Let me begin at the very end of today’s gospel passage where Mark says, “He did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.” Perhaps you are like me and wonder what this is supposed to mean. Is Jesus deliberately speaking in riddles? You know how some people like to speak with an air of mysteriousness. You never quite know what they want to tell you; they seem to enjoy the guessing game. The world of religion has a term for religious leaders who speak like that – in mysteries and riddles, in symbols, and layered words with multiple meanings: they are called esoteric. The definition of esoteric is: “intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest.”
Was Jesus an esoteric? From the sounds of this passage, it sure seems like it. I would seriously consider it, but my ultimate answer is no. I’ll tell you why in a moment. Let me first give you another example. The word of literature can be like that as well. These days it seems that few people read poems anymore. Books of poetry are not big sellers, one reason being, they are often hard to understand. They may sound beautiful; they may sound interesting and sophisticated, cultured, and full of rare insight; they may use exquisite words; but do we understand the poem? Many times, not immediately. So, was Jesus a poet? Perhaps he was, I would like to hear the beatitudes in the original Aramaic before I venture to come to a verdict, but in general, no, I don’t think Jesus was a poet either. Yet, what he said – the stories he told, the tales he spun, they were not immediately accessible to everyone. They needed explanation. Why is that? I mean, we hate that about people in the public when they say stuff and you wonder: what is this supposed to mean? Isn’t that why some politicians like to portray themselves as “straight talkers?” People want to hear the plain truth. Except, and this is true especially for religion, the plain truth is sometimes no truth at all.
Why did Jesus make it so difficult to get his message across? The answer is, like so many times in life: his subject matter wasn’t easy. I mean, he was trying to explain GOD to people. He was trying to explain the KINGDOM OF GOD to people. And as much as we would like to boil this subject matter down to bumper stickers that are often not wrong at all (Jesus does love you!), the subject matter requires a bit more thoughtfulness and imagination. We need to get out of our normal ways of thinking to better understand who this Holy One is that Jesus talked about. Stories and parables were Jesus’ way of challenging people to think more deeply about God, to not be comfortable with a truth or a slogan that has been used many times before and has become worn out to the point of being almost false. That’s why Jesus spoke so frequently in parables, that’s why our way of speaking about God can never be entirely plain.
How does the Kingdom of God unfold? In today’s parable, Jesus argues that God’s Kingdom, God’s MO is inherently present in the way creation works. That’s his point. As a church in a modern world we sometimes forget that. We feel like we need to be architects, engineers, or inventors of God’s kingdom among us. We come up with all sorts of ideas of how we can “make” the church grow. We devise programs and strategies, we advertise, we question, we re-organize. It’s all part of the world that we have come to know, a world where humans “make” things and decide the future, where we take charge – from industrial production, to health care pills, to the genetics of food and sometimes the course of rivers. That world, as you know, is facing some serious problems. There are people who say that we have already left too much of an imprint on our world.
And so it is with the church! We are well advised to remember that the church is not “produced,” but grows organically from within the people who are part of it. The people are the seeds. Yes, you carry the seeds of the kingdom of God in you. Those seeds may be hidden, they may be compromised by sin, forgotten, or buried under a pile of stuff and life’s burdens, but in you lives the DNA of the kingdom of God – the capacity to bring justice, healing and well-being to this world. The question is: will you allow God to grow it in you?
I have said many times when we were having conversations about strategic plans for our church: it is so important that we allow things to grow organically, from within the people who are part of the church community, and even those who are on the fringes and those who have just checked in. If someone has a passion to serve people in a specific way and can find others who have a similar interest, let us support them! Chances are: there are some seeds germinating before our eyes and, instead of looking for some other fancy idea that we think we should do just because someone told us so, those people are already germinating the seeds of the kingdom of God. Jesus said, “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” You are part of that!
Let me tell you a modern parable. There was a church that had debt, debt the size of the combined collective giving of an entire year. And while this community of faith was going through a three-year period to pay back the money owed to the banks, a group within the church proposed to fund a farm in the poorest country of the church’s hemisphere, a farm that would bring food to starving people. And some people surely thought, “This can’t work! We first need to think about ourselves and our own debt and our own community and take care of it.” People always tend to think that way. We may not always say it loud, but let’s face it, it’s human nature. And yet, it was an idea, a seed that took root. The church debt was paid a few months ahead of time. At about the same time, the money for the farm came together. Seeds were purchased in this small community in Haiti, bags of okra and pepper, bean and soy seeds. A year later that farm produced abundantly, hundredfold as Jesus said in another parable, feeding not only the farmers and their families but also the children in a nearby orphanage. Make no mistake, such is the kingdom of God. The precious seeds of God produce abundantly. There are seeds here, present in this church and in other churches around us, and in our communities – germinating, on their way to producing fruit, as we speak.
Sometimes even calamity and disaster prepare the soil to raise crops. Grace Lutheran Church in Hatfield experienced a fire a few years ago. It was a big trauma. They had to rebuild big parts of their church. Last week their pastor called me and asked whether I could help him find a church in Puerto Rico to send money to, as a gift. Ever since they had that fire, they decided to make a gift to a community that has experienced disaster. They do that every year now, a direct result of their own painful experience. That’s the kingdom of God at work! You can’t find a better parable, except there are thousands of others around, if we only recognize them. May God find and grow and germinate the seeds of the kingdom among us! May we be part the next parable for the kingdom of God! There are more to be told, and I can’t wait. Amen.