June 17, 2018 – Mark 4:26-34
Mark 4:26-34
The Reign of God is like a . . . Dandelion?
Lectionary 11 – June 17, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
The reign of God is as if a small child stood in the middle of her yard and
blew dandelions seeds as hard as she could so that they got everywhere –
including her Dad’s garden.
That’s my parable. Inspired by Jesus’ parable.
I’m going to come back to it.
For now, let’s talk about Jesus’ parable.
First – let’s talk about the kingdom or – a better translation – the reign or rule of God.
Jesus means: when God is ruling, this is what it’s like.
Now: there are lots of other things that are reigning now, right?
Brokenness, hunger, violence, racism, injustice of various kinds.
But, Jesus says in his parables of the kingdom, I am bringing God’s rule of
justice and mercy and peace, I am bringing God’s reign of healing, now.
And you see him do this everywhere he goes – he embodies that rule of healing and he brings it.
This active rule of God in healing and feeding and healing and including is like a mustard seed,
Jesus says this morning.
Now that sounds kinda funny.
How is it like a mustard seed when God is ruling?
Well, you have to know a few things about the mustard plant back in Jesus’s day.
And the first and most important thing you need to know is this: it was considered a weed!
It got everywhere!
It would take over your garden if you weren’t careful!
And the joke Jesus is making is this: no one in their right minds would plant mustard seeds!
But – as we know from last week, Jesus is not in his right mind.
Mustard gets everywhere. It’s kind of wild.
There is no place it won’t grow.
This is what Jesus is trying to say – God wants to rule in love everywhere.
There is no part of this creation that God doesn’t love.
There is no part of you that God doesn’t love.
And there is no part of creation that God doesn’t want to make whole and bring healing to.
And there is no part of you that God doesn’t want to make whole and bring healing to.
And so, Jesus says, God’s kingdom is a lot like a mustard seed,
that will take root and grow just about anywhere.
And when it does, it will provide shelter for many.
So now we can get back to my parable about the reign of God:
The reign of God is as if a small child stood in the middle of her yard and
blew dandelion seeds as hard as she could so that they got everywhere –
including her Dad’s garden.
I love dandelions, and I love blowing dandelion seeds everywhere.
I’m not sure if they have dandelions in the middle east, but we sure have them here.
Maybe they are kind of the mustard seed of the west.
They get everywhere.
They are very difficult to eradicate.
And they seemingly will grow anywhere.
In their own way, they are beautiful – and in fact they are good for you, being full of vitamin C.
But what I really like about dandelions is that they are common, they are ordinary,
they are . . . available.
They are able to show up, take over inch by inch, and finally transform a whole landscape.
That is what the reign of God is like.
I got to thinking about all this and realized that it is true.
The reign of God is like that.
Last week you received a small precious gift blown into you by the wind of the spirit.
It was small – a little bread, and a little wine.
That bit of bread and wine carried with it healing and love and grace and forgiveness.
It carried with it hope and peace and caring.
And when you left this place, you took those things with you.
That small seed of grace grew and branched out as you carried it with you.
It branched out into countless nooks and crannies of this world.
See: the thing is:
what happens here on Sunday morning matters for the things you do the rest of the week.
And what you do the rest of the week really, really matters.
It makes a difference.
It extends the beautiful, life-giving reign of God announced by and embodied in Jesus.
You are the body of Christ, and where you go the reign of God comes near.
Where you go, you bear that loving, healing reign.
You might feel like your life is a higgledy-piggledy patchwork quilt sometimes with
no rhyme or reason.
But everything you do is tied together by the fact that everywhere you go you are
extending the reach of the love of the triune God.
And even better: you are not alone in doing this.
You are one branch in the mustard shrub that is First Lutheran Church.
God’s love reaches out through you into the world in your everyday lives.
Our nurses and physicians have been agents of healing this week.
Our business people have been providing countless services in an ethical way.
Our lawyers have been agents of legal justice.
Our teens have been agents of acceptance and lovingkindness in their schools.
Our parents have been bearers of care and vigilance and wisdom and oversight to so many of
our children.
Our school teachers have been nurturing and forming countless children,
loving them and teaching them about God’s world and
the respect and understanding each person deserves.
Our grandparents have cared for grandchildren and have helped keep families running smoothly.
Volunteers like coaches and Big Brothers and Sisters among us have strengthened
our neighbourhoods into being places where friendships and communities can flourish.
Bankers among us have assisted in securing people credit to finance homes and
safe places to live.
Friends among us have offered hospitality to neighbours in their homes this week.
Visitors of the sick among us have alleviated loneliness and extended God’s love and concern
and healing into hospitals and nursing homes.
What I think we need to lift up and celebrate right now is this:
God is working in your everyday life for the benefit of many, many people.
And that is just one week.
Like the mustard plant, and like the dandelion seeds: you get everywhere.
This morning, like a child in his father’s garden, Jesus picks up that dandelion stem in seed and
just blows it everywhere with the breath of his Spirit.
He blows that seed into you, and through you into the world: the seed of a wild kingdom!
It’s kind of a dangerous image, isn’t it?
Through you, out there, every day, God’s loving reign is infiltrating and
kind of taking over the garden of the world.
Like those beautiful dandelions, it gets everywhere: into yards, into parks,
on the verges of roadways and in the ditches beside the highway and in the alley where
some not so great things take place and in fact just about everywhere.
And that is because God’s love is needed everywhere.
It can’t be confined to the nice places, the cultivated places, the tony upscale places.
It needs to get into the cracks of the broken pavement of the inner city school.
It needs to infiltrate the exercise yard of the prison.
It needs to flourish along the daily paths of the homeless.
Like those damnable dandelions in your yard, it needs to take over even where it’s not wanted.
And maybe that’s the real point of Jesus’ parable.
Your kingdom come, Jesus taught us to pray.
And as Luther wrote long ago, we pray not only that it may come,
but that it may come through us.
So come to the table where this tiny seed may be planted again.
Come so that you may receive this gift and so that we might together be the
branches of this wild, nurturing, shading shrub that just gets everywhere.
And it gets everywhere because you get everywhere.
May God’s reign of love come – and may it come through us.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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