17 June 2018

Sermon Mark 4:26-34 17 June 2018 Proper 6 Year B


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         God help me, I was going to preach something safe and comforting today. I thought I could play it safe and say a lot of comfortable things about how we need to let God do what God does. All we have to do is plant the seeds. Or with the second parable, I could talk about how God takes a tiny mustard seed and makes a huge plant out of it. The Gospel stories for today can certainly be preached that way. We don’t even have to think of them as parables. We can make them safe by turning them into fables or allegories.
A fable about the mustard seed could be interpreted like this: Large things can grow from something very small. An allegory about the mustard seed could be interpreted like this: If your faith is small and you nurture it, it will do the same thing the mustard seed did. But parables, especially the parables Jesus tells, are neither safe nor easy. Parables are designed to have multiple interpretations, and multiple ways of twisting our brains around. Parables make us think, and oftener than not, disturb the status quo by making us think about things we’d rather not think about at all.
Parables are intended to mess with our normal way of thinking. Parables are intended to be subversive in a variety of ways. And parables get inside our heads and cause us to think differently, to sometimes get us so frustrated we don’t know quite what to do about them. But, if we’ll stay with them and keep thinking about them, parables can be life changing. We might be transformed before we know it. Maybe that’s what Jesus had in mind. You think?
         There is nothing wrong with interpreting parables as allegories or fables. Interpreting them that way can say some really important things about what we believe about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God may not be easy to spot. The kingdom of God may appear really tiny but end up being large in influence or size or scope when we least expect it. And yet, if we treat these parables like parables, we might begin to look at them differently. And, when we look at things differently we may not always be safe.
         Suppose we focus on what a very odd thing a mustard seed really is. Some varieties of mustard seeds are used as spices, some are used as medicine, and some are used as food. But in general, in a field or garden, in Jesus’ time, they were considered weeds, and noxious weeds at that. Dangerous weeds, uncontrollable weeds that can choke out other plants and take over an entire area. In Jesus’ time, mustard would not be purposely grown in someone’s garden. Instead, it would grow unchecked in a fallow field, or an open uncultivated area.
         If you’re a lawn guy or gal, or a gardener or a farmer, select your least favorite weed. (Pause) Do you know that in some places there are laws that say certain weeds must be controlled? Do you know there is such a thing as the Ohio Noxious Weed List? Which, by the way, if you’re interested, you can hop on the conveniently named and easy to remember website: invasive.org and search for Ohio.
A few of the noxious weeds listed in Ohio are Johnson grass, musk thistle, Canada thistle, giant hogweed, and of course there’s the appropriately named mile-a-minute weed. And yes, wild mustard is on the list. If you’re more familiar with garden-variety weeds, there’s the mowers’ favorite: dandelions, and of course there are a host of other weeds that seem to grow stronger every time you mow them down. Most of those weeds aren’t considered noxious but sometimes when you have the mower out you think they ought to be.
         I find all this interesting, because it seems to me that’s what Jesus is doing here. He’s talking about the growth of the kingdom of God as a noxious weed that is difficult and impossible to control.
Now do you think that’s a comforting image? But maybe that’s a part of what Jesus is doing with that obnoxious and noxious mustard seed. Maybe that’s part of what Jesus is saying about the mustard that won’t go away and keeps on growing unchecked. Maybe part of what Jesus is asking us to hear is that the growth of the kingdom of God can be annoying and invasive and may involve people who can’t be controlled easily. People who may not want to do things the way we’ve always done them here.
         When the kingdom of God grows unchecked and really takes root, undesirable things we’ve never thought of begin to happen. Perhaps even undesirable people show up. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we find unchecked growth uncomfortable or even threatening. We can’t control it or shape it to our image of what “nice” church should look like, or sound like, or be like. It isn’t safe anymore.
Maybe what Jesus has in mind this morning is something other than a nice little parable fit for public consumption. Maybe instead Jesus is offering us a subversive, dangerous and risky plot to transform us and change the church and the world. Are we up for that? AMEN.


The Rev. Nicolette Papanek
 ©2018

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