Pentecost 3

Pentecost 3 (Mark 4:26-34) “The Kingdom of Heaven is like….”

One of the great misunderstandings human beings have about God is that we are all experts on the subject of God.

 Each person on this planet reserves the right to define God however we choose. We all tend to define God within the categories of our own personal experience. Some of us develop rationalizations to support our conclusions. A few of us over the centuries have developed systems of beliefs to hold our experiences and transmit our conclusions to subsequent generations.

God is not a subject we can analyze and codify. God is person we can experience in an ongoing relationship.

Jesus also draws on his personal experience of God to express his teaching about God. What is unique about Jesus is that he has a direct experience of the infinite and eternal reality of God. No other human being has that experience.

We did once. God the Father created us to have a direct experience of the divine through the pre incarnate Son in the presence of the Holy Spirit. As a species we rejected the personal relationship with the divine. We made that choice in order to acquire the attributes and aspects of God apart from the personal presence of God.

Our experience of God and therefor our knowledge of God is now indirect, inferential and distorted. It is indirect because we think about God from the place of pride. Pride reserves the right to analyze, define and delineate.

This should be no surprise. Moses and the Prophets record how people stubbornly resist the reality of God in word or deed. Had people been willing to hear God’s word, believe God’s word and then act on God’s word we never would have needed prophets to call us to repentance. And, we never would have needed Jesus to die on the cross for the forgiveness of sin.

This should be no surprise to us here in the United States where people cannot agree on the basic facts of science. Indeed. There are large numbers of people who hold the belief: my mind is made up don’t confuse me with the facts.

Jesus understands this about our species in general and indeed about our particular pride filled culture. He does no issue decrees and commands as much as he offers us a way. It is a new way of life, a new way of being human. It is a way formed by metaphor and simile. It is a way informed by the forever friendship he offers us.

Jesus uses the language of nature. The language of nature is grounded in the patterns God the Father designed into the world. Those patterns derive from the Son, incarnate in Jesus Christ. In an ongoing personal relationship with the Son we can begin to discern those patterns, learn from those patterns and transform according to those patterns.

Jesus describes the Kingdom of God in terms of the inter relatedness of natural patterns. So, he speaks of the kingdom as seed. The pattern of the kingdom emerges in the pattern of the seed.

The first pattern is action and potential. The sower makes a choice to actively sow the seed. This is an image of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit works within the context of natural law to fulfill a supernatural purpose. The supernatural purpose is the  reunification of lost souls with Christ.

The seed contains the full potential for growth and development. As it sprouts it seems to do so of its own accord. Of course, we all know it is responding to the soil, the sunlight, the rain and the mix of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the air.  It is part of a web of natural relationships of earth, air, fire and water that enables the genetic potential to activate, grow and mature.

The pattern of the seed is that life starts small… imperceptivity small, almost inconsequentially small. The patter is that life emerges within the context of a set of conditions and relationships.

Notice the language Jesus chooses to use to describe the Kingdom of God. It is participatory. It invites us to observe the world around us. It encourages us to think and reflect. It is not an absolute rigid uncompromising ideological (or theological) demand Jesus places before us. It is a process that invites us into a  partnership with God in Christ. The partnership is our response to enter into the pattern and purpose of the Plan of Creation.

Jesus does not use the language of politics or power to describe the Kingdom of God. He uses the language of creation and he uses the language of personal relationships. That language is for us an invitation to participate in a divinely ordered set of personal relationships. Those relationships start small and develop slowly. But, as they derive from the divine pattern of the Word of God so they facilitate a never ending process of growth and development. That is the Plan of Salvation. That is the kingdom of God.

In this passage, Jesus invites us to ponder the wonder of creation and the pattern of salvation as he teaches: the kingdom of heaven is like seed scattered on the earth.