Sermon: Sowing, Losing, Waiting…
Mark 4:26-34
Ha Na Park, Immanuel United Church
This morning, I invite you to reflect with me on the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
First, Jesus tells a parable that has the following elements: a small mustard seed, branches, and birds taking shelter. Please note: except for the Gospel of John, all the gospels including the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, report this parable, in various ways — one time with a garden and another with a field; one time with the seed growing into a large vegetable and another with the seed growing into a giant tree. The Gospel of Mark (the version we read this morning) says that the smallest of all the seeds grows into the greatest of all shrubs.
However, Jesus’ original story is possibly much closer to the following image: a small mustard seed (just small, not the smallest of all the seeds) and the large branches of the grown mustard shrub (not a giant tree) beneath which the birds can find shade. Separating fact from artistic license, a mustard seed is not going to rival a mighty cedar of Lebanon.
The brassica nigra, or “black mustard” seed sprouts into a plant that can grow, given perfect agricultural conditions, eight to ten feet. We can safely assume that this is what Jesus is talking about.
Another fact that I love to mention: Mustard is a valued medicinal plant. Notice is taken of its sharp taste, its medicinal benefits, and its rapid growth, but not of the size of the seed.
Ok, so, we get it. In the Parable of the Mustard Seed, the juxtaposition to make a sharp contrast between the smallest/the greatest is not the point. So, what can we learn from this parable? What does Jesus still teach us?
The good news is that the wealth of wisdom in Jesus’ stories is like a deep well which is permanently provided with the cool and fresh water rising from the pure source.
I would like to share a few scholars’ thoughts on the meanings that can still speak to us, before I share mine.
Amy Jill-Levine notes that this parable is often paired with the Parable of the Seed that Grows Secretly. There’s this interesting theme of secrecy. The seed grows out of sight. Jill-Levine also compares the two parables of today with the parable of the yeast. The yeast is hidden, and the seed grows out of sight. The Mustard Seed and the Yeast are both stories about the necessities of life: bread and shelter. Another lesson we can get from these three stories is that each story illustrates how a single person’s actions can have an impact on life beyond the immediate circumstances. People will come to eat the enormous amount of bread the woman has produced, and birds will nest in the branches of the tree.
Perhaps the parables of the seed that grows in secret and the mustard seed invite us to learn from the ability of God’s creatures. Here, no allegories are intended; birds are birds. Plants are plants. These stories help us develop an understanding about God from seeing the ability of God’s creatures - feathered or flesh - to survive, to make do with whatever is available. Nature is a huge source of inspiration and learning: The ecological adaptation and survival is fierce, yet balanced. It’s a huge inspiration.
Jill-Levine continues, “What we see now is potential, but the potential needs to be actualized. The yeast has to be placed into the dough; the seed has to be planted.” And another lesson comes in here: “Some things need to be left alone. Keep fiddling with the dough and it will not rise; keep exposing the seed to air and it will not germinate.” Not everything, or even everyone, needs our constant attention, yet we still have this call to action.
Now, John Dominic Crossan throws a question — is this parable about growth or miracle?
By definition, calling something a miracle is the acknowledgement that there’s more than the surface of what we see and experience, something that bridges the gap between different things, or between different states.
In this parable, the two different states that seem far apart are the tiny mustard seed and the large shrub which it becomes in the end.
If we explain this growth as just an organic, biological development, the parable loses its tang. (Like hot dogs without mustard.) There’s no miracle (or mustard). Joking aside, if we see the growth of the mustard seed differently, as a gift of nature, rather than predictable, replicable, genetically programmed growth, we hear the good news! The graciousness and the surprise of the ordinary!
Now, I invite you to think about the actor who sows the seed, who sows the mustard seed. Somebody sows it. Somebody loses it. Please think along with me: think of sowing as losing. By sowing we lose the seeds. The losses of sowing. The losses in sowing. We hold seeds, in our hands, then we let go of them, because here’s the trust and assumption, which is the right assumption, that this losing is, also, sowing. At its core, sowing is the action of losing, and it is a gracious and generous action. When we look at this story in the light of loss, it lifts us up to the next level of understanding: a bountiful harvest despite the losses of sowing; the large shade despite the small seed.
Think about how often or how strongly the theme of the mustard seed emerges and continues to shape our own lives, in and through the ebb and flow of our lives: sowing the seed, sowing as losing, losing as sowing, then waiting… in the thin time between the two different states — losses and promises — which seem to be far apart, seemingly unlinked.
I imagine God as the “space of creativity”. Here’s a question: Does God do big jumps or small steps?
Imagine yourself in a place… For example, you are Ha Na, and you are in my office, and you want to go to the photocopier room to see if the bulletins are ready. Wherever you may be, you can only get from this place to that place, here to there, to the other side of the room, by passing through the space in between. You cannot teleport yourself to the other side. Everything and every matter under heaven has its season, its time, and it can only move forward by making small steps, all the time. For an outsider, a miracle may seem to be a superlative event. There seems to be no link between two different states far apart.
To the outsider, a miracle might look like just a big jump which only God can make with our involvement being insignificant or dispensable. However, for the insider, the way of God’s doing things is through making small steps — indeed, our small steps. With God, we make miracles only by passing through the space of creativity between two different places and states, and lifting them up to the next most likely possible state of hope. We can’t skip the hard job of passing through the space, or spiritual waiting through time.
As I conclude this message, I would like to remind you of one of the quotes frequently cited and loved by many of you.
Waiting is a hard job for most of us. You may have various of ways of understanding these words of Julian of Norwich, yet today, please take them in the light of waiting…
“At the same time, God showed me something small, about the size of a hazelnut, that seemed to lie in the palm of my hand, as rough as a tiny ball.
I tried to understand the sight of it, wondering what it could possibly mean. The answer came: ‘This is all that is made.’ I felt it so small that that it could easily fade to nothing; but again I was told, ‘This lasts and it will go on lasting forever because God loves it. And so it is with every being that God loves.’ I saw three properties about this tiny object. First, God had made it; second, God loves it; and third, God keeps it. And yet what this really means to me, that God is the Maker, the Keeper, the Lover, I cannot begin to tell.” (Revelation of Love)
I would personally add… that God is a keeper, yes, and also the sower who is willing to lose Her seed.
Julian of Norwich continues, “It was in this way that our Good Lord answered all questions and doubts I might make, comforting me greatly with these words: ‘I may make all things well; I can make all things well, and I will make all things well, and I shall make all things well; and you shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.”
This week, let us remember the wisdom of the mustard seed and the sower; sowing, losing and waiting…
Amy Jill-Levine's Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi, Chapter 5 The Mustard Seed
John Dominic Crossan's In Parables: The Challenge of the Historical Jesus, P. 50
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