Ezekiel 17:22-24
Thus says the Lord God: I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar; I will set it out. I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs; I myself will plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it, in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar. Under it every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind. All the trees of the field shall know that I am the Lord. I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish. I the Lord have spoken; I will accomplish it.
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17
So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said, “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. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” He also said, “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.” With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; 34he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples.
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Jesus did not speak to the crowds except in parables.
This detail in today’s gospel makes me giggle. It’s like Jesus is actually your Uncle Stan who comes to Thanksgiving and never engages in conversation, but instead has a crazy story for everything. You know the type: he overhears someone compliment the cranberry sauce and then launches into a story about the time that he lost his wallet in a cranberry bog? Do you have an Uncle Stan in your family? Are you the Uncle Stan in your family?
Jesus did not speak to the crowds except in parables, Mark tells us, and I hope that this is an exaggeration, because otherwise, man, Jesus would be so annoying to hang out with.
The reason that Jesus kept telling stories, of course, is that he was trying to help people understand this mysterious kingdom of God that he has brought to birth. The reign of God is so wholly other than the powers of this world, that the only way Jesus can talk about it is by coming at it sideways. Through stories. Stories that invite wonder. Stories that disrupt. Stories that provoke.
Today, we hear Jesus compare the reign of God a mustard plant. Right off the bat, Jesus provokes his listeners by talking about sowing a mustard seed, because wild mustard is an infuriating weed, something that you break your back to dig out, not something you plant intentionally. And when this mustard seed grows into a plant, Jesus lauds it as the greatest of all....shrubs? I mean, who wants to be the greatest of all shrubs? And besides, a mustard plant is hardly all that great of a shrub anyway. It has thin, spindly branches that grow up tall and twist over each other as they try to reach the sun. It will bloom some nice yellow flowers, but don’t let the beauty fool you. This mustard plant will also spawn friends and neighbors, and before you know it, it will take over your field. A mustard plant is not the greatest of all shrubs. It might not be the greatest of anything, really. And it’s hardly a refined, glorious image of the reign of God.
I mean, if Jesus is going to talk about the kingdom of God, why can’t he be more like the prophet Ezekiel? Ezekiel compared the reign of God to a noble cedar tree. A cedar is tall. It is honorable It has a strong, straight trunk. It is solitary and stately and beautiful. Its branches have a wide reach. It is predictable and it protects and it gives shade. It is everything, metaphorically, that you want and expect a king and a kingdom of God to be.
But no. In today’s parable, Jesus says, “yeah....the kingdom of God is not like that.”
The kingdom of God will eventually do all the things that a noble cedar will do: it will grow and it will provide shade and it will have a wide reach and will be a place of protection, but it will do it in a very different way, in the manner of a mustard weed. This kingdom is going to sprawl and twist and it won’t grow straight up and it definitely won’t stay contained.
Forgiveness and humility and love and healing and justice will blossom and spread across the whole wide world, but these flowers of the kingdom will not grow in nice, neat rows. And sometimes these blooms will be met with all the disdain that you would show a common and pesky weed invading your garden.
God’s hopes and dreams will grow up around you and within you, and it’s gonna’ be unruly and messy and beautiful and totally twisted up. You’re going to trip over the roots. You’re going to snag your clothes. You might get lost in it. You’ll need help from other people who are also tripping and getting snagged and getting lost.
Yup, this is what the kingdom of God is like as grows. Tangled. And holy.
For everyone out there who has ever been told, especially by the church, that God only loves you if you are untangled, if your head and heart and body are properly sorted out; if you think that God can only work through you once you rid yourself of your doubts or your missteps or your fears; if you’ve ever thought that God needs you to be noble or strong or honorable if you are going to be a sign of hope in the world - hear this good news.
The kingdom of God is tangled. And holy.
The kingdom of God takes root in you. You, who are tangled. You, who are holy.
Ignore what Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians today, this stuff about how when we are at home in our bodies and in the stuff of this world, we are somehow away from the Lord. Ignore his call to divide up the tangles of your past and your future, your body and your spirit. When you’re writing to a group of people who honestly believe that Jesus is returning next week, maybe this is good advice.
But for us, this is the sort of talk that brings total shame and despair to any of us suffering depression or anxiety, any of us struggling with addiction, any of us who have ever questioned the reason for our existence, any of us who have ever thought that this world might be better without us.
Paul talks about God making of us new creations, and I won’t argue with him about that. But let’s be clear: new creation is always tangled up with the old. When God brings us renewed life, it is not at the annihilation of everything that came before. I mean, even the resurrected Jesus still bore the scars of his torture. Renewed life that inhabits and embodies the reign of God doesn’t happen by burning down the weeds.
Each of us is a tangled up weedy mess of mind and body and spirit. Each of us is a wild, beautiful, holy embodiment of God’s reign. The reign of God flourishes in hearts tangled up between wonder and deep despair. The reign of God flourishes even in bodies and spirits that seem at odds within themselves.
We are tangled and we are holy.
But it’s bigger than that.
We are also all tangled up together, with one another and with all creation. This, too, is what the kingdom of God is all about.
God has designed us to be connected and not pulled apart. Not one of us is a solitary cedar tree. The reign of God flourishes in communities of imperfect and inconsistent people. The reign of God flourishes in our common human needs and joys and fears. The reign of God flourishes in the things that bring us together and not the ways we divide ourselves from one another.
We have been created to depend on one another, to need one other, to recognize that our destinies are intertwined. When one suffers, we all suffer. That’s the way God’s reign is built. Which might be one of the most radical and challenging callings of our faith, to recognize that the barometer for our collective well-being is the health and well-being of the most vulnerable among us.
This Wednesday is World Refugee Day, which couldn’t come at a more apt or challenging time, while we as a nation struggle with the question of migrants and migrant families, and, to be honest, as we have struggled with this question for decades. I do not envy the work of policy makers, who have to negotiate questions of human rights, the economy, national security, and bureaucracy as they consider how best to welcome immigrants and refugees and asylum seekers into our midst.
What I do know is that my well-being is tied to the well-being of migrant families. That’s what the tangled reign of God is like.
Likewise, my well-being is tied to the well-being of single mothers working three jobs to feed their children. My well-being is tied to the farmer who isn’t sure how he is going to pay his taxes. My well-being is tied to grad students staring down a lifetime’s worth of student loan payments. My well-being is tied to the kids who grab free lunches at Kids Lunch Club so they don’t spend their afternoons hungry. My well-being is tied to children with dusty feet playing outside tents in a refugee camp. My well-being is tied to your well-being.
The kingdom of God is tangled. And it is holy. We are tangled together. And we are made holy.
As I was working on this sermon, I looked up pictures of mustard plants, to get a good feel for the image that Jesus uses in our gospel today, and all the pictures that I found were of wide, expansive fields of mustard, stretching as far as the eye could see. Fields full of yellow flowers against the blue sky. Pictures where there was nothing else to see but the beauty of this greatest of all shrubs.
And I understood. This is what the kingdom of God looks like.
The kingdom of God looks like a sea of yellow hope that obliterates anything else that would get in the way. The kingdom of God looks like an endless field of blooming promise and grace, reaching up to the sky. The kingdom of God looks like a twisted up orchard of unruly branches, all clamoring to reach the brightness of the day.
When we embrace the tangles in ourselves, and when we live truly believing that we are tangled up with one another as well, bound together by Christ who is our root, who is our vine, who is the one who makes us one, then we become a part of this landscape. And we get to envision a world where there is nothing left but yellow flowers and spindly branches and birds’ nests and blue sky and God, all in all.
Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard plant, the greatest of all shrubs, that grows tall and wide so that that birds can nest in its shade.”
Yes, the beautiful reign of God is like wild mustard, sprawling and blooming across the horizon. It is tangled. It is holy. And we are blessed to be a part of it.