With Summer in full swing and our gardens, parks and countryside alive with growth, I thought I'd look at the Parable of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29) which comes at the end of a collection of stories pointing to the Kingdom of God. So, you may reasonably ask, how does the everyday miracle of a growing seed show us what the Kingdom of God looks like.
Well, here are some ideas:
Perhaps it tells us God is the farmer, who both plants the seed and gathers the harvest. However, the farmer doesn't appear to understand how the seed becomes the crop. Which doesn't really stack up if omniscient God is the farmer.
Maybe it's telling us we need to be 'farmers' and sow the seeds of God's kingdom, then wait patiently for them to mature in God's time. This idea seems to make a lot of sense, but there's a problem, as we are told that the harvest belongs to the risen Jesus, not us.
Which brings us to Jesus as the farmer, he has set everything in motion and in the end will bring in the harvest. Now this too is fine to a point, however it could be asked: 'Where, is Jesus the farmer now, between the sowing and the harvest, when there's so much struggling and suffering and we long to see evidence of his presence'.
So, if none of these ideas really provide an answer, what then is the lesson of this simple sounding parable? Maybe we need to see it more as a work of art that challenges us with its power and implications and demands a response from us.
Perhaps the Kingdom isn't the farmer, nor the seed and its growth or even the harvest, but is all of them taken as a whole!
Have a wonderful Summer,
God bless, Mark
