Parables of the Kingdom: A Meditation on Mark 4

 And he said, So is the kingdom of God,

as if a man should cast seed into the ground;

And should sleep, and rise night and day,

 and the seed should spring and grow up,

he knoweth not how.

 

St. Mark’s fourth chapter contains several parables about the Kingdom of God, as well as some insight as to why He used parables to speak to the people… and why He explained those parables only to His disciples in private.  Jesus began by using the parable of the Sower and the seed, to describe how the hearts into which His Word was sown would in part determine the outcome of that Word’s work upon them.  He continued with the parable above, regarding the mysterious nature of God’s Kingdom, and how its growth was His doing rather than the work of the farmer who benefits from it.  Then Jesus closed with a parable regarding how small the Kingdom of God can seem when it starts, but how it will fill the whole world as it grows, providing shelter for all who come to rest in the grace of its shade.

 

There’s a pattern which emerges from these parables which we can see in the world today, just as it has been evident across all ages since the world began.  In the beginning is the Word of God, framing the cosmos and everything in it, from the fundamental natural laws of physics where matter and energy are perfectly mathematically balanced to support refined complexities of chemistry and biology, which in turn support the wonderous array of life in this world and the great unexplored expanses of the universe.  This Word which first breathed out our existence and life, which set the heavens in their order and our planet on its course, from Whom came all things and to Whom all things shall return, also came to us in our self-inflicted calamity of suffering and death, to speak a new Word of redemption, forgiveness, and life.  This Word of Gospel was and is spoken to all people, like seed spread in what might appear an indiscriminate and gratuitous manner, regardless of how people will choose to receive it.  Some will ignore it, and the devil will snatch that hope away from them quickly.  Some will respond to it vapidly, and when the devil presses them with persecution, they will abandon it.  Some will consider it philosophically or emotionally, but only in so far as their love of material things will accommodate it, choking that Gospel Word in them until it is unfruitful.  And some will receive it as the life changing Word that it is, transformed by a new birth from above by Water and Spirit, where the Gospel Word grows in and around them richly.

 

Moving from the general to the specific and back to the general, Jesus taught His disciples that of those who received the Gospel in faith and repentance, the Kingdom would grow in and among them by the mysterious power of His Word and Spirit.  The Kingdom was not theirs to grow, but to experience as living members of that Kingdom.  The Christian lives and moves and has their being in Jesus, even as Jesus speaks the Word of Gospel which created the Kingdom into which we are reborn.  Like a farmer who lives and works in his field, receiving the mysterious blessings of renewed life from the hand of God, so the Christian lives and works in the Kingdom of God, receiving its blessings from His hand.  Just as the farmer did not create the land and the physics and the chemistry and the biology of his farm, neither does the Christian create the Kingdom into which he is brought by grace through faith in Christ alone.  The Kingdom of God remains a divine and gracious mystery, both in the individual life of the Christian, and in the community of all the faithful of every time and place.  Thus what started small and was generally disregarded, became the immensity of the holy Christian Church, a fellowship of every soul which has ever trusted in God’s Word of Gospel through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, a Kingdom which transcends time and space to form one Communion of the Saints, within which everyone who seeks shelter finds eternal rest and redemption.  A Kingdom like a great tree for those who can see it, with roots tapped into the Word of God at creation, and extending through every epoch by the life-giving Word and Spirit of Jesus.  Thus Adam is forever linked to Enoch, just as David is linked to Elijah; as Noah is linked to St. Peter, and Daniel to St. John; as St. Paul is linked to St. Augustine, and St. Mathew is linked to St. Chrysostom; as the Church Fathers at the first Council of Nicaea are linked to the Church Fathers of the Reformation, and as every faithful parent and child have been linked in every generation since the dawn of time.  This great Kingdom of God does indeed fill the whole world, and in fact, overflows it, with both roots and branches reaching across eternity.

 

In this, there is great hope.  For the Kingdom of God among us can no more be dislodged or destroyed by the reprobates of our age, than it could by the vicious and vainglorious of any age past.  This great tree into which we have been grafted is Jesus Christ, the Incarnate and Eternal Word of God, who is in the unity of His Person fully God and fully man, and in the unity of His essence indivisible from His Father and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever—a unity in Trinity, and Trinity in unity.  This is the great mystery into which all the faithful are pressed, a fellowship in God’s Kingdom which has no end.  Do not be confounded by the convulsions of a world mortally wounded by sin and despair, for the evil of this world is passing away, together with all its delusions and lusts and violence.  Only the Word of the Lord endures forever, and the fellowship of those bound together in it by grace through faith in Jesus.  Hear His Word to you today, that your eyes may be opened, your ears may be cleared, your heart be enlivened, that you also may through faith and repentance join this great and everlasting fellowship of sinners saved by grace.  Amen.