Mark 4:26-34 - "Beanstalks, Kudzu, and Japanese Knotweed)

            I remember, I remember…..one evening, when I was a child, that my father brought home a Jack-in-the-beanstalk planting kit.  It consisted of a very small plastic cup, a very long piece of thick red yarn, and a single bean seed.  The kit directions instructed us to moisten one end of the very long piece of red yarn and stuff it into the very small plastic cup and then extend the remainder to the ceiling and tape it in place.  Finally, we were told to nestle the single bean seed in the moistened red yarn in the very small plastic cup – and wait. 

            In not too many days, the bean seed sprouted – and then it began to grow.  Soon it was winding itself around the yarn, valiantly surging upward toward the ceiling.  It grew two feet, then three feet, and before too much time had gone by, it came perilously close to reaching the ceiling and the end of the yarn. 

            That was when we transplanted the seed into a flower pot with soil and ran a piece of string across the length of the dining room ceiling, thereby extending the growing space of our single bean seed.  It was about that time too that the vigorously growing plant began to flower – and then to bear fruit.  Green beans hung from the vine that ran across our dining room – and even provided our evening vegetable for a couple of meals.

            I remember, I remember…..several summers ago when a group of us from our church traveled to Tennessee on a mission trip.  For nearly a week, we painted houses and built handicapped ramps.  We constructed porches, additions, and stairs with railings.  It was a first time for me doing that sort of work, and it was also the first time that I ever saw kudzu. 

            Now kudzu is a coiling, trailing, climbing vine native to Japan.  However, in the southern United States, it is considered an invasive species and noxious weed.  It grows over everything, literally everything – plants, shrubs, trees, walls, and, if left to its own devices, even houses.  Its huge leaves shade out anything in its path.  You can see it right on our bulletin cover nearly burying a pick up truck.

            I remember, I remember….when we moved to our farm in Naples three years ago, that I noticed some lovely looking bamboo-like trees on the other side of the road.  And there was even a clump at the corner of a garden that I hoped to rejuvenate near our house.  The plant was quite picturesque – very serene looking, in an oriental sort of way. 

            However, before the spring was out, this plant seemed to have rooted everywhere, and shoots of it were even growing up through the planking of our deck.  No matter how much I tried to pull out the stalks, more sprouted up in their place.  This spring, I even cut out the clump in the garden.  However, the root mass was so deep that I could not get it all, and so I put rocks over what remained of it.  However, shoots continue to reappear every few days, growing in the small spaces in between the stones. 

            I finally found out that I was doing battle with Japanese knotweed.   Though delicious in a pie with strawberries in the early spring when the stalks are small and tender, Japanese knotweed gives new meaning to the word, “tenacious.”  You can cut it down, and it will grow back.  You can dig it out, and it will still grow back.  I suspect you can put all sorts of chemicals and herbicides on it, but it is here to stay.

            “With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?” Jesus asked his disciples.   Oh, that Jesus!  He was always asking questions and talking in parables, which perhaps you already know are little stories that are like puzzles or riddles.  There are about 40 of them in the Gospels, and Jesus only explains the first one he ever told. 

The others he leaves up to his disciples  (and down through the ages, us) to figure out.  No easy answers from this rabbi!  

            Lutheran pastor Stephen Molin tells us that  “German theologian Helmut Thielke says that we cannot comprehend the parables of Jesus until we see ourselves in the story. Like a small child, recognizing herself in the mirror for the very first time, when we see ourselves represented in the story, then we finally get it.

            Then we realize that we’re the snotty younger son who ran away with his father’s fortune. We’re the Levite who passed by the beaten man on the road to Jericho. You might even be the wise man who built his house upon the rock, and I might be the fool who built my house on the sand. Once we see ourselves in the story, the story takes on a whole new meaning, and then we understand.” 

            And so Jesus asks:  “With what can we compare the Kingdom of God?’  And you and I reach both into the parables and into our own experience to answer that question.  When we look at the parables we read this morning, the first one seems relatively straightforward.  It is rather like our family experience with the beanstalk.  You plant your seed – or your garden – and you wait.  Inch by inch, row by row. 

            What I love about gardening is the sheer miracle of it all.  You plant, you water, and you wait.  You trust in the soil and the rain and the sun.  You wait.  It takes great patience, but when the harvest time comes, there are beans to freeze and tomatoes to can.  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done of earth,” we pray.  The kingdom of God is like planting a garden.

            The second parable presented in today’s scripture lesson is a bit edgier, in my opinion. Of course, one interpretation of that parable might be that big things come from small beginnings.   With a small dose of your faith, God can do great things.  And perhaps that is exactly what Jesus did mean. 

            However, I keep thinking that there must be an alternative explanation because that one is so tame and safe, and Jesus was hardly a tame and safe human being.  Consequently, I think we need to take a few minutes to look deeper.  After all, as Lutheran scholar, David Lose, wrote, “Parables…are meant to overturn, to deconstruct, to cause frustration and, for those who stay with them, transformation.”

            Keeping that in mind, I  believe had Jesus been a 20^th century American, he might have compared the kingdom in this parable to kudzu or Japanese knotweed.  But instead (being a first century middle eastern Jew and all), he likened it to a mustard seed.  

            Now we can not know if Jesus was resorting to comedy to get his point across, but surely his disciples – though born and bred as fishermen and tax collectors rather than farmers – knew enough to slap their knees and gaffaw, “A mustard seed??!!! The Kingdom of God is like ... a mustard seed? C'mon, you must be joking?  Surely the Kingdom of God is like something majestic, something powerful, something really big. Like a mountain, or a cedar, or an eagle.   But a mustard seed?’

            Now as far as seeds go, a mustard seed is pretty small – smaller than a bean seed to be sure but not as small as an orchid seed, for example.  However, to really understand the significance of the image Jesus chose to compare the Kingdom of God to, you need to know something about mustard seeds and the plants they produce. 

            In the ancient world, the mustard plant was considered a weed.  Think dandelion.  Except for some small number of varieties raised for medicinal purposes, you would never find mustard actually cultivated in gardens because it would quickly take over and spread out-of-control.  Think Japanese knotweed.  Even the smallest tendril will root itself and propagate.  Think Jerusalem artichoke.  You would be more likely to find mustard plants in an abandoned field or overtaking the side of an open hill.

            And the bit about the birds making nests in the mustard shrubs?  Sounds cozy and bucolic, but what farmer wants a bunch of birds feasting on his seeds? Why do we have scarecrows?  Think black birds and ravens.  It is like Jesus is saying that once the mustard plant takes hold, even the “undesirables” show up!

            The kingdom of God is like wild onions – or crabgrass – or milfoil.  The kingdom of God is like dandelions – or kudzu – or Japanese knotweed.  It grows everywhere – and you cannot stop it.  The kingdom of God is like a noxious weed, like an invasive species.  It starts out small.  It might even start out picturesque.  Sometimes, in its own way, it is beautiful. But watch out! 

Even the tiniest slip of it can take hold and take over. 

            And, as the blogger of “Magdalene’s Musings wrote, “And… we’re not necessarily going to like it. It’s going to disrupt our pleasant and cozy places. It’s going to make us uncomfortable. It might even crack the foundations of the things we think we treasure most… our homes, our institutions, our churches. The (kingdom) of God is wild, and untamable, and uncontrollable. We will wake up in the morning and find that it has made its way into the comfort of our homes. We will probably be distressed, we will probably be freaked out, we will probably want to find some way to fix it or modify it or eradicate it. But it is the (kingdom) of God, and so it cannot be fixed or modified or eradicated.”

            In London during World War II, a church was all set to celebrate its annual harvest festival.  It had been decorated with vegetables and corn stalks when the sirens sounded, and people headed for shelter from a German bombing raid. 

            Unfortunately, the church was destroyed that day, and so there was no harvest festival that year.  The vegetables were destroyed, and the sheaves of corn were scattered by the explosions.  The congregation, of course, was devastated that nothing remained of the church.  However, the next spring, a small patch of corn was discovered growing through the rubble.  In the end, life will not be stifled – nor will the Kingdom of God.

            The Kingdom of God is coming.  It cannot be stopped – not by cynicism, not by war, not by amorality, not by abject indifference.  The kingdom of God is like a single bean seed that grows and grows seemingly without limit in a small plastic cup up a piece of thick red yarn.  The kingdom of God is like Japanese knotweed that cannot be destroyed.  The kingdom of God is like kudzu that eventually overtakes everything in its path.  The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.  That is the message of these parables, and it is a message of great hope. 

            I just finished reading the Hunger Games Trilogy.  There is a scene in the movie in which President Snow, the totalitarian ruler of futuristic Panem, asks his chief Games-maker -- the one charged with creating a spectacle as entertaining as it is barbaric -- why they must have a winner.

            The answer? Hope. He wants to give the oppressed people of Panem hope that maybe, just maybe, the odds will be in their favor and they may win the Hunger Games and escape their life of poverty.

            "Hope," he explains, "is the only thing more powerful than fear." He goes to say that "a little hope is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous."

(David Lose)

            These parables we read this morning offer hope – a lot of hope, dangerous hope that in the end God’s kingdom will win out. We cannot control it.  We cannot even summon it.  And we certainly cannot stop it.