1. Grace, mercy, and peace from God our heavenly Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text today is the Gospel lesson from Mark 4:26-34, as we continue our sermon series on Parables for Pentecost, beginning with the last two verses: “And with many such parables [Jesus] spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately, to his own disciples he explained everything.” (Mark 4:33–34) The kingdom of God is a mystery. Jesus just got through saying (Mark 4:11), “To You Has Been Given the Secret [Mystery] of the Kingdom of God.” The message is entitled, “Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. God’s rule through Jesus Christ, hasn’t come in a way anyone expected. Did we expect the Creator finally to show us who he really is on a cross, of all places? None of us did, from the apostles down to those who won’t have crucifixes in their churches because they’re still in denial that God revealed his glory on the cross: love nailed up, arms wide open, all to let sinners in! He’s the One who reveals how his rule comes to human beings in this evil age. Today we learn two mysteries in two parables. The first parable teaches where the kingdom’s power is, and the second teaches what the kingdom’s form is.
3. We have questions about God’s power. God is supposed to be ruling this world. Is it up to me or up to him to make that happen? And if it is up to him, what then is my role? Jesus said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how’ ” (Mark 4:26–27). When Jesus tells a parable and says “the kingdom of God is as if,” he’s referring to the whole story. In other words, he’s saying, “Listen to the whole story, and this is the situation with the kingdom of God.”
4. This is the situation: The farmer does his job but still doesn’t have a clue how the seed becomes food! This is our Christian confession! Our role is to preach, love, tell our neighbor the Gospel, but we know that it’s up to Jesus to bring life! Think about the times when somebody whom we loved and told about Christ but were so worried about . . . is suddenly alive from the dead! We are surprised! How did this happen? You cast the seed of God’s Word and go to bed and get up, day and night, and the seed sprouts up and you know not how!
5. I know some people think they know how everything grows. “It’s not a human being in that womb; it’s a blastocyst.” Jesus lived in ancient times, and none of those Bible writers even knew what a blastocyst was, so how could any of them approve or disapprove of the procedure performed on one? Just because God lets us name things, we think we know things. But, their fancy word is right in the ancient Scriptures. In our English Bibles, Jesus said, “The seed sprouts,” but the actual word for “sprouts” was blasta (blasta, Mark 4:27)!
6. The problem with those who don’t trust Jesus is that they don’t view him as ancient enough. And the procedure he performs on that blasta-spore of wheat gives life. We know not how. And the procedure he performs in that womb on that blastocyst gives life. We know not how. And the procedure he performs in that soul is to be their King and make them live forever. We know not how!
7. We don’t claim to know what Jesus knows. But we can slip into an unbelief that says, “I know not how, so God cares not how.” When we’re grumbling, we don’t even want to use words like “my Father” or “Jesus, my Savior,” because if we did we’d have to drop the Original Sin Trash Talk. Because we may not know how his Word grows in the heart of a sinner, but we do know how the King makes sinners fit for his kingdom. Jesus traded his royal diadem for a crown of thorns and his white robes for a scarlet cloak and his sapphire throne for a wooden cross.
8. Jesus has earned our trust every bit as much as he has earned our salvation. Whatever we don’t understand, we do know this much from the parable: The power is not in the farmer, but in the seed. The power of the kingdom is the message of the Gospel itself (Mk 1:14–15). Behold your King, with power to rule, with wounds to save. And we want our church to grow. But we know not how. There are people in Oak Creek who will have Jesus as their King. We don’t know who they are yet. But we cast the seed and go to bed and get up, day and night, do what Christians do, and Jesus says the land bears fruit automatically, “first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:28). That’s the hard part, and that’s the work of God alone. We know not how.
9. God is in engineering, design, and management. We are in sales. We cast seed upon the soil, and when the fruit yields, he immediately sends (apostello) the sickle. That means we get to gather up what the Gospel’s power produced now, “because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:29). Planting and harvest is what we do, but the miracle is in between. The power is in the Word, given to us.
10. Why do we need to know that the power is in the Word? So, we don’t waste our time with bogus brands of power. Want power? Let’s spend our time and energy learning the Word—knowing the Gospel, knowing the Law, becoming pharmacists of the Most High, with the right medicine for the right person at the right time, including for ourselves.
11. Now the second parable has to do with the form in which the kingdom of God appears. And Jesus said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.” (Mark 4:30–32) Jesus paints a portrait of his kingdom in two contrasting forms. Smallest seed becomes the largest shrub. Is it up to me or up to him to make that happen? Mark put these same parables together for this reason. It’s up to the King what form his kingdom will take, because the power of the kingdom is with Christ in his Word and not in our planting and harvesting. But also, in this second parable, we mustn’t be fooled by the form in which we find the kingdom.
12. Weakness and rejection, crucified Lord, cruciform lives. Let us not despise the cross-shaped kingdom or our King. The world does, and so many try to reinvent the kingdom so that the despised, obscure seed is blown up into a large shrub by artificial means, like cotton candy. And it’s just as vain to invent crosses that aren’t from him. But look at how Christ and his disciples are despised without a reason, even in this country now. None of us has to search for crosses.
13. This is the nature of the kingdom. On that day it will be the largest plant in the garden. It won’t be a tiny seed that people trample underfoot, as if having Christ as their King were just another one of many good options in life. Its form will be obvious. When the King comes, there will be lightning flashes from one end of the sky to the other, and the mountains will melt, and every eye shall see him whose form is changed from that tiny blastocyst in the womb of the Virgin Mary, whose form is changed from the Jewish man they tortured to death on the cross. They didn’t know it was him of whom Ezekiel prophesied: “On the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bear branches and produce fruit and become a noble cedar. And under it will dwell every kind of bird; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest” (Ezek 17:23).
14. But this parable isn’t mainly to warn those outside the kingdom not to underestimate its power just because of its present form. This is for those who “in this tent [tabernacle] we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling” (2 Cor 5:2). This is for those who struggle with doubts: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself” (Is 45:15). How can God allow himself to remain so obscure? Not much longer. “For we know that if the tent [tabernacle] that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”(2 Cor 5:1).
15. Until then, God’s power is made perfect in weakness. We Christians have to remember one thing: In the kingdom’s present form, God works his power in a hidden fashion, and the fact that we know not how has absolutely nothing to do with the potency of that power. The Gospel consists of words. True. And words may not seem powerful. But words can make things happen when they happen to be God’s words! When you tell someone, “He who knew no sin became sin for you, that you would become the righteousness of God in him”(cf 2 Cor 5:21), there is more power in those words than in all the jet engines overhead, thunder though they might. They can’t take away sins!
16. The planting and the harvesting, the eating and the drinking are ours. The power and the form, the dying and the rising, calling, gathering, saving, and enlightening belong to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who said: “I bring low the high tree, and make high the low tree, dry up the green tree, and make the dry tree flourish. I am the Lord; I have spoken, and I will do it” (Ezek 17:24). In weakness, he dried up the green tree, and when Jesus was done carrying his cross, on the high mountain of Israel he planted it! He made the dry trees flourish—for we walk by faith, not by sight. All that matters to us is that in Jesus dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and that body is coming into our mouths in the Lord’s Supper. We are of good courage. No matter how insignificant the form he chooses to put into our mortal bodies, the power that raised Christ from the dead gives newness of life to us. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
