Seeds: Proper 6,
Year B
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13; Ezekiel 17:22-24;
Psalm 20; Psalm 92:1-4, 12-15; 2 Corinthians 5:6-17; Mark 4:26-34
Unfortunately, Christian supercessionism continues apace for the
unwary, as we rejoin Mark on the road with Jesus. Following the
interpretation of the Parable of the Sower, Mark’s
Jesus tells two more parables dealing with the subject of seedtime and
harvest. The second is the beloved Parable of the
Mustardseed. This “biggest of all garden plants” is paired with
the two verses snipped out of the prophet Ezekiel, in which God plants
a great Cedar as a representation of the promised restoration of the
great King David’s royal line. Samuel reminds us that the
anointing of King David was the precursor to the anointing of Jesus as
the Christ, and the only words that make sense from poor cherry-picked
Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians are, “So if anyone is in
Christ, there is a new creation; everything old has passed away; see,
everything has become new!” Throw in a couple of jokes, and the
sermon is done by mid-week. The Worship Leader is free to attend
the Saturday night banquet at the district/ association/conference
annual meeting.
Paul’s second letter (or collection of letters) to the Corinthians is
the only authentic portion of Paul’s work to be considered in what
remains of Year B. The problem is that the Elves carefully select
portions from what may well be fragments of several different letters
from Paul to his problem children in 1st Century Corinth.
Associating these snippets of fragments with Mark’s Gospel, and somehow
making a retro-active connection to ancient Jewish scripture that
includes the Psalms, Wisdom literature, and the Prophets is
mind-boggling. It is also grossly unfair to Paul’s witness to the
nature of the Christ, and our continuing opportunity to choose to
participate in somehow bringing about God’s realm of distributive
justice-compassion.
Nevertheless, in the portion we are to consider, the bottom line is
that no one now is regarded from the usual point of view. All
those who sign onto the program are transformed beings, living in
the realm of God. Because, Paul says, here and everywhere else,
if the Christ is the risen, anointed one prophesied by the writer of
Daniel, then all the rest of those who participated in God’s
justice-compassion in the past and who continue to participate here and
now are also transformed, and the Kingdom of God is established.
No need to wait around for a second coming.
One of the major themes (if not the primary theme) in the Gospel of
Mark is secret or obscured knowledge, especially of the identity of
Jesus as the Son of Man (described in Daniel 7:13-14) sent to bring
about the non-violent establishment of the kingdom of God.
Because the Revised Common
Lectionary is not set up to consider the Gospels (or any
other part of the Bible) in their own contexts, much is missed.
For example, tucked into the series of parables Mark’s Jesus tells is
the aphorism: “Since when is the lamp brought in to be put under the
bushel basket or under the bed? It’s put on the lampstand, isn’t
it?” Mark then clarifies Jesus’s words by adding, “After all,
there is nothing hidden except to be brought to light, nor anything
secreted away that won’t be exposed.” Then Mark warns his
community that the same standard they apply to others will be the
standard applied to them. He follows that with a non-sequitur from Jesus that
perhaps provides a hint that what Jesus’s followers expected would
happen when the Kingdom of God is finally reinstated is not how things
will actually pan out: “In fact, to those who have, more will be
given, and from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be
taken away!” The Parables that surround or bracket these sayings
are about the nature of the kingdom of God.
The Elves have decided that Matthew’s setting of the Parable of the
Mustard Seed is definitive, so Mark’s placement of it is never included
in any part of the 3-year cycle of lectionary readings. In Mark’s
presentation, first, the kingdom of God is like the Sower who sows the
seed on all sorts of ground. Mark provides an explanation, then
inserts the aphorisms about how everything that is secret will come to
light, and how the measure you give will be the measure you get.
Next, the kingdom of God is like the sower who sows, and the seed
germinates and sprouts with no further assistance from the sower.
The sower isn’t needed again until it is time for the harvest.
Finally, Mark’s Jesus compares God’s Kingdom with the mustard
seed. It is the smallest of seeds, but when it is sown on the
ground it becomes the biggest weed in the garden, so big that the birds
make nests in it!
Traditionally, these metaphors have been interpreted to be about faith,
or belief, in the story that Jesus died to save people from personal
sin. Seed that is sown upon fertile ground, where people are
willing to believe the story, takes root and grows. Then the
harvest is taken in, and the saved go to heaven. All it takes is
faith that is as tiny as a mustard seed, and the sinner is saved from
hell for all eternity. But this interpretation – as always –
eliminates the power humanity has to transform the quality of life on
Planet Earth.
It is impossible to know what the original circumstances were when
Jesus first told the parables; it is highly unlikely he associated
those parables with his observations about the hidden lamp and to have
and have not. But taken in sequence, each of Mark’s parables
about the sowers and the seeds builds on the one before it. The
aphorisms in the midst of these parables serve as hints to their
meaning for Mark’s oppressed, exiled community. Mark seems to be
using them to explain that Jesus was the Son of Man, as prophesied in
Daniel, come to usher in the Kingdom of God, and usher out the Empire
of Rome. All will be made clear, Mark says, and nothing will look
like what we expect. It will be a non-violent shift in paradigm,
not a violent revolution. The Kingdom of God – or God’s Rule –
goes on all around us, whether we notice it or not, whether we
participate in it or not. But the consequences of not
participating are clear: “to those who have, more will be given, and
from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be taken
away.” If we follow the same unjust standards that the Empire
follows, the same will be done to us “and then some!”
The Jesus Seminar scholars
suggest that the Parable of the Mustard Seed may have been told by
Jesus as a parody of Ezekiel’s poem about the mighty cedar of
Lebanon. Ezekiel warned that the ancient king Zedekiah had
abandoned the Covenant with God, and would die in exile in Babylon. But
God promised to plant a great Cedar on the highest mountain as a sign
of God’s renewed Covenant and the coming restoration of the Davidic
house of Israel. If Jesus did tell the parable as a parody of the
well-known prophecy, his followers would have gotten the joke, and so
would Mark’s exiled community in Ephesus. It had nothing to do
with supplanting Judaism with Christianity, as tradition would have us
assume, and everything to do with the subversion of the Empire of Rome.
Here is the scene:
Jesus and some of his companions
are hiking over to Capernaum to visit Peter’s mother. Perhaps
they are lamenting the days when it was still possible to catch enough
fish from the Lake for your family’s needs, plus a bit more to sell in
the market. Now, with the new city of Tiberias and the
restrictions on access to the Lake, even the more well-off in the
village are beginning to feel the economic effects.
Jesus is sympathetic.
“But,” he says, “Remember old Zedekiah? Instead of keeping God’s
Covenant, when the king of Babylon came to Jerusalem, Zedekiah made a
deal. Then, instead of keeping the deal, Zedekiah called in
reinforcements from Egypt. God wasn’t about to allow any more of
this. In fact, Ezekiel tells us that God decreed that because
Zedekiah had broken covenant with both God and the Babylonians, he
would die in Babylon.”
“He got what he deserved,” says
Peter.
“It’s the same way now,” Jesus
continues. “Under God’s rule, to those who have more will be
given, and from those who don’t have even what they do have will be
taken away!”
This stops the group in its
tracks. “What?”
“That’s the way it works under Roman rule!”
“That’s the way it works when you
abandon God’s Covenant,” Jesus retorts. “If anyone here has two
good ears, use them!”
Jesus’s cousin Barabbas pokes
Judas in the ribs with his elbow. “Hey Jesus! Maybe it’s
time to take matters into your own hands. God’s supposed to bring
back King David. He promised. Ezekiel said as a sign of
that promise, God took a sprig from the top of a cedar and planted it
on the top of Mount Zion. So what about it? When do we
start the war?”
“That’s what Ezekiel said,” Jesus
responds. “But here’s what I say: Look at this barley
field. It’s practically overrun with mustard.”
“That steward needs to get the
workers out there at the New Moon. Pull that stuff up by the
roots,” Bartholomew says.
Jesus goes on: “God’s
Kingdom is like the mustard seed.”
Barrabas and Judas shrug at each
other. Here he goes again . . .
Jesus ignores them.
“Mustard is the most noxious weed imaginable, right? When it
grows up it takes over the entire field; it is nearly impossible to
eradicate, and the next thing you know it has grown so big that all the
birds of the sky can nest in its shade.”
Peter and Andrew start
laughing. Barabbas and Judas roll their eyes and drop back to
continue their own conversation.
The story is empowering, emboldening, uplifting, encouraging, hopeful,
subversive, and ultimately triumphant.
While the motives of the Elves may be suspicious, given the
traditional, doctrinal emphasis on sin, salvation from hell, and the
afterlife, including the story of Samuel’s anointing of David as the
King to replace the disastrous regime of Saul does fit in with the
interpretation these readings have received in this essay. For
the full argument, please read the commentary from the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A .
In Year A, the story is paired with John’s story of the healing of the
man born blind (John 9:1-41). Like Year B,
the Elves left out the context that led to the need for God to replace
King Saul. Basically, Saul had caused God himself to regret ever
having selected him to be king in the first place. Saul (like
Zedekiah in Year B’s pairing) had broken the Covenant with God in a way
that God could not overlook:
“Breaking Covenant with God
brings war, famine, disease, death, economic, political, personal
disaster. Instead of acting from radical abandonment of
self-interest (love), which brings the restoration of God’s rule, where
the lion and the lamb lie down in distributive, balanced, justice and
peace, civilizations are normally built through victory, whether
military, economic, political, or personal, and only after such victory
are justice and peace discussed. Justice in normal civilization
is retribution: an eye for an eye. In Samuel’s bloody, graphic
demonstration, Saul’s imperialism, which he chose for himself, is
ransomed life-for-life. God himself regrets ever choosing Saul as
the people’s king, and Samuel’s personal grief is profound. The
only recourse for God is to overturn convention and choose a lowly
shepherd, the youngest of eight sons – David is not even the magical
number seven.”
In both contexts, the Elves have illustrated that when God acts to
restore God’s justice, it is not through the normally expected
violence. The Jewish people may have longed for a Warrior-King,
who would bring retribution and the restoration of honor. What
they got was a shepherd. Instead of the great Cedar of Lebanon,
planted by God on the Mountain in anticipation of a Warrior Liberator,
Jesus says, the Kingdom of God proliferates among us like mustard weed
among the barley.
“The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in
Lebanon. . . . In old age they still produce fruit; they are always
green and full of sap . . .”
BLOG ARCHIVE