The Seeds of the Reign of God

Proper 6 Year B, Mark 4:26-34

This section of Mark introduces Jesus as teacher for the first time, or at least presents his teaching in any detail for the first time, even though Jesus has already drawn huge crowds. Mark would give short shrift to notions of Jesus as great moral teacher; he is depicted here as having already established a movement, but one where the members’ understanding of his mission and identity has not kept up with the demonstration of his power.

The selection of verses for this reading has skipped past the beginning of the chapter and of Mark’s parabolic discourse, which actually starts with the Sower (given full treatment in Year A from Matthew’s version). While this means we miss some context for the use of parables in Mark, which is stated more fully between the Sower and the interpretation (vv. 10-12), importantly some of the cautions about parables are reiterated in an editorial comment at the end of this section.

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples (vv. 33-34)

So the persistent notion that parables are helpful real-world explanations that can function like helpful anecdotes for speakers is way off. Jesus’ own purpose, according to Mark, is not quite obfuscation but certainly a means of cloaking the proclamation, except for those who genuinely “have ears” and will accept the invitation to listen (v. 9). What makes it possible to understand parables is not book-learning or intelligence as usually understood, but the willingness to seek the will of God and do it.

Modern scholarship has tended to emphasize that parables are about one single thing, a central point, rather than being allegories wherein some sort of correspondence can be found between all the elements of the story and the situation of Jesus, or our own.¹ This is a good insight, and encourages a critical view of some patristic and later exegesis wherein the rush to allegorize hides more than it reveals; but in fact Jesus’ parables (and the evangelists’ presentation of them) vary a lot in how they work. The principle of simplicity has to be used cautiously as we see the specific genre of each saying. In this case we have two parables that seem to work rather differently.

The first, of the Seed that Grows by Itself, could be a simile, as Adela Collins puts it, unlike the more famous narrative of the Sower. The sketch of the agricultural cycle is entirely straightforward; some will recognize the sentiment of the children’s song “Oats and Beans and Barley Grow.” The observation of the mysteries of nature is of course a common theme in the wisdom literature, and already points to the glory and inscrutability of God.

Yet the mysteries of agriculture are not the point here. This is, as Jesus says, an image of the reign of God as itself a mystery, but one which is coming. This is not about cycles or repeated times and seasons, but about the one time to which we are called to pay attention. The reign of God is nevertheless like the growth of the seed; it not available for manipulation or even for interrogation, because God gives the growth. The disciples in the story (and those reading it) are reminded to maintain hope, knowing that God is the bringer of change and not we ourselves. Ched Myers refers to this not as passivity but as “revolutionary patience,”² and suggests that here the reference to the sickle and the harvest may evoke Joel’s similar oracle (3:13) that alludes to God’s dramatic intervention, not merely to repeated harvest.

Roman marble relief of a sower; from the Museo Nazionale at the Baths of Diocletian, c. 300.

The second parable does have some elements of allegory, if we consider its own apparent reference to an older scriptural example, from Ezekiel 17. Readers who follow the version of the Revised Common Lectionary (or the Roman Catholic original) that provides readings from the Hebrew Bible to illustrate or support the Gospel will hear that passage read too, and so the connection is made readily. In the Ezekiel story the tip of a cedar—very different, admittedly, from a mustard seed—is broken off and planted in Israel, to become a mighty tree so that “in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind” (Ezek 17:23). And our mustard seed somehow does the same.

The Ezekiel passage is certainly an allegory, about the political situation of Judah in exile, part of a multi-episodic account of the experience which Ezekiel himself interprets (Ezek 17:11-21). Eagles are kings (of Babylon and Egypt), plants are nations, and the tip of the cedar seems to be a scion of Judah that will be restored in Israel. The reference to the birds of the air is more than a colorful piece of elaboration on the success of the horticulture in either passage, but an established political metaphor, found also in Daniel (4:20-22), wherein the ruler’s protection is depicted as providing shelter to the people.

Yet the resulting shrub of the mustard plant is an unlikely royal or messianic image, despite the fact that mustard grows to a size and with a vigor quite disproportionate to the tiny seed, which is certainly part of the idea here. Jesus is recalibrating messianic expectations; while the fact that the birds of the air will find shelter affirms the divine purpose and outcome, this sort of messianism will not be quite as imagined.

In all these versions of the image there can be blessed growth, but also overweaning pride. To be a towering tree is not an end in itself, because:

All the trees of the field shall know
   that I am the Lord.
I bring low the high tree,
   I make high the low tree;
I dry up the green tree
   and make the dry tree flourish.
I the Lord have spoken;
   I will accomplish it (Ezek 14:24)

So if we allow a strong connection with Ezekiel here, Rome is inevitably part of this horticultural metaphor of imperial power too, a kind of cedar or other grand tree unnamed but implied, whose growth vaunts itself but which will be brought low by the work of the mustard seed.

Staying with the allegorical possibility then, Jesus may be describing not just the reign of God as a mysterious growing presence, but himself as the mustard seed. Its unlikely nature and scale refers to his unassuming origins, while the promised shelter of the birds is a paradoxical promise of his reign. It is always what God accomplishes that matters.

While the mustard seed in particular foregrounds Jesus’ own struggle and its promised outcome, the community of believers may have seen itself in both of these stories, as their parabolic nature allows, and so may we. As Mark and the first readers of the Gospel will have encountered them, both parables bring encouragement where there might have been confusion or disappointment. Yet they do so in somewhat different ways; the connection is the reign of God itself, the agricultural setting, and the movement Jesus is leading. The parables do not tell us everything we need to know; they are tests, not just examples. Following Jesus in patience and hope will be required to benefit from the fruit they bear.

1. Especially A. Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu (Mohr: Tübingen, 1899).

2. Binding the Strong Man : A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Maryknoll, N.Y. : Orbis Books, 1988, p. 169f.