Second sermon in the series Back to the Future preached at St Patrick’s Mt Lawley and St Luke’s Maylands 6th December 2020
Jesus was a master communicator. He could hold an audience in the open air for the best part of a day. Part of the explanation of this is that much of his teaching was in parables and pictures. If you ever had doubts about whether there really was such a person as the Gospels describe, you need only consider these parables. No one before or after Jesus has ever produced so many, of such quality, and all of them carrying the stamp of an original mind. If you had no other evidence you would know there was a genius back then, with a style of communication that has never been matched.
One of the distinctive characteristics of many of his parables is a bizarre detail: something which catches your attention—wakes you up if you were asleep. You may remember how Jesus likened himself to the cruel, incompetent ruler of Judaea and Samaria. No one else would have dared make such a comparison. His audience was shocked and they listened. The parable before us this morning also has a twist.
It is the second Sunday in Advent 2020. We are thinking about Jesus’s coming, and his coming again. What ties both these things together, and everything in the Bible is the kingdom of God. Last Sunday we saw how Jesus announced the arrival of the kingdom. The night before he died he spoke to his disciples about the kingdom; it was in his mind as he faced his death. When he met with them after his resurrection, he taught them for six weeks about the kingdom. At the end of the Book of Acts, Paul is in Rome—speaking about Jesus and the kingdom of God. Today’s reading teaches how the kingdom will come.
Mark 4:30-32Jesus said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
In none of his parables does Jesus aim to tell us what the kingdom of God is. There is nowhere where he sits down and says, “Let me explain to you what the kingdom of God is.” This is a problem for us today, but there is an easy explanation: he didn’t need to, because all his listeners knew what he meant. Every Jew who went to synagogue school and listened week by week to the Old Testament scriptures knew there would be a new world when God would send his Messiah-king. Israel would be liberated from foreign domination; evil would vanish from the world. Even death would be abolished. They knew this, and when Jesus announced that the kingdom of God was at hand—well, that is why they turned out in their tens of thousands to listen. They knew what the kingdom of God was; what they didn’t know was how it would come. Most thought it would happen through military conquest, but Jesus said different. But before we come to that, I want us to pay attention to a clue which makes it very clear what the kingdom of God is.
Mark 4:30-32And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
If you were a Jew in his audience the end bit would ring bells: “It makes great branches so that the birds of heaven can nest in its shade”. First there was Nebuchadnezzar’s dream which we read about in Daniel 4.10-12:
“I saw and behold a tree in the midst of the earth, and its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth. Its leaves were fair and its fruit abundant, and in it was food for all. The beasts of the field found shade under it, and the birds of the air dwelt in its branches and all flesh was fed from it.”
The dream was a picture of Nebuchadnezzar’s empire. There is a similar image in Ezekiel 17.23 where the future restored Israel is likened to a great tree that becomes home to all the world’s animals and birds. Jesus pictures the kingdom of God as a vast world empire surpassing even the great kingdom of Babylon. The kingdom of God is the world rescued, renewed and ruled by God through his chosen king, the son of David, the Messiah Jesus.
And this agrees with the whole Old Testament which promises that one day God will take away the evil and suffering of the world and solve its endless problems by bringing the whole world under the government of one God-chosen, God-loving, person-loving man, the King Messiah who will rule in an eternal kingdom over every nation tribe and language group forever.
And it agrees with what Jesus teaches everywhere else –
Matthew 25.31-34: When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations … Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world …
Now we know what the kingdom is, we must consider the question how it will come. And when you see what a huge thing it is that Jesus meant by it – not just a mental thing, or a religious thing, but God actually setting up the government of Jesus over the whole world – then it is no small question, how he is going to do it.
It is like a mustard seed which when it is sown on the earth is smaller than all the seeds sown on the earth, and when it is sown it comes up and becomes greater than all the plants in the garden and it makes great branches so that the birds of heaven can nest under its shade.
You can imagine the thoughts of a Galilean farmer in Jesus audience: “Eh, Jesus. You’ve got it wrong there. The mustard plants in my garden never get above shoulder-high. What are you talkin’ about great branches and eagles makin’ nests?”
There does appear to be some confusion here. The mustard plant is an annual, which normally grows to about four feet with a few thin stalks and a head of yellow flowers. When it is sown on the earth it is the smallest of all the seeds, Jesus says; the mustard seed was proverbial for the tiniest thing. But when it is sown it comes up and becomes bigger than all the lacanon (vegetables). The word means vegetables; Jesus has correctly classed the mustard plant!
But then, says Jesus, it becomes a tree. Literally, it puts out great branches so that the birds of heaven can nest in its shade. But it doesn’t. So, anyone listening to Jesus teaching by the lake would have been surprised at this point. It sounds like he has made a mistake.
Modern translators and commentators don’t like the idea that Jesus might have made a mistake, so they do their best to save his credibility here. They shrink the tree or stretch the mustard plant – like the commentator who says he has seen “goldfinches and linnets coming in flocks to perch in this tree-like herb and eat its seeds”: not quite what Jesus had in mind by the birds of heaven making their nests in its shade.
But Jesus wasn’t ignorant of the ways of plants. A seed that should have grown into a shrub, but, started making great branches, is the picture he wanted to paint. This is a Jack and the Beanstalk story.
Here a seed whose natural growth might be expected to produce something like a sunflower, is suddenly pushing out branches – and as we have seen already, this tree is a picture of the great empire of the future which will give protection and nurture and happiness to every human lucky enough to find a place in its shade. God’s kingdom starts with a tiny seed.
In the parable of the sower Jesus tells us the seed is the Word: a mere word, about the arrival of the kingdom of God, announced by a Galilean carpenter, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It was the fear of crucifixion that held the Roman Empire together. Crucifixion was the predictable end of anyone who had thoughts of starting their own kingdom.
The point for us is that one does not expect to see a kingdom grow from such a beginning. The word of a Galilean carpenter who died on a Roman gallows is a most unlikely beginning for the great empire of the future, which will draw all nations into its branches.
What would you expect a seed like that to grow into? A Bible Study Group, perhaps? But not a kingdom? Chairman Mao said, “Freedom comes from the barrel of a gun.” The Ayatollah Khomeini reckoned Jesus’ one mistake was that he would not use the sword. You wouldn’t think that what is going on in your churches might lead to a kingdom.
What was the reality though? 120 disciples – then 6000 in Jerusalem – then Samaria, and the gospel spreads into Syria. Then it jumps to Cyprus, crosses the water and spreads though modern-day Turkey. Startling growth, we must admit, but in the world’s garden still no more than a modest bush, and hacked and chopped at from every direction, with not much prospect of becoming anything more than a stunted shrub. And the first Christians were not very interested in everyday politics!
But then it breaks out into the Empire: westwards into Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Crete, Italy, Spain. South into Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia and Sudan; eastwards into Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Persia, and India. All in the first century.
Then it expands northwards. There were difficulties penetrating far into Germany and Scandinavia. Those were places you didn’t go without a legion; there were too many forests with hairy men hiding behind trees. The spread of Christianity was more successful among the more civilized peoples of Armenia, Georgia and Russia. The tree certainly does appear to be putting out branches, though still a long way from what Jesus predicted.
But there is something else that is peculiar about the way this kingdom grows. Periodically it dies back. When it was carrying all before it in France, Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland, it was dying in the lands where it began. As it jumps to North America, it weakens in Europe. And then in the 19th century extraordinary growth takes place in Africa, and the South Pacific. In our own century there appears to be a dying in the lands from which the gospel came to us – France, Italy, Germany, England, while there is startling growth in Africa, South America, Korea, China, and South East Asia. There are more Christians in China today than Australia’s total population.
It raises a question: will the gospel ever grow to such an extent in one generation that it will resemble Jesus’ great tree? There is an understanding of Christianity that thinks it will: Christianity will become more and more victorious until the whole world embraces the gospel. In the 19th and early 20th centuries when the British Empire was expanding and saw itself as the bearer of Christian civilization, that might have looked possible, until Christian nations began turning their backs on Christ. Jesus said, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Clearly, he did not expect that his kingdom would be complete in one generation—only at his coming again, when he will raise the dead, separate the wicked from the righteous, and reveal what he has been building through the ages. Then will stand side by side generations of believers from first century Israel, Syria and Turkey, with Ethiopians and Nubians, France’s extinct Huguenots, and Christians from Africa and Australia. Only then will we see what Christ has been growing through the centuries and it will be a magnificent kingdom-like tree, a people who will inherit the earth.
The Parable of the Mustard Seed tells us about the incredible growth power of the Jesus’ message of the kingdom. So, when we see that two thousand years later it is happening just as Jesus said it would, you should be encouraged. Everyone in his time, including his disciples, thought that ignoring the political problem and getting on with preaching the gospel was suicide, a sure way to bring a promising movement to an end. People ever since have thought there are better ways to make the world good. But Jesus was right – not because he was clever, but because he knew the future. And he knew the future, not because he was wise, but because he controls it.
There is another lesson we can learn from the way Christ’s kingdom grows. Wherever you are, wherever the gospel is preached, it develops like a plant from a seed; or perhaps we should say, like a branch from a bud. Take a slip from the gospel tree, plant it anywhere, and it will grow.
I know no better illustration of this than Africa. Think what Christianity was in Africa when first Anglican missionaries came to West Africa, and when, a generation later, the first CMS couple came to East Africa, at the same time as David Livingstone set out on his epic journeys. You could number the Christians in Africa in the tens of thousands then. In 1900 the number was about a million. In the year 2000 it was climbing to 400 million. Today it is over 600 million. I will tell you one story; I wish I had time to tell you more.
My friend is from Mozambique. He studied for four years at George Whitefield College, then returned home wanting to teach in his church and deepen people’s understanding of God. His church didn’t trust him and told him to plant his own church. He didn’t see church-planting as his job, but was forced into it. He started preaching the gospel, and soon had a sizable congregation. Eight years after he had left college I heard he had eight congregations. I did not believe it and went to see for myself. There were seventeen, and he was working on an eighteenth in the capital. The last time I emailed him the number of churches had passed forty. This is not typical, but it illustrates the power of the gospel and how the kingdom grows from a tiny seed.
With us it is very different. If you are like me, you are easily discouraged by the apparent decline of Christianity in this country. But I don’t think it is actually declining. The media would have us believe so, but in all sorts of places, Perth included, I see growth: faith springing up from the preaching of the gospel. There are more people in training for mission and ministry in this country now than ever before in Australian history. But it is tough. We are living at a time of small beginnings.
We each need to think about our own church. Is it new and vital and growing, or is it dying of old age? The way forward in every case is the gospel. If we focus on the gospel and expect to see people coming to Christ—well, it might start small, but only God knows where it will end.