Mark 4: 26-32
Just two weeks ago I visited my mother in my home town
of Cork. Cork is the second city of Ireland, a country that
has a long history of arable farming. I grew up in the city
but being Irish, rural life and rural ways never seemed to
be so very far away. In the 1970s in Ireland it was still
normal to see a TV programme showing the buying and
selling of cows and sheep at a cattle mart. The Irish soap
opera was ‘The Riordans’, a kind of television version of
the Archers. Then there were the TV adverts with an
agricultural theme—city dwellers knew more about bovine
TB, brucellosis and liver fluke than you can imagine. And
these are just the ones I can recall from memory. In a
country where agriculture was one of the major industries
you didn’t need city farms to encounter animals. Invariably
there was at least one country relative who could furnish
you with that memorable, unbelievable experience of
being woken in the middle of the night to be taken out to
witness the birth of a calf or a lamb.
So the agricultural images that Jesus used in his parables
never seemed strange to me. If we try we might visualise
Jesus teaching by a lake, or in a town square, or on a grassy
mound with a group of curious people gathered around
him. He looks up and sees…a person herding his sheep or
goats to a pasture, a man scattering seeds in a nearby field,
or a tree growing in a small garden. Jesus uses what he sees
to make his point, and I can imagine him indicating the
various people as they go about their daily work.
Today we are encouraged to think about the ‘Kingdom of
God’, using the agricultural metaphors of growth and
harvest. First we hear of the seed and the sower. In St
Mark’s version of this story we hear of a sower who lets the
seed alone to develop by itself. The seed has the potential
for great growth, it holds within itself all that it needs to
become a flourishing crop, aided by the sun and the rain,
from God’s bountiful creation.
So the farmer in this parable does not interfere with the
growth of the plant; we do not hear of fertiliser or
weeding. Neither do we hear that he checks the plant for
disease. This may seem a little odd to us—in our part of
the world farming is mechanised and crops are regularly
inspected and managed. Yet all around the world there are
crops that flourish without any human intervention. We
are not encountering a lazy farmer, we are simply seeing
one who in—this particular story—is trusting to God and
nature to see what will happen to the seeds he has sown.
The emphasis is on the work of the seed rather than the
work of the sower. The beautiful and mysterious growth of
the seed under the earth will become evident at harvest
time. The sower has patience and faith in the good work of
God and his Kingdom.
The second parable today adds another layer to the story
of growth. In it we encounter the strength and power of a
tiny seed. The seed of a mustard tree is indeed very small
—it is certainly much smaller than an apple pip. And yet
this seed can grow into a tree that will give shade to people
and home to the birds of the air. It is interesting that Jesus
chooses a tree of little cultural significance to make his
point, instead of (for example) a stately cedar, or some
other noble tree, and it might give us a fresh insight into
this story to learn that mustard seeds were often sown by
mistake. They were so small that they easily got mixed up
with other seeds, so they were often an unplanned and
unsought bonus plant that you discovered in your garden.
Those who listened to these parables might have been a
bit surprised by the story of the sower who does not
actively tend the seed. The appearance of a mustard tree in
the garden would have been a bit of a mystery to the
person who thought they had planted marjoram or sage.
These stories might have made the listeners stop and
ponder, they might have challenged them to think a little
differently.
As we too ponder these parables, I think that there some
encouraging thoughts for us to take away. We can
sometimes feel that success or failure of any action we
undertake in God’s name depends solely on us. Both
parables emphasise the grace of God, his action in the
world, alongside which we work. God is already present
and at work in every corner of the world. The suggests that
our vocation is to be attentive to his presence, to discern
his work, rather like the sower waits patiently for the seed
that he has planted.
However, this can also be a challenge to us, as we are used
to modern models of growth that emphasis action and
busy-ness. Our world is full of hurry, we measure success
by how much we can do in a single day—how full our diary
is—and we can easily fall into the trap of equating our self
worth with constant availability. Yet the growth of the
Kingdom of God that Jesus describes today is not
‘measurable’ by our human methods—it does not conform
to targets, spreadsheets or diary pressures. It does not
respond to constant texts, endless emails and the ping of
Whatsapp messages.
So how do we balance when to act and when to watch?
Perhaps today Jesus is asking us to think about where we
place our attention. Attentiveness to God and to each
other helps us to draw closer to the One who made us and
loves us. It is this attentiveness that helps us discern more
clearly where God’s kingdom is already growing—quietly,
mysteriously and surprisingly—and take our part in that
growth.
This is not a passive act—this holy attentiveness takes
time to grow and develop, just like the seeds in our
parables today. It grows through prayer, reading of
scripture, receiving holy communion and practical acts of
mercy. But where we begin is in a recognition of our
absolute dependence on God and his loving action in our
lives—the seed that he has planted in us all. Held in this
intimate and precious relationship we watch together for
the opportunities to partner in the work of his Kingdom.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit…