Jesus said to the crowds: “This is how it is with the Kingdom of God; it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.” He said, “To what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use for it? It is like mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it sprints up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.” (Mark 4.25-32)
Although we have only reached Chapter 4 of Mark’s gospel by this point, we have come a long way. Or, rather, Jesus has come a long way. In Chapter 1 he called his first disciples and began his public ministry of preaching and healing. In Chapter 2, he encounters the hostility of the religious leaders when he heals the paralytic, eats with tax collectors and sinners, and defends his disciples from attack by the scribes and Pharisees when they chewed on a few grains of wheat on the sabbath.
Then, in Chapter 3, he heals a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, resulting in the Pharisees deciding to put him to death. He also is accused of working on behalf of the Devil because he expelled a demon from a possessed man. His family comes to take him back home because they also think he is out of his mind, causing Jesus to redefine familial bonds not on the basis of blood relationship, but on doing the will of God.
Now, in Chapter 4 he begins to teach the large crowds that congregate around him about the kingdom of God, using three parables or stories about seeds. Our selection today comes from the latter half of that teaching. The first half, which has been jumped over, is the story of the sower who broadcasts seeds across the ground, some falling on rock, some on pathways, some among thorns, and some on good soil. It is a familiar story to all of us.
Today, we have the other two parables about seeds, one telling the story of a farmer who scatters seeds on the ground and the “seeds sprout and grow, he knows not how.” It is followed by the third and last story about the seeds, the more famous story of the mustard seed, “the smallest of all seeds on earth,” that “springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”
Obviously, all three parables are held tightly together not only by the topic of seeds, but also by the message that Rabbi Jesus wants to convey to the crowds, namely their response to the invitation to share in bringing the kingdom of God to fruition upon the earth. The sowing of the seed is the primary motif, representing the breakthrough of the Kingdom of God into the world.
And, as he makes clear, God is the one who plants the seeds and nurtures their growth, even if we “do not know how.” He is the dynamism or force behind the gradual growth of the seeds, whether it is the seed on the good ground, or the seed that becomes full grain in the ear, or the mustard seed that becomes a ginormous plant. The seed is predestined or determined to grow by the Creator who wants it to flourish.
Of course, the parables, particularly the first one, makes clear that we have our part to play in the process also, namely being open to the plan of God and cooperating with his vision for the world. If we choose to be hearers of the word spoken by God through Jesus, then we do our part to see that the seed is not stunted in its growth. If we fail to become listeners, instead choosing to be deaf to the word and ways of God, then the paradise that God planned for the world stays a desert, the seeds shivering up under the heat of the sun or carried away by the birds who snatch it out of the soil.
As we can see, these are not difficult parables to understand. Jesus says as much when he tells the crowds, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.” Of course, as Mark also makes clear, there is a thickheadedness in the Twelve who “questioned him about the parables,” resulting in, as Mark says, “his explaining everything in private to his own disciples.” This becomes a major theme in Mark’s text, this failure to understand on the part of the Twelve. We will meet it numerous times ahead, each time a reminder that we are stand-ins for the Twelve, an embarrassing and a challenging assessment of ourselves as lightweights in the discipleship department.
The irony, of course, is that the Almighty does the heavy lifting, providing the seeds and embedding within them the potential to become big and beautiful heads of wheat or tall trees with branches broad enough for the birds of the air to rest upon. In comparison, our part is small, even if necessary. In simple terms, “we take the seed and run with it,” allowing it to become what God intends it to be. And, in opening our ears and our hearts to the word of God, we become the soil in which the seed can flourish.
If I were to pick two people who clearly understood these parables, it would be Brother Lawrence and Therese of Lisieux, both of French origin, both of whom did nothing big on the world stage when they were alive, but both of whom allowed the seed to grow in their hearts and, in the process, allowed it to become something that went well beyond their simple lives.
Brother Lawrence lived in the seventeenth century and grew up in poverty. As a young man, he joined the French army so he could have food and clothing. After the Thirty Years’ War, he became a servant on an estate, after which he joined the local monastery. Uneducated and unable to do the studies required to become a priest, he spent the rest of his life in the monastery in the lowly position of a lay brother, someone who did the mundane and ordinary tasks that needed done.
So, he worked in the monastery kitchen, cooking the meals and washing the dishes. He did these chores for many years until he was promoted near the end of his life to the task of repairing the sandals of his fellow monks. However, despite his unremarkable assignments and his unassuming ways, he became one of the most respected members of the community, known for his humbleness, his peaceful demeanor, and personal integrity.
If there was one reason for his being recognized for his holiness, it was because of the closeness that he cultivated with God, a closeness that was borne of his love for the Almighty. He once said, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”
As a result of his embracing the presence of God in everything he did, he could say, “I turn the cake that is frying on the pan for love of him, and that done, if there is nothing else to call me . . . it is enough for me to pick up but a piece of trash from the ground for the love of God.” He rightly understood that nothing was too small or too insignificant if it was done out of love for God. Like the parable that Jesus told, God can take the little things we do out of love and turn them into something bigger.
The second person was Therese of Lisieux who became a Carmelite nun in the late 1800s, dying of tuberculosis at the young age of twenty-four. Like Brother Lawrence, she came to see that it was not the greatness of our projects or the bigness of our works that mattered, but only the love that we put into them, in this way transforming the mustard seed into something unimaginable and bigger than expected.
She once said, “You know well enough that Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, nor even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.” As a result, she urged “miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kind word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love.” She lived by a simple truth contained in these words, “When one loves, one does not calculate.”
I know I said there were two people who truly understood these parables of the seeds, but I have to sneak in a third because her insights are so similar to those of Brother Lawrence and Therese of Lisieux. And that would be Mother Teresa who spent her days feeding the poor and holding in her arms the dying. Her life was lived in accord with one of her principle beliefs found in these simple words, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
On more than one occasion, she said, “I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world,” her words again making clear that she understood well what Jesus meant when he said “the seed sprouts and grows even if we do not know how.” Similarly, she would tell others, “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”
These three individuals–Brother Lawrence, Therese of Lisieux, and Mother Teresa–did the humblest and lowliest of jobs, cooking, washing dishes, feeding someone who was hungry, work that more often than not went unseen, too unimportant for important people to be bothered by as they sought to make a big name for themselves, wrongly believing that they were the sower, not God.
And yet, each of these three ended up being remembered and recognized for their openness to God working in and through them, their response always the same–doing the tasks put before them out of love for God. And because their love was immeasurable, their works became immeasurable, the tiny seeds God placed before them becoming in time large branches big enough to allow the birds of the air to rest in their shade.
So, if nothing else, these parables that we hear today serve as a reminder that we also can do our part in bringing the Kingdom of God into this world, wherever we live, however small we consider ourselves in the larger picture of things. We don’t have to sit in the seats of power and we don’t have to be the ones calling the shots. The only thing we have to do is allow God to work in and through us, however trivial the task before us, however mundane it may appear to others. God takes our small piece and puts it onto the larger picture of the kingdom, bringing it closer to completion, in this way the seed slowly and steadily growing into the fullness for which it was intended from the start.
As we ponder these parables and consider the ways that we can live them out in our lives, we also may want to take to heart one final bit of advice from Mother Teresa when she reminded us that “Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” Sound advice to those who have ears that hear. Let us begin.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 