I didn’t post this earlier.

Proper 6B

June 16, 2024

I’m going to tell you a story. It may not be a parable but it may get at something central about parables. On Wednesday morning, as I was coming into the courtyard here at church, I encountered a woman who was walking around and enjoying its beauty. But it seemed like she was looking for something. So I asked her, “May I be of help?” 

She said that she was looking for the baby bunny she had seen the day before. She had a lanyard around her neck, so she was here for a conference and had seen the rabbits the day before while walking back to her hotel. She was disappointed that the baby bunnies were nowhere to be found, although there was an adult sitting in the grass a few feet from us as we chatted. 

Our conversation was ironic, though she didn’t know it. Just before I got on my bike to come to church, my wife had come in from the garden complaining. She had put out new plants the day before, and that morning found one of them had been eaten by the rabbits. I guess the coyote I had seen strolling through the yard a month or two ago hadn’t been back recently.

To the stranger passing by, the bunnies in our courtyard were cute, enjoyable to watch. To gardeners, they are pests. To my cats, who watch them from our screened-in porch, they’re potential playmates or prey, though they remain tantalizingly out of reach. 

What might bunnies have to do with the Reign of God? What do mustard seeds and rabbits have in common?

Jesus taught in parables. That is something on which the synoptic gospels agree (it’s less obvious in the Gospel of John where Jesus uses other methods of teaching). But just what a parable is might not be clear. They are stories, or observations, taken from daily life that Jesus uses to describe the Kingdom, or reign, of God. We have two examples in today’s gospel:

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. 

         The reign of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows up becomes the largest of the shrubs. That’s right, the reign of God is like a bush. Now, I’m sure if you’ve ever heard a sermon on this parable, you’ve heard some sort of comparison made between the mustard seed and faith; if you only have a little faith, it can grow and mature into something great.

But here Jesus does not compare mustard seed to faith. He compares mustard seed to the reign of God. Indeed, we need to keep one central thing in mind when we read the parables. They are intended to disorient us, to challenge our ordinary perception, to make us think and see the world in a new way. That’s often quite hard to do because of their familiarity. We’ve heard them so often we think we know what they mean, we think they can only mean one thing. And often, the gospels themselves insert an interpretation that forces a meaning upon us. 

Let’s listen to this parable again, in all of its brevity. The reign of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds. But when it grows up, it becomes the biggest of the shrubs, and puts forth large branches, and birds make their nests in its shade.

Now, just a couple of things before we go on. First, mustard. It’s not something that people would ordinarily have planted in the ancient world. Sure they used it as a spice and as a medicinal, but mustard was then, as it is now, something of a weed. It’s rarely planted because when it is, it can take over a garden or a field in a relatively short time. It’s what we would call an invasive species, and what gardener would plant it, knowing that in a few years she would be fighting it.

The second observation I have is that it doesn’t become a big tree. It grows into a shrub, really, literally, a large plant. So, it’s not giant by any means. It’s not stately or beautiful. It’s a shrub.

So I ask again, how is the reign of God like a mustard seed? To provide another perspective from which to interpret the parable, let’s think about what ancient people might have imagined the relationship between a seed and the plant that developed from it might be. Clearly they knew that seeds produced plants and trees. They require water, soil, and nutrients to thrive. But they didn’t understand or even know the science of botany. To give just one example of ancient reflection, many people imagined that somehow the seed contained within it somehow, the full-grown plant. We needn’t concern ourselves with the details, suffice it to say that for some ancients, looked at one way, the seed was the seed, another way, it was the full-grown plant.

So the reign of God is like this mustard seed. It’s really somewhat dangerous. Yes, it’s small and it grows into a bush and provides shelter to birds. But it might get out of control, take over a field or a garden and suddenly, whatever its beneficial properties, you’re fighting it.

This for us may be the crux of it. Jesus said many things about the reign of God, but above all, he taught in parables. The reign of God is like a mustard seed, or a widow who has lost a coin, or a man who discovered a treasure in a field. He also said things like, the reign of God is near, it is even within you. But most importantly, the reign of God is just a little bit dangerous. It comes to turn our world upside-down. It comes to upend and overturn our expectations and to challenge the kingdoms of this world.

Jesus came preaching the reign of God, not a place, a kingdom, or even something like heaven. The reign of God is a new reality perceived in the midst of the old. It is a new way of being, ushered in by Jesus’ proclamation, expressed in his actions. As he taught, he also healed the sick, restored sinners to God, and brought together groups who had been alienated from one another. He ate with tax collectors and sinners and in his table fellowship offered a vision of a new community in which all might come together.

None of that is particularly obvious. He might have been a miracle worker. Others might have seen him as a fraud. He might have been a rabble-rouser. You probably didn’t want to invite him to dinner; who knows what random guests he might have brought along. But each of those things, his actions as well as his words, pointed to the new reality of God’s reign.

We don’t need to look far to see the reality that we face as a world. I hardly need to recite the litany of troubles facing us locally and globally. Perhaps at the heart of it, however, is this. We know we are beset by many problems, economic, environmental, social. But it seems that as a culture we are unable to come together to address them. Our bitter divisions have only deepened over the last years, and the solutions that have been offered seem only to widen the gaps that exist in our society and world.

Into this world, Jesus comes preaching the good news of the reign of God. And what is the good news? Perhaps only this. To have hope that in spite of the reality we see, that in the midst of it God is working a new thing. The reality is obvious; we are bombarded with it daily. But at the same time, there are signs of God’s inbreaking into that reality, to make it new.

Our mission as the people of God, is not only to proclaim the good news, but to see the good news in the world around us. Where do we see signs of God’s inbreaking into this world? Where do we see signs of God’s reign? We might see it in the work of our food pantry; the guests who visit Off the Square Club or Julia Weaver’s Uptown Sanctuary. It might be something as overlooked as our courtyard garden, where a passerby can pause to enjoy the beauty and shade on a summer’s day, and enjoy the site of baby bunnies. All of this we might take for granted. We might see them as our duty, or as perfectly ordinary. But to those who experience them from the other side, they are rays of hope and joy.

The reign of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds that becomes a bush where the birds find homes. Where are the mustard seeds in our world, and in our daily lives, where God’s reign shows signs of breaking in?