The Sprouting Seed (Proper 6B)

The Sprouting Seed
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6)
17th June 2018
Homily Preached at Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon
8:00 a.m. Spoken Mass; 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Ezekiel 17:22-end; Psalm 92:1-4, 11-14; 2 Cor 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34

The Very Rev. Fr. Tony Hutchinson, SCP, Ph.D.

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

The Bible made the news once again this week.  Christian religious leaders of all stripes—from Roman Catholic bishops and cardinals, to progressive protestants like Jim Wallis of Sojourners and our own Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, to Southern Baptist leaders and even the Rev. Franklin Graham—issued statements blasting as immoral and cruel the administration’s policy of separating children from their undocumented parents at the border, and warehousing them.  In response, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended the policy, saying it was supported by the Bible: “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.” 

Sanders and Sessions seem unaware of how these very verses over the centuries have been quoted to prop up just about every unjust law or wicked regime:  slave owners enforcing the infamous Fugitive Slave Act before the U.S. Civil War, Afrikaner supporters of Apartheid, and anti-Civil Rights lovers of Jim Crow.  Even the Nazi-controlled Protestant Church appealed to them to argue that the German Volk owed their Fuehrer obedience and loyalty.   All missed Augustine and Aquinas’ argument that “an unjust law is no law at all, but rather merely violence.” 

When people say “the BIBLE says,” remember what Fr. Morgan Silbaugh tells our Bible study group, “and what ELSE does the Bible say?” 

In the lead-up to Romans 13, Paul himself writes: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor…  Contribute to [those in need]; extend hospitality to strangers.” (Romans 12:9-18). 

Again and again the prophets declare: “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut 10), “Cursed be anyone who deprives the alien…of justice” (Deut 27), “The aliens shall be to you as citizens, and shall also be allotted an inheritance” (Ezek 47:21-22), “Do not oppress the alien” (Zech 7:8-10). 

Jesus says in Luke, “It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause a little child to stumble” (Luke 17:2).

In Matthew 25, he says that on the Last Day, the one thing that will separate those with God and those against God is whether we welcomed strangers, fed the hungry, and helped those in need. 

Some may reply, “But how can we defend our nation, and make it great again? Right there in Ezra, it tells us of the need to build walls.”  Again, what else does the Bible say?  Today’s Gospel says a lot here. 

Jesus grew up in Galilee, a minor client state on the fringes of the Roman Empire. Rome had swallowed up all the world around the Mediterranean.  Rome was great, was huge. But the Pax Romana was largely a creation of the state’s propaganda machine: the leader of the Celts in Britain before being paraded as a conquered slave in Rome, famously said, “You make a desert and call it peace.”  The state spin-doctors said that the Empire was the order and peace intended by the gods, and the Emperor was God’s son.  

Judas Maccabee  

One of the peoples Rome conquered was Jesus’ own, the Jews. Just a century and a half before, they had hoped dearly for deliverance from all their foes and the establishment of God’s just and right kingdom. Judas Maccabee and his army threw off the harsh oppression of the Greek Syrian kings left behind by Alexander the Great. The Book of Daniel, written then, predicted that the Maccabees’ rule would grow and grow, like a rock cut out from the mountains without hands, until it would fill the whole world and smash all systems of oppression and wrong.

But that effort had gone seriously wrong. The Maccabees themselves became tyrannical, and their religious establishment hopelessly corrupt. The Temple itself became as much a symbol of oppressive taxes and impossible rules as of God’s presence on earth. The Temple officials, called Sadducees during Jesus’ time, became quickly the quisling darlings of the Romans. What Daniel had hoped would be the kingdom of God had become just another petty and corrupt banana republic with a compromised religion and horrendous rulers.
 

Some Jews fled the Maccabean establishment and went into the Judean wilderness, seeking to “prepare in the desert” a way for God’s true kingdom. They called themselves the “sons of Zadok” or the “sons of Light,” and advocated a separation of true believers from the rest of the world, “the sons of darkness.”  They believed one day they would destroy the wicked, including the evil “Kittim,” or Romans, in a great war.   They are the ones who wrote what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jewish historian Josephus called them Essenes. Making Judea great again, building the Kingdom of God, meant for them fundamentalist religion, war, and hatred of foreigners. 

Others reacted to the Roman subjugation of Judea and the corruption of the Temple by calling for more and more rigorous study and application of the Law of Moses.  Personal piety, avoiding political controversy with the rulers at all costs, and keeping apart from foreigners for them was the way to make the nation great again.  These are the Pharisees.

Others reacted by calling for armed rebellion. According to Josephus, a Galilean named Judas led a major revolt against Rome around A.D. 5 in a tax protest.  The Romans crushed the revolt, and then crucified thousands of the defeated rebels.  A few surviving guerillas fought on as bandits and terrorists. They are called the sicarii, the knife bearers, or the Zealots.  They insisted on their right and duty to bear arms in the defense of what they called freedom.  They later led another revolt against Rome that ended in the Temple leveled, never to be rebuilt, Jerusalem destroyed, and the expulsion of Jews from Palestine.  The zealots thought that weapons in the cause of right would make the nation great again, would usher in God’s Kingdom. 

When Jesus began to preach, it caused quite a stir. People were excited. Here was a prophet declaring that God was beginning to act to establish his kingdom. “God’s kingship has come near!”  He quoted Isaiah, declaring liberation to the captive and freedom to the prisoner.  And when he began to heal people to show that God’s kingdom had arrived, they really started to flock to see him and hear him. Would he overthrow the Romans? Would he throw out the corrupt priests from the Temple? Or would he just provoke the Romans into killng them?

People asked him how the Kingdom of God could have come already when the rule of the Evil Empire was still so evident. How could he mistake his little public teach-ins for the overthrow of evil promised by the prophets?

Jesus told stories from everyday life as a means of making people question everything they thought they knew about these questions.  Many of them start, “The kingdom of God is like…”  Today’s Gospel from Mark has two of these riddles: the seed growing on its own and the mustard plant. 

 

God coming here and now, fully in charge—It’s like a growing seed: it sprouts and grows all on its own regardless of whether the person who planted it knows that it grows or understands why it grows.  Jesus says that God’s kingdom comes mainly through God’s action. God is already at work and will ultimately set things right, but not yet completely.  God’s reign, making the nation great again:  it starts small and happens in ways we don’t see and can’t even guess.  It’s a mystery:  but it’s true all the same. 

God coming here and now, fully in charge—It’s not like the giant cedar tree prophesied by Ezekiel.  No—it’s like a mustard shrub, little more than a big weed.  It grows in unusual places, apart from human control.  If noticed, it is uprooted.  If without notice, it its tiny seed goes wild.  Though not quite one of the usual images for God’s kingdom—vineyards, olive trees, or that great cedar tree—it’s big enough to shelter wild birds.  For Jesus, the kingdom is the mustard weed.

The kingdom won’t come through force of arms. It won’t come through blaming and scapegoating foreigners and infidels.  It won’t come through mere personal piety and commandment-keeping.  Note the image here:  secret growth, a wild weed, and shelter for the birds, often a symbol for the poor.  Jesus is questioning whether the Kingdom has anything to do with making the nation great again in any traditional sense of that word.  For him, greatness is in goodness, justice, kindness, and providing shelter. 

The kingdom will come through God’s action behind the scenes, on the human heart. Conscience will change us, our ways of behaving, and with this our political systems.  It may be in secret.  It may not be obvious.  But it will come. It will come. Our conscience demands that we make the kingdom alive:  challenge the Empire with peaceful non-scapegoating acts of witness: turn the cheek, go the second mile.  Stand up to power in love and gentleness.    

No matter how bad things are, how much the evil triumph and the righteous suffer, how overwhelming the imperial power seems to be or how corrupt and compromised religious leaders are, the kingdom will come. Despite it all, God actually already is in charge, and God’s reign is here and now. And its full manifestation will come.  Trusting in God means not worrying that it will, because it will.  Trusting means following that clarion call of conscience that God puts in our heart.  “Take up your cross and follow me!” 

That seed is growing on its own.  That weed can sprout and become immense! A country can be great again only when it is kind again, is good again, is just again.   Embrace the reign of God.  Love mercy, work justice, and walk humbly with that God who will make it happen. 

In the name of God, Amen.