LET GO AND LET IT BE
I get into my car this morning and I hear a great song by the
Who—it’s called “The Seeker”, these are some of the lyrics---“I asked Bobby
Dylan, I asked the Beatles, I asked Timothy Leary, but he couldn’t help me
either, they call me the seeker”
Jesus’ parables and short sayings turn us into seekers…
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We
are invited to get to the bottom, to the heart of the matter. We don’t get it
if we just listen superficially like the crowd—we have to be disciples, we have
to go deeper…we have to really hear…as
verse 34 says, we have to have that private audience with the Christ
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The mustard seed parable is not
gardening advice and it almost certainly goes back to the historical Jesus, it
is found in the in all three synoptic gospels, that’s Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It
is also found in the gospel of Thomas and the lost gospel Q. The fact that it is found in the Q or source
gospel is significant, for the Q gospel is a document put together by the top
Jesus scholars in an attempt to reflect the words of the historical Jesus. So,
in other words, according to the top Jesus scholars—Jesus actually, probably,
told someone the parable of the mustard seed.
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In
verse 30 Jesus asks, “What is a good
image for God’s Kingdom?” here he is intentionally asking a question that raises
a particular image in the minds of the people. That image is a cedar of LEBANON. A big beautiful tree like the
redwoods of California. Tall—probably 2 or three hundred feet. This was the dominant image for the Kingdom
of God—a big, highly valued, very useful, gorgeous tree (Hear Then The
Parable—Brandon Scott)
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In
verse 31 Jesus says, “The Kingdom of God
is like a mustard seed”.
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Now,
in Jesus’ time, planting mustard was illegal—it was strictly forbidden to
cultivate mustard in your field—because mustard was basically thought of as a
weed—it grew aggressively, spontaneously—it would spread like wildfire through
a cultivated crop and overtake it (Brandon Scott). In fact, our neighbors to
the north are the world’s largest exporter of mustard and on a Canadian
government website there is a warning that mustard can cause problems with
other crops if it is allowed to get into your fields.
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So Jesus just likened the kingdom of
God to an illegal weed that people desperately try to keep out of their fields. This is Jesus at his subversive best…he is
undermining and challenging the dominant image for the kingdom—why would he use
such a strange, provocative image for the kingdom?
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For
one, this image ridicules and subverts the conditioned response of the people—it shocks them and gets their attention—it
creates a space for the seed he is planting. Jesus is saying the kingdom is not what you have been taught about it.
The kingdom is not like a cedar of
Lebanon—it’s like a weedy mustard plant
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This image of the mustard seed also
challenges and subverts the culture of success and grandiosity. The kingdom is not like a big
beautiful tree. It’s actually like this
tiny seed that grows into a shrub that you’re afraid of. Jesus seems to be saying you’re like the
kingdom when you’re like this dangerous weed—to the dominant culture of his day
Jesus himself was a dangerous weed. Jesus grew out of native Palestinian soil
and was spreading a message many people did not like. Jesus is also saying
you’re like the kingdom when you’re not very awe inspiring—no you’re like the
kingdom when you’re ordinary and maybe even a little wild. Our culture
loves the big, the successful. We even speak of successful churches this way.
That church is doing well—look at it—it’s big—it’s rich--it looks like a successful church.
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But here is the truly interesting
point Jesus is making with this remarkable image…The
kingdom is something you actually try to control, the kingdom is something you
actually try to keep out of your fields. Jesus’ first audience
must have responded much the same way most of us do to this—wait a second, we
like being good to people, we like trying to build the kingdom, what do you
mean we try to keep the kingdom out of our fields? I’m a good person, I invite
the kingdom into my field.
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But, no matter how you slice it Jesus
is suggesting otherwise here. If Jesus is telling the truth, the kingdom of
heaven is like a mustard seed, then we try to keep it out of our fields and we
don’t like it very much. We’re afraid it will corrupt and overrun our
nice-neat, cultivated crops.
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I can imagine someone saying to
Jesus, hey ya crazy nut, I like my field. I’m very careful about what goes in
there, I carefully plant and then water, and then I worry about how it’s doing.
I want a nice, pretty, controlled, successful field!
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And to this Jesus says, yes, and what
you’re keeping out is the Kingdom. The experience of
the Kingdom is outside that nice controlled, cultivated field.
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So, how do we plant kingdom
seeds—how do we grow the kingdom? By letting go, by letting God. For by
letting go we let it be. And that takes real faith. We stop acting like
farmers trying to keep mustard out of their fields. We stop trying to control,
we stop trying to cultivate our ideas of what the kingdom should be because
ultimately that brings conflict. Christians have their idea, Jews have their
idea, Muslims have their idea, this group has their idea, that group disagrees.
You have yours and I have mine. The kingdom will grow on its own—if we let it.
It will grow like wildfire, like the mustard plant. It might look a little
ugly—it might not be a big beautiful tree—it might just be a plain old weed—and
like plain old weeds it will be everywhere—if we let it be. And, paradoxically,
this small, ordinary, forbidden plant that grows from the smallest of seeds
will somehow provide shelter for everyone. It will get into the nice, neat, controlled
fields we work so hard for, it will break into the crops we cultivate and then we will say the kingdom has come.
Amen.
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