How do things grow? Scientifically, of course the growth process of plants and animals and all life can be scientifically explained, but to the everyday eye, life and growth maintains a mystery.  One day a seed is planted in the ground, and then several days later (or longer), something breaks through the earth and begins reaching toward the sun and out across the ground.  We cannot see the hidden life of the seed under the soil, but realize (sometimes) that this new growth bursting from the ground is the ongoing transformation of life that began as a seed and then through nourishment has now become a seedling – new life growing up and outwards.

The gospel (mk 4:26-34) reminds us today of how mysterious and wondrous this process of planting and growing truly is.  One action of planting, perhaps even by a single person, contributes to a process of growth and transformation that perhaps for quite some time can go unnoticed.  Even to the extent that when something does “come of” this seed, we don’t readily make the connection that what has grown is the result of that planted seed.  This is the mystery that Jesus is calling the “kingdom of God”:

“… it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear”.

Maybe we rely too heavily on things for which we can explain. There has to be a reason, we tell ourselves.  And the reason is tied to an explanation that involves facts.  We tend to feel a comfortable certitude when everything can be accounted for and explained.  Once this happens, there appears to be a platform from which we can make evaluations and judgements about things that either agree or disagree with this explanation.  This is a necessary faculty that we must employ to live in this world, but I wonder if we rely too heavily upon it.  Perhaps more specifically, we apply this way of ‘reasoning’ inappropriately to life itself.  Can everything in life simply be ascribed to evidence, facts, explanations, etc.?  Even if it can, do we miss something very important about other aspects of life that carry different and perhaps even more value that the establishment of certainty and clear judgments based upon fact?

Jesus seems to be saying nothing about the kingdom of God granting us certainty or even fact-based knowledge. Jesus wants to stress the process of life and indeed the hiddenness of that process, which ultimately yields something much more than what we thought we started with and what we think we have ended up with:

“To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God…
It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground,
is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth.
But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants
and puts forth large branches,
so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”

Jesus’ choice to speak in parables was not simply an exercise in cleverness to befuddle his audience. But the mystery that defies a clear cut definition of things such as ‘kingdom of heaven’ can become a way of halting our ordinary manner of taking in information and applying a judgment.

Who knows what seeds we all carry, those we allow to drop mindlessly or even intentionally plant? Sometimes what we think we have planted does not grow into our expectations. Sometimes we mistake an intermediate stage of something that is constantly growing as the final end ‘product.’  Jesus though seems to be focusing on mystery, process, and ultimately abundance!

Note that in the case of the small mustard seed, it grows into one of the largest plants. That in itself may seems odd, but even more importantly is the next part of the scripture “…and puts forth large branches so that birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.”   It is almost as if this ‘kingdom of heaven’ is not just the seed, nor the one who plants the seed.  It is not even the plant itself, or its size that is the most important aspect.  It is not even our estimation of the ‘final outcome’ of what has been growing that is important.  The most important aspect is the presence of abundance in all of this.

It seems that it could be the very mysterious nature of the way God works through our interactions – here ‘planting’ – and participation in the world that allows us to connect with something and someone other than our self, i.e., our individual self, which is the overriding element of value. In other words, it’s everything, the entire process, and our openness along the way to perceive and to participate in the transformative abundance that extends up and outward in the process of growth.

Somehow along the way, we can be transformed, and in doing so others simultaneously are transformed. We are all planters, gardeners, and reapers of the magnificent orchard of God’s ongoing creation.  Our attitudes and actions are not stand-alone events that have no bearing on everyone and everything else.   Everything we do, how we see other things and people, extends out as branches where there is the hope that “the birds of the sky can dwell.”

So, if this ‘kingdom of God’ is this mysterious process of cooperating through transformative seeing of how we are all connected, the question is how much ‘shade’ do we provide for each other.   I am not talking about a kind of ‘shade’ that we hear in colloquialism that refers to sarcasm and tearing down each other.  This ‘kingdom of God’ shade is one where everyone can dwell in the abundant connection of diversity that at the same time unifies all.

This is God’s ‘shade’ that is something that is given to us, but something that we are ultimately responsible for ‘growing.’ This is the process of God’s love that relates us all to God and to each other and commands us to work as conscientious gardeners welcoming the wonderful unexpected fruit that may grow.

Peace,

Thomas