Sam Bush, “First Class Ticket to the Kingdom of God”
I hope it’s a happy Father’s Day for each of you. In case you forgot that it was Father’s Day, it seems our Gospel reading also forgot. It seems to bypass the holiday entirely. This passage from Mark does not depict a sweet scene of Jesus and Joseph building a bedside table in the garage, Joseph the carpenter teaching his son how to square a corner. Jesus likely came from generations of tradesmen - he was likely handy with a hacksaw - but there’s no mention of woodworking here.
He is talking about the Kingdom of God and is convinced that the best way to understand the Kingdom of God is not through explanation but illustration. Our reading says he only spoke in parables. Throughout his ministry, Jesus told parables about travelers, shepherds, vineyard owners, widows, bakers and merchants, but not carpenters. He could have compared the Kingdom of God to properly installing windows and doors or how to construct a flooring system, but he breaks from the lingo of the family business. Time and again, his preferred analogy is agricultural. Fig trees, weeds, sowers and seeds. Why?
For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is not something that is built, but grown. He is fascinated by farming. He says, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself,” the Greek word “of itself” meaning “automatically, without any human effort.” You can’t say the same about bricks. Put a brick in the ground and it will neither grow nor multiply. Apart from human effort, construction is static. Your house is not going to maintain itself; your kitchen will not clean itself. Whereas buildings and structures require constant upkeep, a seed sown has a life of its own. There is an organic power to it.
You could say that Jesus is romanticizing farm life, that he only understands it through Instagram and doesn’t understand how much effort is required to tend a single raised bed - the weeding, the watering, keeping pests and invasive species away. Still, there is something innately different between constructing and cultivating. There is a power at work that is beyond human effort.
This kingdom is not like other kingdoms. We know that kingdoms operate by force. Kingdoms rise and fall based on strength and dominance. Throughout human history from Alexander the Great to the Qing dynasty, kingdoms are never surrendered; they are conquered. It’s nothing personal. It’s just natural selection.
What about the kingdom you are building or defending in your own life? It requires constant maintenance - deadlines to be met, laundry to be done. There are grand campaigns - goals to achieve, careers to develop, books to write. Meanwhile, threats are coming from every direction - arguments to win, people to avoid or punish. All the while, there are inward uprisings that need to be suppressed, mostly in the form of anxiety, guilt and addiction. Where are you currently under siege? How heavy is your crown?
The Kingdom that Jesus is describing is a seed the size of a grain of sand. The mustard seed is not a symbol of power or dominance - it is not the mascot of any major sports team - but Jesus won’t stop talking about it. In Matthew’s gospel, he says, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” What a ludicrous thing to say. It’s so absurd that we assume he’s speaking metaphorically, that he’s quoting the philosopher Confucius who said, ‘The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” In other words, if we just do the work and chip away little by little, we can be the change we want to see in the world. But, according to Jesus, his kingdom doesn’t work that way.
His kingdom doesn’t need us to build or defend it. Twice in Mark he says that the Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s already here! We are not architects or project managers, but fertile soil that receives the smallest little seed which then grows on its own. The power of God is not something that you make happen; it is something that happens to you. Abraham Lincoln once described the passive approach to harvesting a fruit tree. “A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit,” he said. “Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.” What’s the secret to success in God’s Kingdom? Do nothing. If anything, get out of the way. Pray and watch and wait.
As your own kingdom is beset by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Jesus invites you to raise the white flag, to melt your sword into a plowshare, your spear into a pruning hook.
What does the mustard seed’s power look like in real life? Well, Paul Cowley is an Anglican minister who grew up in Manchester, England. His father was a mean man, an alcoholic and both verbally and physically abusive. Paul runs away when he is 15, gets into trouble and spends time in prison, but somehow he makes out OK. He’s running a health club in London when, after being an atheist for almost 40 years he becomes a Christian. Shortly after, something makes him want to be in a relationship with his dad again. After years of not speaking, he tracks him down. Paul was hoping his father had changed like he had, but found that he was even grumpier and more vulgar and crude than before.
Occasionally, he would invite his dad to his family’s home in London. Each time he would pick him up at the train station, his father would be drunk and complaining, mostly about money. After one of these visits, something strange happened.
Paul takes him to the station and puts him on the train and right in the middle of the carriage has this overwhelming feeling of love for his dad. “It was really weird,” he says. “I almost started to cry. I looked at him and felt really sad for him, that we never had a relationship and in my mind came this idea to upgrade his ticket to first class.” So he buys his dad a very expensive one-way ticket, walks him to his seat and kisses him on the forehead. Standing back on the platform, Paul’s wife says to him, “What on earth did you just do?” He says, “I have no idea. I just really wanted to see my dad happy.” As Paul looks at his father through the window, he sees him take his hat off, recline his chair, snap his fingers for a cup of tea and start to read his newspaper. As he turns to look at his son, he has the biggest smile on his face. Paul says it was like every Christmas and birthday rolled into one big smile.
That was the last time Paul ever saw his father who, three weeks later, died of a massive heart attack. “I always think,” he says, “Was that me just making up an idea that I thought I might buy him a ticket or was that God guiding me. I have a real peace with my father after all those years of arguments and fighting and drinking and womanizing. The only image I have of my father is that picture of his face looking through the window of that railway carriage as it rolled off.”
This is not a story about building a kingdom, but of a tiny seed that was buried and would germinate, sprout and grow, he did not know how. You see, God was at work in Paul Cowley’s heart. And God’s abundant love for him grew into an unconditional and undeserved love for his father who was by all accounts a wretched man. God’s Kingdom, you see, is not built on human strength or reason, but on the power of God.
Hours before his death, Jesus tells Pontius Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world. He rules not with force and might, but with love and grace and willingly surrenders his power by laying down his life. The only woodworking mentioned are the nails being driven into his hands and feet on the hard wood of the Cross. His main purpose, you see, is not as a carpenter, but as a seed that would be buried in the ground. As the great hymn proclaims, “Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.”
