What Size Matters?

Mark 4:26-34; Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17

Everything was going so well at first! It started with the dramatic baptism in the Jordan river; then there was the showdown with Satan in the desert, and of course the many healings and exorcisms that drew a large following. And yet, just four chapters into Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ ministry seems to be falling apart. After the stunt he pulls in the synagogue—healing a man’s withered hand—the authorities are so outraged they’ve started to plot his downfall. Jesus’ own family has decided that he’s out of his mind, and tried to stage an intervention. It’s gotten so bad that Jesus and his closest friends decide they need to run away to safety.  

So at this moment, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, the Jesus movement looks like it might be over before it really began; just another revolution nipped in the bud by the powers that be; too small to move the needle against an Empire that’s too big to fail. It would have been a great time for Jesus to perform another show-stopping miracle, or at least give a passionate, Winston Churchill, “never surrender” type of speech—anything to inspire his followers and keep things going.

But that’s not what happens at all. At this decisive moment, Jesus chooses instead to preach a long, complicated sermon, full of parables, on the subject of farming. It’s easy to imagine the newly-appointed apostles looking around nervously at each other, their faces turning red, wondering where in the world Jesus was going with this, what all this talk about sowing and seeds and harvests could possibly have to do with building the Kingdom of God.

What I think Jesus’ disciples assumed—and what we also tend to assume—is that size matters, and that bigger is better. To be small and humble in this world is to live without much hope for glory or success. People who are born with lots of wealth and privilege are usually able to grow it, and stay on top, while those born with less have to work much, much harder to get ahead, and, despite all our talk about the “American Dream,” many never do. That was who most of Jesus’ followers were—the working poor. What little money they made was heavily taxed by both the Roman Empire and the Jerusalem Temple. Just think how small they must have felt, compared to those two huge things—the Empire and the Temple. 

Can you see now why Jesus chose this topic for his sermon? In an agricultural society, he’s using an image everyone would have been familiar with—planting seeds in the earth—in order to plant another kind of seed—a seed of hope—in the hearts of his disciples. Nothing is smaller than a mustard seed, Jesus says. But when it’s planted on good soil it blossoms into the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. What seems small and hopeless doesn’t have to stay that way. Things that might seem lifeless and insignificant are in fact destined to be glorious and full of life. 

OK but how, how does this miracle happen? How does something small become something great? And what role do we play in all of it? If we look a little closer at the parable, I think we find an answer. We’re told that after the seeds are sown, the sower simply goes on living his life; the seed sprouts and grows but he does not know how. The earth produces of itself. In other words, the sower's job is just to sow; what makes the little seed sprout and grow into something great is not the sower but some other, powerful force. And that power, of course, is God.

Jesus was hoping that the parable of the mustard seed would convince his followers of this fact by reminding them of a few verses from the prophet Ezekiel; verses we just heard.

I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of a cedar…I will break off a tender one from the topmost of its young twigs…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…I bring low the high tree, I make high the low tree; I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.

God takes a tiny twig and transforms it into a beautiful tree whose branches overflow with fruit and birds of every kind. God also takes the tree that uses more than its share of soil, and blocks out the sun, and cuts it down to size. Because in God’s kingdom every tree has enough room to thrive. Each is given life, and freedom, and a sense of belonging to one community, one family bound together by God’s love. You know this story, Jesus is saying, because this is our story. We’re the tender twig that God grows into a noble cedar.

And this is also an important word for the Church to hear today. Congregational growth doesn’t happen because of programs or gimmicks or magic bullets, but through planting seeds. Every time we speak God’s name to a friend or a neighbor, every time we do an act of selfless service in the name of Christ, we are planting the seeds of God’s kingdom. Seeds that God will grow, not us. We don’t have to coerce people with arguments, we don’t have to rebrand the Church to make it “relevant.” We just have to have faith and trust that, in the Gospel, we already have everything we could possibly need.

I know this because this story is also my own story. I was baptized as an infant, but brought up in a family that didn’t go to church all that much. Eventually I moved away from faith entirely, and lived a life that, frankly, seems selfish and small to me now. But my baptism was like a seed planted in me, one I didn’t realize that God was cultivating all along. And when I finally stumbled back into church, it was the Eucharist that kept me coming back. God’s gifts of bread and wine—the body and blood of Christ—were the nourishment I needed to begin growing into the person God created me to be. The new creation that Paul talks about. 

The Kingdom of God is not like the Empires of this world. Its size doesn’t matter one bit, because it doesn’t spread by domination and conquest. It spreads by tiny seeds planted, one by one, in human hearts. Seeds of faith, and hope, and love. Seeds that God grows through the Holy Spirit that’s at work in all of our lives, whether we’re aware of it or not. God takes what is small and insignificant—a Hebrew slave, an exiled nation, a nobody from Nazareth—and turns them into noble things. God takes the seed of a fallen creation, and makes it new. God takes this fragile human body, and gives it divine, eternal life.

The Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Chappaqua, NY
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 16th, 2024