading this? It seems to me that we are called upon to be sowers of seed --- planting our experience of Jesus Christ in the ground which is our lives, our families, our work, our communities. And that’s the responsibility of all of us, not just the clergy, not just the Parish Committee, but each and every one of us. In doing so, we are also the seed itself. We are little witness posts, stakes in the ground marking what the Christian faith can be in this world of ours. We are the ground in which God plants the seeds of the good news; we are called to be open, accepting, nurturing, caring and enabling that good news to grow to maturity. We are the harvesters --- but God is a harvester as well. We are called to use the harvest well, not just to use the grain to make one great big loaf of bread and then sit down and gorge ourselves on it. No, we harvest to feed ourselves, our families and our neighbors; to trade some grain for money to use for shelter, clothing, other food, education, health care, and some fun; and to save some of the grain to plant next season.

And we stand in awe of the mystery of growth, as I do of the wonder of my garden ---- as we wonder at the tiny, tiny mustard seed which grows into such a large plant. And, ah yes, we can be for others in need the shelter of the braches at times and we can be the ones who need to shelter in the protection of the full grown mustard plant. We could go on and on.

Remember that I mentioned taking the Crystal into another room, in different light to understand the variety of its brilliance? We look at this parable here in Christ Church Cathedral, in Hartford Connecticut, USA on June 14, 2009. This is the light, the culture, the time in which we look at these parables. But let us now take it back in time when Jesus shared it with his followers and see how the light hits it. The disciples had been following Jesus for some time. They had sacrificed, suffered and slogged it out. They were trying to be faithful in the midst of their doubts. They had done some planting and had sheltered some of the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick. But just like us, they saw the government still failing them, the economy was tilted to the rich and powerful, their feet still hurt, they owed more money than they had and most of them still couldn’t manage their teenage kids. We remember that the Christians for whom Mark wrote his gospel were living under the terrible reign of the Emperor Nero, whose persecution of Christians was murderous, a real and present threat! And, oh yes, after all their hard work, all their sacrifice, they had to be asking themselves, “why aren’t there more people in Church”? Now make no mistake about it, these followers of Jesus understood the many facets of these parables. It is estimated that 70% of the population in Jesus’ day were farmers, living off the land. Yes, they knew seeds and harvest and marveled more than we at the mystery of growth.

So what did Jesus offer the faithful in his day? In the face of what they could easily see as failure in their mission, Jesus reassures the faithful that even though the reign of God among them seemed pitifully small and insignificant, it would surely and steadily be fully developed and realized: The Kingdom, the reign of God would come!

But that Mustard plant with room to roost was important for them as it is important for us. In our society, particularly in political circles, we often use the image of the “big tent”. That is, there is the need to be welcoming of those who are not exactly like us, those for instance who do not believe in the definitions of the Republican Party currently articulated by those we have come to know as “the base”. So we see Dick Cheney, a classic neo-conservative openly questioning his party’s exile and condemnation of practicing gays and lesbians. The Mustard plant image for Mark’s readers was like the big tent of today. The issue in that day was not specifically gays, but gentiles and all those who had been marked as sinners, outcasts and unclean.

There’s an important parenthesis here: We tend to think of planting seed in a particular way. We make a hole, drop in the seed or the bulb, fill in the hole and tamp it down. When Ruth and I lived in Iowa with its hundreds of thousands of acres of corn, they planted with what’s called a corn drill. A big machine would roll across the fields and send a spike down into the ground and at the same moment drop in a kernel of seed corn. The machine would automatically fill in the hole and pat it down in the flash of an eye. In Jesus day planting seed was nothing like that. The seed was scattered abroad, almost indiscriminately. The sower didn’t control where the seed landed. Think about that image in the parable as the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ was spread abroad without any thought as to controlling where the seed would land, no thought as to who would hear the word and respond, even those we might think inappropriate responders!

We can see that in our own day, the Episcopal Church has been discovering anew the size, scope and roominess of the shelter provided by the Mustard tree. When we were in the midst of the search for our new dean, we heard some of the older members of this congregation reflect painfully that as African Americans and newcomers from the West Indies, they were not made to feel welcome in this Cathedral. And that’s the kindest way to say it. This was a bastion of whiteness. Later it was battle for women’s full participation in leadership. We have two plaques right up by the altar which commemorate past bishops of this diocese. Those plaques were placed by what was officially called “The Women’s Auxiliary of the Diocese”, reflecting that the real thing was led by the men and the women of the Church were but auxiliary of the real Body of Christ! Another plaque from 1851 out in the corridor was placed in 1845 by the “Episcopal Female Benevolent Society”. Most recently, it has been gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual men and women, boys and girls who have so belatedly come to roost, as it were, in this ever-growing tree, this expanding tent, all of us roosting together while still fighting against our prejudices, still trying to understand that we must make room for the new gentiles. We best remember that we, like every single generation before, we are totally blind to God’s next revelation of those whom we will next be called upon to welcome here at Christ Church Cathedral.

But like the church of Mark’s time, we still mourn that there aren’t more people in church, which is our mistaken measure of the Kingdom of God. But you know, while we certainly participate in a part of the Kingdom of God, we are some of the seed, we are sometimes the ground, we are sometimes the sowers and sometimes the harvesters, the Kingdom of God has never been nor ever will be the same as the Church. The Orthodox tried that, the Church of Rome makes that mistake, and goodness knows we Anglicans/Episcopalians have tried to co-opt the Kingdom of God. But these parables should humble us as they point to the absolute immutable facts that [1st] it is God’s Kingdom, not ours; 2nd, it is God who makes the growth happen --- even against terrible odds, in the midst of what is certainly nearly overwhelming evil, and [3rd] it is God who will define the limits or lack of limits of the branches, the shelter God offers, the size of the tent, the boundless boundaries of God’s own love and grace.