June 16, 2024

Pentecost 3, Year B

Epiphany, Winnipeg

Mark 4:26-34

When I was in grade seven I happily joined in with what I assume is the ancient tradition of making fun of kids who were different. Kids like Mark. Mark was not shaped like we all thought someone should be shaped, and he wore worn out dress shoes to school instead of runners, and his hair went like this and his glasses went like that – I don’t remember it all, but for some reason he was singled out by almost everyone. I can’t imagine how lonely that would be. One evening I was at home hanging around with my brother and I started going on about how weird we all thought Mark was, and my brother, who was a grade ahead of me and was definitely one of the cool kids, listened patiently for about fifteen seconds and then said, “Just stop it Paul. Leave him alone, so what if he’s different? Just let him be different if he wants.”

That’s one of a handful of grade seven events that I remember very clearly. The tone of voice, the room we were in, the smell of the house…. And over all these decades since then, every now and then a little sprout will pop up unannounced out of the ground of my mind and say, “Just leave him alone, or let her be. So what if they’re different?” I need to be reminded sometimes… and when I need to be reminded, that same voice will come back and say the same thing again, and that little sprout popping up out of the soil of my mind will remind me to let the Marks be Mark; and it will remind me that Jesus seemed to like hanging around with the ones like Mark, with hair that went like this and glasses that looked like that and who nobody seemed to want to let in. …and Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if your brother said this to you when you were in grade seven, and a few small words settled into your being and now they keep growing and showing up and filling out and giving a small harvest now and and then of kindness and grace. You don’t know how. But there it is.”

The Kingdom of God is like, the Kingdom of God is like…. You might have noticed that Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God, or the Reign of God, a lot. He never really defines it, he just says sometimes quirky or unexpected or even strange things about it. The kingdom of God is like a merchant searching for fine pearls, or it’s like a woman who loses a coin and turns the house upside down to find it. It’s like mustard, it’s like yeast, the Reign of God is like a king who throws a wedding party and none of his rich friends come so instead the people on the street and under the bridge get invited. The kingdom of God is like a farmer who plants a crop and doesn’t go pull up the weeds.

Jesus doesn’t ever really say what it is. He just says, “Well, the kingdom of God is sort of like this, or maybe like that.” Like the lost being found. Like something little turning out to be something grand, and always like something we can’t plan or understand. And when Jesus talks about the kingdom of God he never talks about another time and another place.

So in this reading today, it’s like something that’s coming here now, popping up over here and showing up over there, coming to life in the world even now. Even when don’t expect it. Even when we don’t know it. Even when we can’t see it. Even if it seems like we never will. It’s like a farmer and the seed that she plants and the seed grows…she doesn’t know how. But it grows.

Maybe the reign of God is something grand like this: a woman named Loujain al-Hathloul spent years defending the rights of women in her home

country Saudi Arabia. Sometimes the work would seem to be going somewhere, and she’d scatter seeds of justice and they’d grow. Sometimes it would be more like the soil was baked and dry and nothing would happen. But either way, she knew that it mattered that she kept on planting seeds. Even if she couldn’t see them grow. She might not have said it this way, but she knew something about the reign of God that grows even when we can’t see it or know not how.

After years of doing this work she was arrested, but all those seeds didn’t stop being sown. Soon enough people all over the world started writing letters to the Saudi Arabian authorities demanding that she be let out of prison. People met in church basements on the other side of the world and had coffee and muffins and wrote letters to far away kings and princes. And people kept throwing seeds in that soil, and nothing happened, and they kept throwing seeds in that soil, and writing those letters and making those calls. Seeds grow, we know not how, and after months and years of letters from strangers Loujain al-Hathloul was released from prison. But even if that had never happened, people would still be writing those letters and making those calls. Because the reign of God grows, we know not how, even if we can’t see it, and that reign of God will sprout and fill out and make a harvest of justice. Because the reign of God might even be like a seed that’s kept in the ground but it can’t be kept in the ground and trampled down. It grows.

Or maybe it’s something a little less grand, like this: The reign of God is like people baking muffins or buying cheese for the school around the corner. You know not who will eat the muffins or cheese, you know not whether the hunger will end, but the seeds will grow and you don’t know how. But they’ll matter and grow.

Or the Reign of God is even smaller, like people chatting in a narthex in a church or at a water cooler at work. Someone listens and cares, or encouragement is spoken, or people just rest and laugh for a minute, and you don’t know how that might change someone’s day. It might not. Or it might. You really don’t know. You might not even know that seeds are being sown. The reign of God is like that. Like planting seeds that you might not see grow. But they grow. Or the reign of God is like a little bread and a sip of wine on a warm damp summer morning. A few of us who take it are lost, and a few are hurt or afraid. A few are just fine, thank you very much, and all of us are in some way, like our world, a little parched, a little dry, and in need of seeds of hope or promise or peace. And little bread, a little wine, seeds are sown, and we don’t know what those seeds will become in the lives that we live or in the world where we live. But the reign of God is like a seed that is planted. And it grows.

When Jesus talks about the reign of God, it’s not a time or place or complicated theology. Sometimes it’s just encouragement for everyone who does little things that seem to be nothing; who just puts a seed or two in the ground – seeds that we hope will grow into justice, or into healing, or into a fair country, or into a school where it won’t matter if you look like this or you look like that or your hair goes like this and your glasses look like that. Seeds will grow even if we don’t know how. Today, tomorrow, in a week or two, or a few months or years…. But seeds will grow.

When Jesus talks about the reign of God it’s a gracious invitation to us to live together and to live as though all these things are true; all these things we hear about justice and healing and right relationships and people who care about each other, all these things we hear about a woman being set free from prison, and about all the Marks and the Marys and the cool kids happily living in the same school together.

And when Jesus talks about the reign of God it’s a straight up promise that it will be so. There are seeds in the ground – like a seed buried in a tomb for three days – and those seeds are alive – like a new life bursting out of the ground, out of the tomb. The reign of God is growing and there already is, and there always will be, this shrub that grows, and its branches reach out all over, and there is shelter and shade and enough for all and a home for all.

AMEN.