Jesus also said, “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, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
Jesus also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
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. (Mark 4:26-34)
A seed is a mysterious thing. A kernel of corn. A grain of wheat. A mustard seed. Each contains the instructions of how to reproduce itself. Not only that, each seed contains the instructions for the next generation to do the same for the generation to follow. In other words, a seed stretches into the future. A seed also stretches into the past. Each seed contains the memory of the failures and successes of previous generations.
The farmers in Jesus’ day would have been awed by such a thing. Today we might fancy that we understand genetic coding. After all, we learned about DNA in high school. We grasp [Read more…] about What We Plant, a sermon on Mark 4:26-34