Weeds & Grass Roots Movements

Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on Mark 4: 26 – 34.  Focus on why Jesus likens God’s kingdom to a weed.  And why weeds grow, spread and infiltrate everything and are impossible to destroy.

In a remarkable little book called How to Do Things with Words, philosopher J.L. Austin makes the claim that contrary to conventional wisdom, words don’t simply describe things, they actually make things happen. When two people say, “I do” in the context of a marriage ceremony; they are not merely describing the relationship they are entering into but actually creating it.

Or when someone says, “I love you” or “I hate you” we don’t only hear those words but actually feel the force they exert upon our bodies. Therefore we ultimately know what a words means not from what it says, but from what it does. For example: Is the sentence “close the door,” an invitation to greater privacy or an annoyed command to keep the hot air from seeping into an air conditioned hall? You don’t know until you feel the force of the words as they act upon you.

I find this description of words very helpful when it comes to understanding the impact of Jesus’ words on the people who heard them. Jesus’ parables remind us that the faith we claim and the kingdom we announce finally isn’t an intellectual idea but an experience, an experience of the creative and redemptive ways God continues to change lives to this day.

I have to admit that there is a tendency to read these parables of Jesus like mini proverbs: “big things sometimes have small beginnings, or don’t judge based on its size.” Makes sense at one level but then it also completely misses the mark of what Jesus was talking about when you realize that in Jesus’ world neither a mustard seed or yeast was viewed positively.

Mustard was a weed, dreaded by farmers the same way a gardener dreads crabgrass or bindweed. It starts out small but before long it takes over your whole field or yard. And the same with yeast, which was viewed as a contaminant in the Bible and was almost always used as an example of how sin works.

So why does Jesus compare the kingdom of God to a weed or to a contaminant? Because both the mustard seed and yeast have this way of spreading beyond anything you’d imagine, infiltrating any system and transforming it by its sheer presence.

What could be less significant than a bunch of slaves under the hand of mighty Pharoah? Or a little baby born in a barn in Bethlehem? What could be less promising than a cross or a small church in Hackensack? You’d expect to find the kingdom in cathedrals and mega-churches, but these parables suggest that the kingdom is to be found in the humblest places among the most unlikely of people. And over the past two thousands years we have seen the proof. Today the Roman Empire is studied as history and Jesus is followed as the living embodiment of God. A person who is followed, studied and worshipped all over the world.

And the parables that Jesus spoke about such as the mustard seed would have been familiar in their context, disturbing in their implications and challenging to anyone who liked things being the way they were. To the farmer the mustard seed is the equivalent of our crabgrass today.

The people who first heard Jesus’ parables didn’t hear them as homey or comforting proverbs, but as subversive statements, for Jesus speaks of a kingdom that is invasive, unstoppable, a nuisance, uncontrollable, a kingdom that is tough. It doesn’t require any care. It takes root quickly, grows quickly, doesn’t require much to thrive and spread. He likened his kingdom to a weed because weeds are hard to get rid of. God doesn’t want his church to go away.

So let’s hear these parables anew, after all, the gospel is Good News. So how might we write one for our time and place. Try it yourself. The kingdom of heaven is like a single grape with spot of mold on it in a bag filled with other grapes. But the next day when you open the bag you see the mold has spread to all the grapes. The kingdom of heaven is like a bee. It stings and can kill some people, but the land of milk and honey wouldn’t have existed without it.

What do you think? Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but it does do what Jesus does in these parables – takes common things and makes them signs of God’s kingdom. And if this is true then God’s kingdom is wild not tame. It starts out small, but spreads quickly. It comes from the bottom up not from the top down. Even in death it tumbles and spreads more mustard seeds wherever the wind blows it.

To quote the late great J.J. Cale – They call me the breeze cause I keep blowing down the road. They call me the breeze cause I carrying no load and no one’s carrying me. Like a tumbling weed we go tumbling through our towns, our homes, our work places and in all these ways we scatter tiny mustard seeds here and there.

That smile you just gave or that wave. The tone of your voice or the smile on your face all tiny seeds that can spread instantly and quickly.

I want the growth and healing of this community to be a prayerful priority for everyone here. I want us to ask of ourselves what kind of church we want to be? What kind of person do I want to become?

The key difference between God’s kingdom and earthly kingdoms is this: God builds God’s kingdom over time because God has all the time in the world. But the kingdoms of this earth know they have a limited time so they have and will always try and dominate people and nature through force of law or force of arms.

But that’s not how God’s church is supposed to work. We work by serving others, by speaking with others, by worship and studying with others, by visiting with others, by feeding others, by loving others. And it is this power. The power of love not the power of law that transforms everything and everyone. It’s called Agape – love for others. And we must practice it every day if we want to get good at it. Amen