No Boundaries
Mark 4:21-34
I remember my 16th birthday like it was yesterday. Actually, it was a few days before my 16th birthday. My grandma and grandpa Goodwin had stopped by our house one evening “just to say hello, because they were in the area.” Which was a little unusual because they lived in a small village about 20 minutes from the town where we lived, and they did most of their shopping and banking and whatever else they needed to do there. And all of their friends lived there.
They came in that evening and sat down in the living room and we all chatted about insignificant things for a few minutes, and then they told us why they’d really stopped by: they wanted to give me my birthday present early that year. And they handed me a small, carefully wrapped box. I carefully unwrapped the box and opened it, and then just stared, not knowing what to think. Because inside the box was a set of keys. Back then cars had two keys … one for the ignition and one for the doors and trunk. That little box contained a huge gift! I couldn’t believe it. They were giving me a car. THEIR car. I didn’t know what to say. Mom and dad, of course, knew what was happening ahead of time. They had just bought a new car, and were giving me their old one … a silver 1984 Chrysler LeBaron 2 door sedan in excellent condition. They had started driving like old people before they got old.
It wasn’t powerful. It wasn’t a Mustang or a Camaro. Just a Chrysler with a small four-cylinder engine – a four banger, a we called them back then. But the paint job was still pristine, no rust. The interior looked like it had just been driven off the show room floor. And it was mine. Those same grandparents bought the first car for all six of their grandkids – my brother, my sister, and my three cousins too. They didn’t get a small box with nothing but a key inside. They got an envelope with a check in it. And they knew what was coming. I didn’t. I was the oldest grandchild. And I’m the one who opened the tiny little nondescript box with nothing but a set of keys inside.
From what Jesus says, I think that God likes small. Small and hidden, actually. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. It’s like yeast. It’s like a perfect pearl. It’s like finding just one lost sheep. Or just one lost coin. It belongs to little children and others who were “small” in our eyes.
God likes small beginnings. He likes to work in hidden ways that are easily overlooked. He loves any lost individual, even when he has 99 percent of the others safely under his care. He passionately cares for the socially unimportant – the people others trample as they rush toward prominence and prestige and power.
Small doesn’t mean “insignificant” or “of no consequence.” The Good News of Jesus is the most consequential news bulletin in the history of the world. And the individuals for whom he died are, as the old Sunday school song says, his “precious jewels.”
In Jesus, God offers us something that could have been small, obscure, and forgettable. He didn’t offer us some grand universal principle. His gift was the life and death (and resurrection!) of just one person in a small country repeatedly crushed and occupied by foreign powers. He does not give us love or peace or brotherhood. He gives us Jesus, who died like a common criminal.
But when we pay attention to the small thing God gives us, it changes our entire approach to life. We see the world differently. What had seemed insignificant now demands our full attention. What had seemed ordinary now seems interesting. What had seemed a dead end now promises great potential – the redemption of the whole world. Turn with me to Mark 4:21-34 as we jump back into our series from Mark’s Gospel called JESUS – His Life, His Mission.
As we dig into what Jesus is saying here, it’s important to remember what’s been happening in Mark’s Gospel. Back in June, before we took a break from our Mark series to focus – as we often do – on the Psalms over the summer, we looked together at Mark 4:1-20 – Jesus telling the story of the sower. Not a sewer, as in someone sewing fabric, but a sower – a farmer sowing seeds. In that parable, some of the seed falls on fertile soil and produces a crop, but much of it falls on bad soil – the compacted soil of the path, or thorny or stony soil found in various places around the field. Only the seeds that fall on fertile soil produce a crop.
Now, I know there aren’t as many farmers as there used to be, but most of us, even people who live in big cities, understand at least something of how plants grow. We have gardens and flower beds and house plants and things like that. We may not all be farmers any more, but we still understand something about growing plants. So even today, we look at that parable and we say, “Well duh.” But Jesus isn’t giving a biology lesson or an agricultural lesson. He’s teaching us a core principle about the kingdom of God – that the condition of the heart in which the seed of the Word of God is planted matters. He’s explaining why some people who hear his teaching respond and why many others who hear the same teaching don’t, and even oppose him and what he is saying. And he invites us to ask a question of ourselves – are we receptive, fertile soil in which the Word of God is planted?
So remembering that, we can turn to the parables Jesus tells that Mark places next in his Gospel. Look at Vv. 21-25. Mark is putting all of these parables together for a reason. Having just reminded us that we need to pay attention to the condition of our hearts, that we need to work on being receptive to what God is saying and doing in our lives, Mark moves next to Jesus telling us how absurd it is to think that light is meant to be hidden.
Have you ever been discouraged, maybe watching or reading the news, feeling like the powers in this world that are opposed to the Kingdom of God, opposed to Jesus, are winning all the battles? Every week I read articles about what is now being called “The Great Dechurching” in America, as more and more people, even those who were once faithful worshippers, choose to do something else with their time on Sunday mornings. Churches across the board are shrinking and struggling. High profile moral and leadership failures have led to a disenchantment with the church, the likes of which I don’t think we’ve seen since the Protestant Reformation.
Covid kind of exacerbated that. It changed our culture and the way we do things day to day, from the way we shop to the way we get entertainment to the way we go about school to the way we engage with our faith. The thing we have to understand is that cultures are always changing, and the Kingdom of God is always exploring new ways to find and engage people with the good news of the forgiveness and transformation Jesus is offering. The church has always been called to be a transformed and transforming community, a visible and refreshing alternative to the way the rest of the world is doing things. Not FORCING people to do things our way, but inviting people to embrace the life we have found in Christ!
Mark put this particular parable here in the middle of a bunch of parables about soils and seeds and harvests for a reason. The people he was writing to were early Christians coming under increasing pressure to reject their faith and were being persecuted for following Jesus. To them, it felt like the world was winning and God wasn’t doing anything about it. They were harried and harassed and worried and discouraged. And Mark is writing to encourage them.
Matthew and Luke both include this story too, but with a significant difference. As they related the parable, the emphasize our willingness to let the light of Christ shine through us into the darkness of this world. Mark emphasizes something different. He emphasizes the light itself. Although Mark’s words are translated here as “Is a lamp BROUGHT IN to be put under a basket?,” his words literally read “Does a lamp COME in …?” Now, it’s likely that Jesus told the story both ways more than once. So what is Jesus saying here? Can a lamp come in by itself? Of course not! If my lamp gets up and walks across the room and hides in a corner, I’m leaving the house! He’s referring to HIMSELF as the light, and reminding us that he did not come into this world to be hidden, even if it seems that way sometimes.
Even if we get discouraged because it seems like the wrong side is winning all the time. Even if it seems like society is slipping farther and farther into darkness by the day. No, Jesus did not come to be hidden. He came to shine. That which seems hidden will one day come to light. He isn’t talking about hidden sin in this instance, although that principle is true too. He’s talking about his return, when all will know, and those who have followed him faithfully, when it would have been easier, more convenient, more popular, and sometimes much safer not to follow him – will be shown to have been in the right all along.
And then Jesus ties things right back into the parable of the soils and incredible harvest that comes from fertile soil. Look at Vv. 24-25. Fertile soil leads to a bountiful harvest. “Pay attention to what you hear.” Literally here he says “See what you hear.” Pay attention. Notice. Make sure your heart is fertile. Those who spend time seeking God, praying, reading and studying and meditating on God’s word – those who are actively paying attention and seeking truth – will see a bountiful harvest of love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and kindness, and gentleness, and the other fruits of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Where the light of Christ shines, a seed is planted.
And that seed WILL grow. Look at Vv. 26-29. Plants grow. That’s what they do. When they have the right balance of water and sun and nutrients in the soil, they grow. Now, even in the ancient world, the farmer wasn’t totally passive during the growing season, but then as now, there is less to do during that time. The farmer is patient, allowing the plants to grow. Yes, the farmer can do some weeding and fertilizing, but the farmer is most active when the seeds are planted, and then later during the harvest. The growing season is a time for patience. When the soil is fertile, the plant grows, until it is ripe and the grain is ready for harvest.
We live in a world that celebrates instant gratification. We want what we want, and we want it now. We want to order something online and have it delivered to our doorstep tomorrow. We sacrifice speed for health every time we pull into a fast food drive thru. It’s no different in our faith. We want patience, and we want it now. We don’t want God to put us in situations that cultivate patience, which is the way God does things. We want God to push a button, so to speak, and to reprogram us for patience. To zap us with it. But that isn’t how God works. God works in our lives the same way God works in the natural world, slowly and mysteriously and patiently, bringing about growth in his time, in his way. But he does bring it about, and it will be magnificent.
Look at Vv. 30-32. Today, we all know that the mustard seed isn’t the smallest of seeds. There are seeds that are too small to be seen without magnification. But in the ancient world, the mustard seed was one of the smallest seeds they knew about. And in ancient Judaism, it was often used as an example of the small start for the big things God was doing. It’s a small seed, that becomes a plant big enough for birds to perch in, sometimes even nest, find a home in.
But there’s something else happening here. Today we tend to view the mustard plant as an invasive weed. It kind of is. It’s hard to control, hard to manage. You know what? In the ancient world, they viewed it the same way. Pliny the Elder was a Roman author and naturalist and natural philosopher who was a contemporary of Jesus, and of Mark. Of the mustard plant Jesus is speaking of here he wrote that the plant “grows entirely wild, though it is improved by being transplanted; but on the other hand when it has once been sown it is scarcely possible to get a place free of it, as the seed when it falls germinates at once.” Invasive. Hard to contain. Takes over and is almost impossible to eliminate once it has been planted.
It’s no mistake that Jesus chose this plant to describe the way the Kingdom of God grows in our lives and therefore, in our culture. It is a force that cannot and will not be contained. Like the Autumn Olive we have today, that was introduced in the 70s and 80s as a good plant for farmers to plant as a windbreak, it now takes over open fields and is impossible to keep out. Jesus wants us to know that even though it sometimes seems like darkness is winning, his light cannot and will not remain hidden. It is even know growing in fertile soil, and it will one day be shown to have far surpassed every kingdom and power and authority on the earth. Just as Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, his kingdom is Kingdom of Kingdoms. It cannot and will not be contained. So take heart, and be patient. God accomplishes great things from small beginnings. And those who invest time and energy in understanding and responding to Jesus will receive a return on that investment in love and joy and peace that they cannot imagine.
Shark Bay, Australia, should probably have its name changed to Seagrass Bay, since the largest resident isn’t a great white shark, but a single seagrass meadow. After discovering that the whole bay’s worth of seagrass spread from one seed and was all part of the same plant, it instantly became the world’s largest plant – as large as 20,000 football fields. At 77 square miles, it’s three-times the size of Manhattan, and could be 4,500 years old to boot.
Jane Edgeloe and colleagues took samples from several stalks from across Shark Bay. They wanted to find out how many individual plants made up the rich meadow, which spreads 110 miles throughout the giant inlet. Edelgoe said, “The answer blew us away – there was just one! That’s it, just one plant has expanded over 112 miles in Shark Bay, making it the largest known plant on Earth.”
Another of the researchers said, “It appears to be really resilient, experiencing a wide range of temperatures and salinities plus extreme high light conditions, which together would typically be highly stressful for most plants.”[i]
One plant. A small beginning. But wow, what an end. That’s the way the Kingdom of God works. That’s the way God works in the world, and the way God works in our lives. The start may seems small. Almost insignificant. But in the end, the Kingdom of God surpasses all boundaries, all earthly kingdoms, and every effort to foil it’s growth. Let us pray.
[i] Andy Corbley, “This Plant From a Single Seed is Now 77 Sq-Miles Wide and World’s Largest,” Good News Network (6-6-22)
