Mark 4:26-34
26 Then Jesus said, “This is what God’s kingdom is like. It’s as though someone scatters seed on the ground, 27 then sleeps and wakes night and day. The seed sprouts and grows, but the farmer doesn’t know how. 28 The earth produces crops all by itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full head of grain. 29 Whenever the crop is ready, the farmer goes out to cut the grain because it’s harvest time.”
30 He continued, “What’s a good image for God’s kingdom? What parable can I use to explain it? 31 Consider a mustard seed. When scattered on the ground, it’s the smallest of all the seeds on the earth; 32 but when it’s planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all vegetable plants. It produces such large branches that the birds in the sky are able to nest in its shade.”
33 With many such parables he continued to give them the word, as much as they were able to hear. 34 He spoke to them only in parables, then explained everything to his disciples when he was alone with them.
It’s like this, Jesus tells the crowd. Who knows where they have come from or what they are looking for, but this crowd of people has gathered because they want an explanation for the things that they don’t understand. And you know, from your own moments standing in that crowd, there are so many things that we don’t understand. We don’t understand why we dream. Or why we can’t feed every hungry person. Or why we feel compelled to make the world a better place. But we do. And so, we’re here together in this crowd because we believe that Jesus might be able to explain it.
So, we’re on the tips of our toes when Jesus says: It’s like this. And then he says it again and again and again. It’s like this. It’s like that until it seems that he’s become flustered or maybe overwhelmed and he searches the skies asking: What’s a good image for God’s kingdom?
And we want to know. We want something that will explain it because we’re really not so sure anymore. We always thought that God’s kingdom would plant itself in this world and it would grow. And grow. It would spread love and justice through every person and every government, but that seems so far from the reality we know. So, we want to remember what it’s like. We want a metaphor that we can grab hold of because someone somewhere is going to ask us why we bother. Someone somewhere is going to insist that it doesn’t matter. Someone somewhere is going to tell us that it’s a nice idea, but it’ll never happen. And we want to be able to respond, like Jesus, It’s like this.
It’s what Ryan Knighton wanted to explain to his two-year old daughter. He wanted her to know what it’s like, but he couldn’t figure out the right words. It never sounded right. It didn’t really matter that she was two. It doesn’t make sense to anyone. Because really how can you explain something that is so true for you to anyone else? There never seem to be the right words. There is no perfect parable to explain it. Still, Ryan tried. He told to his two-year old daughter, “Papa sees what you see when your eyes are closed, but mine are open.” It didn’t work. She looked at her father in the same dumb-founded expression that you have seen when you have tried in your own feeble way to explain what it’s like.
If you can’t explain something in your everyday life, something as simple as the way you see, how can you ever explain what God’s kingdom is like? How can you put words to that feeling especially when these conversations always happen when you’re not prepared? When you’re more concentrated on which aisle the cinnamon is in than how long the line is at the soup kitchen, that’s when it happens. When you’re so desperate for some caffeine that you’re not thinking about how the business practices of this particular coffee chain affects gays and lesbians, that’s when it happens. When you’re enjoying a day in the sun watching your child play soccer, that’s when that someone somewhere decides to ask you about why you would ever go to church.
It’s not like you’ve never thought about this before. In fact, you’ve probably thought about it a lot. At some point, you probably weighed the pros and cons of this church and the ways that this church tries to build God’s kingdom, but how do you explain it? Because like God’s kingdom, the church is not a place. It’s a feeling you get. And how do you explain a feeling? How do you describe the experience of dreaming and feeding with this particular group of people? It’s like trying to explain why you love your family. You just do. Sure, there are reasons that they drive you absolutely crazy but you love them. You can’t explain why. There are no words.
So, when that someone somewhere asks you why you go to church, you can’t answer. You are completely and totally speechless. But, you know you have to say something. So you politely ask why this someone somewhere wants to know. Maybe (if you’re really brave) you even ask if he’d like to come to church with you. Of course, you could have guessed what the response would be. You could have guessed that this exact horrified look would cross his face. So, you’re not surprised when he launches into an attack of the church that you have come to love. You know what his bullet points will be:
• the church just wants your money (where he cites a reference to the selling of indulgences in the middle ages)
• the church hates women (he gives no example but you could name a few)
• the church preaches love but hates the gays (which he proves by referencing only the Westboro Baptist Church as if there are no other churches in the world)
• and last, but not least, the church doesn’t believe in science.
And what can you say? Is there a good image to describe what Jesus is all about? Even if you are in the spice aisle in the supermarket, this isn’t a time to talk about mustard seeds. Who among us knows any thing about mustard seeds? There must be something else. Because we know that the church has made mistakes. You have your own examples. You know when the church has failed by rejecting your gay son. You know when the church failed to celebrate your divine image by welcoming you into leadership as a woman. It may have been 50 years ago but you remember. It’s not that you don’t have these experiences, but you also see and feel and hear something else. So, you know that Jesus says those things to the crowds. He speaks in parables to them. He tells them as many parables as they are able to hear, but when we are alone, he explains everything.
Because you are a part of this family. No matter what mistakes have been made or what failures we’ve shared, there is something that holds us together. It’s that feeling that we don’t know how to put it into words. It’s that thing. And if we’re really honest, we’re not even sure it’s still there. We remember what it felt like. We saw it once. We even dreamed about how love and justice would root itself in this world, but so much has happened since then. It’s hard to imagine how we could ever feel that way again. But, once upon a time, you did feel that. You have heard and seen and felt it. So, what is a good image for God’s kingdom?
It seems to me that there are only parables. There are only stories to explain what it’s like. It’s what Sarah Kay does in her poetry. She doesn’t tell you what it means. She tells you the story about how every single day from kindergarten to fourth grade, Sarah’s parents packed her lunch for school. And every day, from kindergarten to fourth grade, Sarah opened her lunchbox to find a neatly folded piece of paper containing a new poem. Could this be a good image for God’s kingdom? Could this be what it’s like? And don’t you have 1000 stories like it?
Sarah Key thinks you do. You may have seen her TED Talk in which she began by asking you to think of 3 things. Think of 3 things that you know to be true. Sarah gave a word of caution with that. Don’t think about it too much, she said. There’s no need to prove how smart or brave or brilliant you are. Just think of 3 things that you know to be true. Go ahead and give it a try. It can be something you learned in history class or the fury that you feel that those someone somewheres don’t understand your faith or what was in your lunchbox as a child. Think of 3 things that you know to be true.
Pause.
You may stumble over the words. You might want to edit that first thing or maybe the second, but you know these things to be true. For you, it’s like this. God’s kingdom is like this. It’s what it feels like when you feel like you have no words and can’t make any sense of anything, but then you tell your mother or your brother what it feels like. You share those 3 things that you know to be true right now and their eyes light up. Because something in those words connects you. It describes something that you both feel. It speaks to something that you both understand. And that changes everything even though some part of you had given up. Before that moment, you had ignored those things that you knew to be true. You thought it didn’t matter — until you made that connection and it all came rushing back. Yes, God’s kingdom is like this.
Now, you know that that someone somewhere won’t be satisfied with this. Those someones somewhere will want scientific data or logical proof. Their eyes won’t light up when you share those 3 things that you know to be true. That’s OK. Because all we have is parables. It’s how we explain things we don’t understand to each other. We tell story after story until all of our eyes are shining and we remember what we thought we’d lost.
Yes, it’s just like this. It’s like something that grows that you can’t understand. It’s like something so small that you can’t imagine that it will become anything else, but it does. It becomes so much more. God’s kingdom is like this.