With What Can We Compare The Kingdom?

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

June 14, 2009

Text: Mark 4: 26-34

No church buildings. No government protections. No bodyguards. Simply a band of followers, captured by the message and the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Lots of rabbis, lots of men claiming to be the Messiah had come and gone.

Leslie Weatherhead: “Having caught even a glimpse of [Jesus], I cannot long live without Him.” “Take Hold of Jesus and you will discover that he is God.” (Luther) (June 11 in Daily Readings from LW)

Now their hopes were pinned on him. Kingdom of God? God’s mighty act in history? It took a giant leap to see this!

Kingdom, reign, dominion of God: bringing at last the people of God from exile when God would reign and evil and injustice would be dealt with and God’s Shalom would be ushered in.

But they are so small and the world is so large. “Are we fools or saints?” They asked, surely, and so do we!

So Jesus told parables: Stories which tease us to think differently.

With what shall we compare the kingdom?
Farmer: sows the seed, sleeps and rises (a daily pattern) and the seed sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself.

Our mindset: productivity and profit are supreme goals. But in kingdom thought, God is the source of productivity.

We like to manage most enterprises we are involved in, to be sure the outcomes are plentiful. We feel guilty when they are not. And this works, more or less.

But the kingdom is God’s enterprise, God’s venture.

Maybe one word from this parable is the reminder of sleeping and rising------ a counsel for “renewal of Sabbath observance: a more balanced rhythm of sleeping and rising,” working and rising and risking, knowing that the growth of the seed of God’s business ultimately depends on God. “God is at work even when the divine action seems imperceptible….[We work] with the assurance that the words Jesus preached [and is] will eventually bear a good harvest, even if the beginnings seem very modest.” (Barbara Reid, Lectionary Commentary-Gospel Lessons, page 205)

And the mustard seed? Proverbially (if not actually) the smallest seed and yet grows to be 8 to 10 feet tall.

“The infinitely great is already present in the infinitely small…..With the same certainty  that the tall shrub grows out of a tiny seed, so God will cause my small band [of followers] to swell into the mighty host of the people of God in the Messianic Age, embracing [also] the Gentiles.” Lots of different birds in the kingdom-tree! ( Joachim Jeremias)

We live a dual existence, experiencing the new reign of God while still suffering under the old reign. We are “the advance representatives of God’s new creation in an unwilling and hostile world.” (Source?)

Seed stories can give us a sense of perspective: “God’s reign [active, loving, powerful, persistent action] is beyond our understanding or control. [And] yet we may recognize its progress and play a part.” (Oxford Annotated RSV notation)

Seeds in ordinary life: “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me.”

Lawyer friend who taught Disciple Bible Study for a year and he and his students were so transformed by the little church that they still meet to hold each other accountable and grow in grace.

A woman in a nursing home who could no longer see or hear well but who sang louder than all the others, from memory, “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent word.”

A retired colonel who intervened with the police chief to see that an injustice done to his yard man was set right again.

My Grandmother Shirley Moore who, during the Great Depression, would feed transients who came by her back door asking for food.

A young single woman I once knew who lobbied without pay to get legislation passed which delivered help to young single mothers caught in grinding poverty.

A pastor, now retired, who counsels people with AIDS and their families.

A homebound woman who prays daily for a long list of people and situations she has in mind.

A worker at the Methodist Children’s Home in Waco whose daily practice is to meet the school bus when the children are brought home from school.

Not to discount those who do heroic deeds, or are giants of sacrificial vocations, or are able to make big decisions; but, for most of us followers of Christ, the seeds are small, and there may be no obvious result.

As Jesus’ actions and stories were seeds of the kingdom, so too are our actions and stories in his name and spirit.

Christ and Christians work is the “action of grace in territory occupied by the devil.” (Flannery O’Connor)

And living this way takes patience and persistence based on a confidence that God is alive and well and will bring a harvest of a New Creation.

John Howard Yoder describes the apocalyptic message of the Bible-----the messages of the eschaton, the end times, the hope for a new heavens and a new earth-----this way:

“People who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief.…by winning some of one’s battles for the control of one’s own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb.” (Quoted in The Grain of the Universe by Stanley Hauwerwas, 2001, front piece)

What makes us believe in the kingdom now and coming?

In connection with encountering Jesus, we experience mercy and forgiveness.

In meeting Jesus and listening and watching him, we catch a vision of a promised land,

We see in him an example of living which personifies happiness, authenticity.

“As a farmer trusts to God and waits for the moment of harvest, so the one who recognizes the challenge of the activity of God in the ministry of Jesus must learn the lesson of patient waiting, in sure confidence that what has been sown will be reaped…. In the teaching of Jesus, the emphasis is on the present which carries with it the guarantee of the future.” (Norman Perrin, page 159)

We cannot worry the kingdom into coming.

And the tactics of kingdom workers? Not a political solution but turning the other cheek, going the second mile, losing our life to gain it, the forgiveness of sins, the touching of the untouchable, our speaking out for the wretched of the earth and for peace on earth.

To be the light of the world differently: get up every day believing that Jesus got it right! And “to abandon all alternative visions and join Jesus in his.” (Wright)

It may seem small now, but the outcome will be glorious, embracing all the world’s people.

Whistling in the dark? Hopeless idealists? Unrealistic?

We have seen a new possibility, an alternative world, and we will live in the overlapping of the old and new world, making our contribution to the re-shaping of the world, but most of all trying to embody Christ’s presence in the world as a sign of ultimate hope.

“The consummation of God’s reign is not dependent on our best efforts (social ministries, pastoral care, evangelism.) [And yet we offer only our best efforts!] The fortunes of the kingdom do not rise or fall with programs. The basis for optimism rests in God, the giver of growth, and the sole determiner of time for harvest.” (Walter Brueggeman, Texts for Preaching Year B, page 391)

“For the darkness will turn to dawning, and the dawning to noonday bright; and Christ’s great kingdom shall come on earth, the kingdom of love and light.”