Posts Tagged ‘mustard seed’

Whose kingdom is it anyway? Mustard seeds and seeds growing secretly.

June 15, 2024

Pentecost 4 -2024

Mark 4:26-34 (some thoughts)

Marian Free

 

In the name of God whose creative energy brings all things into being. Amen.

‘Patience is a virtue’ the saying goes. Yet as parents and educators many of us are impatient. We have a tendency (fuelled by parenting books) to expect children to reach certain ‘milestones’ at particular times and worry (about them and/or our parenting) if they do not. Such a scenario makes no allowances for different temperaments or different interests, let alone differing times of maturity. Yet I can think of a number of children who at school were considered to be under-achievers and who went on to pursue higher degrees and/or challenging careers. When the time was right or when their interest was peaked, these children found the drive to grow and to achieve, a drive which no amount of coercion or threat could have achieved. Nothing good is gained by pushing a child who is not ready developmentally or emotionally. Excessive worrying will only lead to self doubt and low self esteem n the part of the child. There are times when we have to sit back and let things take their course.

It is not just children who need the right time and conditions to flourish. Nature is filled with examples of fauna and flora that will not reproduce unless the environment is right (for themselves and their offspring). An example is the desert spadefoot toad that is native to the Australian desert. These creatures have adapted to an arid environment by burrowing underground to escape the heat which would dry them out and kill them. When the drought breaks, they emerge to engage in a frenzied period of breeding. In order to take advantage to the short-lived pools of water, the tadpoles of this species develop remarkably quickly. If the conditions are not right the toads will patiently wait until they are.

Some plants and animals will wait for the rain before they reproduce or germinate, others, like the banksia, will only release their seeds in the fierce heat of a bushfire. Nothing we can do will make them germinate or reproduce if the situation is not conducive to flourishing.

Many of us find it hard to be patient, we want to see results – results that affirm we are doing/have done the right thing – prepared our children for school, given the radish seeds just the right amount of water, fed our pets the food that will keep them healthy, provided advice that eases someone’s burden.

The problem is that the world does not work that way. Our actions, however well meaning, will not speed up a process that needs a time.

I wonder if impatience is at the heart of today’s parables. I wonder if the disciples (or the hearers of Mark’ gospel) are chaffing at the bit to see the results of Jesus’ mission or their teaching. I wonder if they are impatient to see change in the world as evidence that the way that they are going about things is the right way to go.

Why else would Jesus urge patience? Why else would he tell parables about a kingdom that has small beginnings and grows in secret?

Behind both these parables is a reminder that the kingdom of God is in God’s hands and the kingdom will come in God’s time (not ours). We cannot force the kingdom, nor can we bring about GOD’S kingdom (not our kingdom), the kingdom of HEAVEN (not the kingdom here on earth) by our own efforts. Jesus’ language says it all – the kingdom of heaven doesn’t need our help. We cannot force its growth or bring it into existence by our own efforts. We have to place our trust in God, to remember that God is always working and that God who made the universe from nothing can certainly bring about the kingdom from the smallest beginning, even if we cannot see the growth.

In a world of declining congregations, we tend to take too much on ourselves, as if the existence of God, or the coming of the kingdom were down to us.

The message of the parables is that we must exercise patience and await with eager expectation to see what God has in store for us next and leave the kingdom in God’s capable hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Get over yourselves – be as a mustard seed

October 1, 2022

Pentecost 17 – 2022
Luke 17:5-10
Marian Free

In the name of God – Source of all being, Word of Life, Holy Spirit. Amen.

Apparently the Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard said that “we need to forget all Christian language for 100 years”. It is a radical statement, but one that deserves to be taken seriously. There are so many “givens” that we now take for granted – especially when it comes to our biblical texts – that we are in danger of losing the original meaning of a text or of reading into a text what we expect to be there, rather than being open to what is actually there. Starting with a clean slate (abandoning inherited interpretations) would provide an opportunity to see our faith and our texts with fresh eyes and to glean a new – more accurate – understanding.

Today’s gospel provides one such example of the way in which we have read things into the text or used a text for our own purposes. This is because a) we approach the text from a particular viewpoint and b) because the literal translation of the Greek doesn’t immediately make sense.

The gospel this evening consists of two apparently unrelated texts – a demand for faith on the part of the disciples followed by Jesus’ example of the relationship between slaves and masters. Examining these texts anew and without the baggage of our existing understanding shows them to be closely related and makes it clear that they are less about the amount of faith one has and more about a life of faith as servants of God.

A traditional interpretation of our text is that if only we had enough faith, we could do astonishing – if extremely odd – feats. Doing the extraordinary – uprooting and re-planting mulberry trees, healing the sick or turning water into wine – has become, at least for some, a benchmark of the degree of faith that one has. Behind this is an assumption that faith is somehow quantifiable, something that we can measure, a benchmark that we should aim to reach. The implication is that it is possible to have too little faith, or that faith and the performing of miracles are intimately related.

Three things argue against this interpretation.

First is the context. The disciples’ demand to have their faith added to follows Jesus’ instruction to forgive. (Forgiveness might be miraculous, but it has nothing to do with the moving of mulberry trees.)

A second argument against the idea that Jesus’ saying has to do with the amount of faith one has is revealed by an examination of Greek text. When we do that, we discover that the translators have done what they often do – they have added words. This is because it seems to them that the original text needs additional words in order to make sense. The presumption seems to be – if the disciples have asked Jesus to add to their faith, Jesus response must be related to the size of their faith – which is what the NRSV English translation suggests. “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” The Greek however says nothing about the size of a mustard seed. A literal translation of the sentence is: “If you had faith as a mustard seed.” Our translators have replaced “as” with “the size of” probably because the idea of a mustard seed having faith presents its own difficulties!

Finally, the fact that the author of the gospel has paired Jesus’ saying about the mustard with the example of the master and slave, suggests that his intention was that we read the two sayings together. Jesus’ example is image from everyday life with which Luke’s readers would have been familiar. In the highly structured culture of the first century, each person fulfilled their assigned role with no expectation that they would be singled out for praise simply for doing what they were meant to do. This interpretation is further strengthened when our attention is drawn to another translation issue.

The final line of Jesus’ example is translated as: “So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’” Behind this assumption is the view that slaves would be self-deprecating, or worse that the early Christians (whom we assume to be the slaves) think of themselves as having little value in God’s (the master’s) eyes. We see Jesus’ example quite differently when it is pointed out that the word translated as “worthless” is actually the negative of the word “need”. The sentence could just as easily read: “we are slaves without need.” In other words, the slaves do not need to be thanked for carrying out their role because fulfilling their role is sufficient reward.

In the light of these three points – context, translation, and pairing – it becomes clear that Jesus is not childing the disciples for their lack of faith, rather he is chastising
them for imagining that faith is a commodity – something that can be owned, measured and used. A mustard seed has no choice except to fulfill the purpose for which it was created. A slave has little choice but to do what their master requires. Jesus seems to be encouraging the disciples to be satisfied with fulfilling the purpose for which they were created and with living out their God-given vocation.

He might just as well be saying: “Get over yourselves! Faith is not something to possess but a state of being – in relationship with God and in relationship with others. Be happy with who you are. Live out your vocation faithfully. Trust God to work in and through you and get on with living.”

Jesus says: “Have faith as a mustard seed.” “Be content with the person that you were created to be.”
Our response might be: “We are slaves without need.” “We will live our lives faithfully, allowing ourselves to be used for God’s purpose rather than striving to be what we are not.”

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Weed or towering cedar? The Kingdom of God.

June 12, 2021

Pentecost 3 – 2021

Mark 4:26-34 (some thoughts)

Marian Free

May I speak in the name of God who created us, Jesus who redeemed us and the Spirit who enlivens us. Amen.

A key theme of the Hebrew Bible is the Kingdom of Israel. From the time Saul is appointed as the first king, the historical books are concerned with the rule of the various kings, their victories (or losses) in battle, the size of their kingdoms, their wealth and, of course, their relationship with God. Never was the kingdom so powerful, grand and wealthy as in the time of Solomon who had “dominion over all the region west of the Euphrates from Tiphsah to Gaza, over all the kings west of the Euphrates; and he had peace on all sides”. Not only was his kingdom extensive, but his wealth was legendary. Just imagine: “Solomon’s provision for one day was thirty cors of choice flour, and sixty cors of meal, ten fat oxen, and twenty pasture-fed cattle, one hundred sheep, besides deer, gazelles, roebucks and fatted fowl. Solomon also had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.” Under his rule Judah and Israel lived in safety – under their vines and fig trees.

Solomon’s wealth and power were displayed in the houses that he built for himself and for his wife which were made of the finest stone and timber and lined with gold and precious stones. Likewise, Solomon’s Temple was extraordinary – filled with vessels of gold and silver and bronze, adorned with carved timber and furnished with the finest of cloth. So rich was Solomon and so secure his kingdom that it was said that: “The king made silver as common in Jerusalem as stones, and he made cedars as numerous as the sycamores of the Shephelah.” He had seven hundred princesses as wives and three hundred concubines!!! (See the first few chapters of 1 Kings for details.) Even allowing for exaggeration, the description of Solomon’s power and wealth gives some idea of the the sort of kingdom that Jesus’ contemporaries might have been expecting God to restore.

To them, the comparison of the kingdom to a mustard seed would have been utterly surprising, shocking and even offensive. Not only that, Jesus is using imagery that would have been confusing. When the Hebrew Bible wanted to use plants to symbolise powerful kingdoms, the writers chose plants that were equally powerful and majestic – the mighty cedar tree or the cosmic tree that represented the Babylonian Empire.  (“it was large and strong, with its top touching the heavens, and it could be seen to the ends of the earth. … Under it the wild beasts found shade, in its branches the birds of the air nested; all men ate of it”; Dan 4:8-9), Or the vision of Ezekiel in which the restoration of the people of Israel after the Babylonian captivity is imaged as a shoot plucked from the crest of a cedar (Babylon) and planted on mountain heights, where it becomes a majestic cedar and “birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it.”( (Dennis Hamm SJ. http://www.liturgyslj, 13/6/2021).

Not only does Jesus chose something as pedestrian as a mustard seed with which to compare the kingdom – he mixes his metaphors. Even though mustard is a short, scrubby plant and small, Jesus still envisages birds making nests in its shade. He inverts and subverts the Old Testament imagery of the mighty cedar. As he describes it, the kingdom of God is not majestic and powerful. It will not come with force and overwhelm all that is before it. Instead, the kingdom will come subtly and quietly – like the seed whose growth cannot be observed until the first shoots push themselves above the ground. What is more the kingdom of God will not tower over or overshadow those beneath it, but will still spread out and provide shelter and shade for those who seek it.

The kingdom of God does not consist of mighty armies or lavish palaces. Its king does not enforce submission, but rather encourages loyalty through love. Its leader does not impose his will, but instead models servant leadership.

We are gravely mistaken if, like Jesus’ contemporaries, we are expecting God to break in to our world with power and might ready to bend the whole world to God’s will or (worse) to establish us as God’s representatives on earth. Jesus’ life and ministry illustrate the sort of kingdom about which he speaks. It will (it has) enter(ed) our world unexpectedly and quietly and has disrupted our preconceptions and our expectations. In fact, it was for the majority of people, completely unrecognisable.

In the Lord’s Prayer we pray for God’s kingdom to come. Let’s be sure that we are not looking for it in the wrong places.

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The kingdom of God is like a weed

June 16, 2018

Pentecost 4 – 2018

Mark 4:26-34

Marian Free

In the name of God, creator of the universe, source of all life and love. Amen.

Mustard

 

 

 

 

A story that I used to read my children goes like this:

There was once a father and a mother, six handsome little boys, five lovely little girls and a chubby baby who lived in a house in the middle of town. “I’d be a happy man,” said the father, “if I had a house the right size for my family.”

The mother baked all day in the kitchen.

The boys fought on the verandah.

The girls played “shops” in the parlour.

And the baby crawled all over the place.

 

“There’s no room to move in my house,” the father said to the mayor. “What can I do?” “Ask Grandma to come and stay,” said the mayor. “That’s what you can do.”

Grandma came. Straight away she began washing in the laundry. Grandpa came with her. Straight away he began to mend his car in the garage.

The mother baked more food in the kitchen.

The boys fought on the verandah.

The girls played “shops” in the parlour.

And the baby crawled all over the place.

 

“There’s no room to move in my house,” the father said to the mayor. “What can I do?” “Ask Uncle John to come and stay,” said the mayor. “That’s what you can do.” Uncle John came. Straight away he sat down by the fire and put his feet on the mantelshelf. His dog came with him. He lay down on the mat by the door.

Grandma did more washing in the laundry.

Grandpa kept on mending his car in the garage.

The mother baked even more food in the kitchen.

The boys fought on the verandah.

The girls played “shops” in the parlour.

And the baby crawled all over the place.

 

“There’s no room to move in my house,” the father said to the mayor. “What can I do?” “Ask Aunt Debbie to come and stay,” said the mayor. “That’s what you can do.” Aunt Debbie came. Straight away she washed her hair in the bathroom and made her face beautiful. Her cat came too. It chased Uncle John’s dog.

Uncle John sat by the fire with his feet on the mantelshelf.

Grandma did even more washing in the laundry.

Grandpa kept on mending his car in the garage.

The mother baked more than a lot of food in the kitchen.

The boys fought on the verandah.

The girls played “shops” in the parlour.

And the baby crawled all over the place.

 

“There’s no room to move in my house,” the father said to the mayor. “What can I do?” Ask your cousin’s children to come and stay,” said the mayor. “That’s what you can do.” The cousin’s children came. There were six lively boys and six sweet girls.

The six lively boys played football with the boys on the verandah.

The six sweet girls played hide-and-seek with the girls in the parlour.

Aunt Debbie washed her hair in the bathroom and made her face beautiful. Her cat chased Uncle John’s dog.

Uncle John sat by the fire with his feet on the mantelshelf.

Grandma did even more washing in the laundry.

Grandpa kept on mending his car in the garage.

The mother baked even more than a lot of food in the kitchen.

And the baby crawled all over the place.

 

“There’s no room to move in my house,” the father said to the mayor. “What can I do?” “Send all the visitors home,” said the mayor. “That’s all you need to do.”

 

The cousins went home.

Aunt Debbie went home. She took her cat.

Uncle John went home. He took his dog.

Grandpa went home. He took Grandma with him in his car.

The six handsome little boys stopped playing to wave good-bye.

The five lovely little girls stopped playing to wave good-bye.

The mother picked up the baby to wave good-bye.

The father waved good-bye, then sat down in his favourite chair. “I’m a happy man,” he said. “My house is exactly the right size for my family.”[1]

The bible is far too serious to include stories like this that are both absurd and humorous – or is it?

I think that we often overlook the humour in our scriptures because we have been brought up to believe that scripture is the word of God and that God is a humourless being. God, the creator of heaven and earth is far too majestic a figure to have sport with mere human beings – or so we think. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if we are open to the possibility we will see that the bible makes it very clear that God has a wonderful and robust sense of humour. Think of today’s Old Testament reading – God sends Samuel off to choose a new king. First of all God tells Samuel to engage in deceit – to lead the elders of Bethlehem to believe that he has come to offer sacrifices. Then when Samuel makes Jesse produce all his sons, one by one, God rejects them all in turn. Finally Samuel makes Jesse bring David, the youngest in from the field and God reveals that he is the chosen one. Then there is the story Jonah who is swallowed by a giant fish, or the last chapters of Job in which God appears to take delight in reciting all the wonderful things that God has done. I could go on and on. The bible makes such good reading because its writers have used hyperbole and comedy to get our attention and to make the stories inviting and repeatable.

Today’s gospel is one such example. “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed,” Jesus says. Now no Palestinian in their right mind would plant a mustard seed. Mustard was a common weed. It sprang up everywhere, spread like wild fire and was difficult to eradicate. The kingdom of God is like a weed – that must have brought a smile to those who were listening. But it doesn’t end there. Jesus goes on to suggest that this common, scrappy weed grows to be the greatest of all the shrubs with large branches that provide shade in which the birds can nest! No doubt Jesus’ audience laughed out loud at this point – the image is so absurd – birds sheltering under mustard – impossible! (Matt Skinner )

Why not compare the kingdom of God to the great cedar of Lebanon – that would have made more sense? Mustard – the kingdom of God is like a common mustard bush – that’s just ridiculous.

Jesus uses humour to grab the attention and to subvert the expectations of the listeners. The absurdity of the imagery will not only make them laugh, it will also serve to move them to a new way of viewing God’s kingdom. Contrary to their expectations, the kingdom of God will not come with a shout and a bang. Its coming won’t be dramatic and showy. Like an unwanted weed the kingdom will simply spring up all over the place and quietly and gradually it will take over. Before we know it, the kingdom will be everywhere.

Jesus pairs this parable with a second comparing the kingdom to another ordinary, unexceptional event – that of a seed growing. Just as mustard spreads and takes over without any help from us, so a seed once planted, quietly does its own thing with or without our interference. We don’t have to worry about the kingdom – God has it well in hand.

So you see, we don’t always have to take the gospels seriously, we don’t always have to find deeper meanings or make the texts fit our pre-conceptions.  Sometimes we can simply take the texts at face value – simple stories about simple facts. Mustard is a weed that grows prolifically; seeds have their own mechanisms for shooting and growing.

The point is this – the kingdom of God is not necessarily a grand affair heralded by trumpets, adorned with magnificent buildings and filled with important people. It is as ordinary and insignificant as a weed, quietly taking over, pushing its way into unlikely and unexpected places and growing inexorably until it spreads throughout the world and it does all this without our help.

We need to take our scriptures less seriously and perhaps more importantly we need to take ourselves less seriously.  The kingdom does not depend on us. God has it all in hand, we can relax, have a laugh and leave it all to God.

[1]A traditional tale, re-told by Jean Chapman in Tell me a Tale: Stories, songs and things to do. Hodder and Stoughton, Australia, 1974, 86-89.

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Good citizens or bad?

July 29, 2017

Pentecost 8 – 2017

Matthew 13:30-33, 44-52

Marian Free

In the name of God who refuses to be bound by the limits of the human imagination and who challenges us to go outside our comfort zone to be part of God’s kingdom. Amen.

In our society used-car salesmen and real estate agents are, in general, held in suspicion. There is a belief (based on the experience of some people) that a used-car salesman will use all his persuasive power to convince an unsuspecting buyer to purchase a “bomb” and that real estate agents will in the same vein exert pressure to induce someone to buy a home that may or may not be what they were looking for. Naïve and not so naïve buyers can find that they have spent more than they intended on a car or house that fails to live up to their expectations or that costs them more than it was worth.

Every age has stereotypes that are imposed on members of certain professions, cultures and social classes regardless of whether or not they are an accurate representation of all the people who could be included in a particular category. In every age there are those who contradict or confound the expectations of those around them. Not all used-car salesmen take advantage of their customers’ trust and not all real-estate agents behave in ways that cause alarm.

Today’s gospel consists of five parables, the first four of which have in common that Jesus uses an image that has a negative connotation and turns it around so that it says something that is positive. In order to understand the parables of the mustard seed, the leaven, the treasure and the pearl, we first need to know something of the culture of Jesus’ day.

In first century Palestine, mustard was a noxious weed. Farmers would routinely pull it out of their fields. Leaven was an agent caused decay and while used correctly it could cause bread to rise, it was also an image for evil or corruption. In the absence of banks, treasure was often buried to keep it safe from robbers and marauders. The hidden money is no surprise then, but to whom does it really belong – the owner of the land or the person who has been illegitimately digging around in a field that does not belong to him? Finally, we have a merchant and a pearl. Merchants occupied the place that used-car salesmen and real estate agents occupy in our time. In other words, they would try to purchase goods at the lowest possible price and to sell them for as much as they could persuade someone to pay.

Parables that in the first instance appear to us as bland and almost self-evident, take on quite a different flavour when seen in the light of the culture of Jesus’ time. In comparing the kingdom of heaven to a weed, an agent of corruption, a thief and a merchant, Jesus is giving status to things and people that would normally be considered as contemptible. He is subverting the normal cultural view and suggesting that the kingdom of heaven is very different from anything that his listeners might have envisioned.

Can you imagine the response of Jesus’ listeners when they heard these four parables? No doubt they, like us, had in their heads some sort of idea as to the nature of the kingdom of heaven and what it might take for someone to attain it. I suspect that they, like us, associated the kingdom of heaven with righteousness and good behaviour. They assumed that it was a place (an existence) in which all corruption, unscrupulousness, dishonesty and all that was worthless had been weeded out. A place not too dissimilar to the world with which we are familiar, minus all the things that in our eyes are not “good” or not “worthy” of the kingdom.

Jesus’ parables often contain contradictions that force Jesus’ listeners to see the world and to see the kingdom in a new and different way. Wheat that can yield thirty, sixty or a hundred fold, weeds that are left to grow among the wheat, a Samaritan who is good or a father who welcomes back a son who wished him dead. Here as elsewhere Jesus turns convention on its head reminding us that no matter how hard we try we will not be able to put ourselves in God’s place or to begin to dream what God sees, what God thinks and what God plans for the future.

In other words, so long as we think according to the conventions of our time, we will be blind and deaf to the possibilities of the kingdom. Jesus is suggesting that sometimes being a good citizen of heaven means being a “bad citizen” in terms of the world. Standing up for justice, confronting evil and corruption or challenging unfair, discriminatory practices may mean putting ourselves on the “wrong side” of the law, outside the boundaries of so-called respectable society and challenging the status quo. By behaving in a way that is non-conventional, by operating in ways that differ from the standards of the world Jesus implies, we may in fact discover that we are conforming to the values of the kingdom.

Jesus tells parables, not to provide comfort, not to give us nice stories to tell our children and certainly not to help us to “fit in” to the culture of our time. Jesus tells parables to shock us out of our complacency, to challenge the arrogance of our preconceptions and to open our eyes to the endless possibilities of the kingdom, possibilities that far exceed our ability to imagine. Parables force us to ask ourselves whether, by concentrating on being good citizens of this society, by conforming to the values of the world around us and by fitting in with our culture, we are in fact squandering our opportunity to learn what it means to be good citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

 

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How does your garden grow?

June 13, 2015

Pentecost 3 – 2015

Mark 4:26-34

Marian Free

In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier. Amen. 

For at least the last forty-five years I have been involved in discussions about the future of the church. In particular, I have observed and been party to a lot of navel gazing in relation to declining attendance on Sundays and a variety of suggestions as to how we might halt that decline. Numerous reasons have been offered for this parlous state of affairs – women returning to the workforce, television, Sunday sport and Sunday trading – to mention a just a few. The liturgy has also been blamed for a downturn in attendance. In particular, there are those who express a concern that our form of worship doesn’t appeal to young people. As a consequence there have been a variety of attempts to address this problem, ranging from Folk Masses in the 60’s to Twitter Masses in the last decade.

Focus on the liturgy has not been the only response to this perceived crisis in the life of the church. Programme after programme has been rolled out, each with a degree of optimism that suggests that this time we have the right formula and one that will bring people back to the church. Sadly, over time, these programmes fall into disuse and distant memory as they fail to live up to their promise. Church attendance remains at best static and worse continues to decline.

The cynic in me wonders whether our concern with church attendance has more to do with maintaining the institution of the church than it does with spreading the gospel message, more to do with us and less to do with God. At the very least it implies that without our help God will simply fade into insignificance, that without the church there will be no God!

A perusal of the Gospels reveals that, unlike us, Jesus was not concerned with the religious practice of the people – how often they went to the Temple, or whether or not they attended the synagogue on a regular basis. Jesus seems to be more concerned that the crowds understand the liberating power of the gospel. The Gospels record that Jesus set people free from their diseases and infirmities; he released them from the power of evil spirits and he liberated them from a false understanding of the scriptures and from the misleading teaching of the leaders of the church. Above all, Jesus was concerned that the people fully understood the nature of the Kingdom of God (or heaven).

Jesus himself proclaimed that the Kingdom of God had come near (Mark 1:15) and when Jesus sent out the disciples, he gave them authority over unclean spirits. The disciples proclaimed repentance, cast out demons and anointed and cured the sick (Mk 6:6-13). They did not concern themselves with filling church (synagogue) pews.

Jesus’ primary concern was the Kingdom of God and most of the parables relate to this theme. These parables begin: “The Kingdom of God is like – a sower, a seed, a woman, a shepherd ..”. From all of these images, his listeners were able to build a picture of the kingdom of God in which the lost are sought and found, growth is secret and more abundant than expected, weeds will grow together with the wheat, debts are forgiven and the first will be last. Moreover, the kingdom will be worth more than everything that we own and we will give all that we have to possess it.

The parables do not say or even imply that the Kingdom of God will consist of full churches or of dioceses that are financially secure. The signs of the Kingdom are much more subtle and unexpected. More than that the Kingdom, according to Jesus, is not ours to build, but always God’s. It is the Kingdom of God, not the kingdom of the church and of church-goers. We seem to have convinced ourselves that the Kingdom is entirely dependent on the existence of the church and lost sight of whose Kingdom it is and that we expend far too much time concerned with the survival of the institution of the church and far too little time announcing the kingdom of God as an alternative to the kingdom of this world.

This morning’s parables are particularly challenging in a climate that is focused on church growth. The first, the parable of the sower, is a stark reminder that the growth of the Kingdom is entirely determined by God and not by human effort (‘the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how’). The second, the parable of the mustard seed, confronts us with the idea that to an untrained eye the Kingdom might look like an insignificant herb or weed – nothing like the images that “Kingdom” usually calls to mind. In other words, whatever the Kingdom is, it will not be as we expect.

In the light of these parables, perhaps it is time that we, the church, stopped looking inwards, trying to tweak what we do on a Sunday morning so that it becomes more attractive to more people; time that we moved out from our beautiful buildings into the communities around us; time that, instead of trying to persuade people to come to us that, we found ways to set people free from the chains of individualism, consumerism, ambition, from oppression, injustice and violence.

Above all it is time to take a deep breath and to remember that it is God (not us) who will cause the Kingdom of God to grow and that in ways that we may not see or understand. It is time to recall that the Kingdom that will be unlike any other Kingdom that has preceded it. If we cannot imagine it, we certainly cannot build it. In other words, perhaps it is time to relax, to stop struggling for survival; to let go and let God and then to watch in amazement to see what God will do and then to go wherever God may take us.

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