One of my favorite podcasts is a radio show from Canada called The Vinyl Café. The show is a series of stories about the misadventures of Dave, the owner of a record store in the suburbs of Toronto with a penchant for making humorously poor decisions. One of my favorite episodes is called “Dave and the Mexican Climbing Mint.”
One winter Dave and his wife Morley spent a week visiting friends who owned a vacation home in Mexico. They spent their days lazing around, drinking mojitos made with fresh mint picked from their friends’ yard. They had such a good time that Dave decided that, as a surprise to Morley, he would take a cutting of the mint back to Canada with them, so they could replicate their vacation at home. Dave planted the cutting in their yard where it, unsurprisingly since it had been transplanted from the Mexican tropics to a Toronto winter, did nothing. And Dave, in a way listeners to the show would be familiar with, promptly forgot about it.
That is, until the next spring when Dave realized his tiny cutting had sprouted a few leaves. He rushed outside to examine it closer, when he noticed another, similar looking, sprout a few feet away. He went to pull it out and discovered it wouldn’t come. The new sprout wasn’t a separate plant at all, it was connected to the original by an underground root system. Now that Dave knew what to look for, he realized there were sprouts all over his yard. All that long winter when his plant had seemed to be doing nothing at all, it had been sending out root systems across his backyard. Dave went inside and looked up “Mexican Climbing Mint” on the computer, and the very first page that popped up opened with the title “Invasive and Noxious Weed.” He rushed back outside, following the path of the sprouts, pulling them as he went, until he peered over the fence and yes. There, in the middle of Mr. Mortenson’s prized tomato plants, was the unmistakable sprout of Mexican Climbing Mint.
Not knowing what to do, Dave went to talk to his best friend, Kenny Wong, owner of the local dining establishment Wong’s Scottish Meat Pies. Kenny assured Dave he had the answer. Kenny knew a guy who could get Dave some herbicide that would do the trick. Powerful stuff, Kenny assured him, so powerful its illegal in Canada, the kind you can only get in the states. That night, dressed all in black, Dave filled his sprayer with the American made herbicide and set out across the neighborhood.
The next morning, Dave woke up to the sound of commotion. He looked out his window to see half the neighborhood gathered in his driveway. When he had been filling his sprayer, Dave had accidentally spilled some of the herbicide and gotten it on the bottom of his shoes. Paths of dead grass led across every yard in the neighborhood, with all of the paths leading directly to Dave’s garage.
Looking down at his neighbors, something across the street in the Turlingtons’ yard caught his eye. Mary Turlington was everything Dave was not, organized, careful, and fastidiously precise. The Turlingtons had just had a new patio installed, and all spring long Mary had been bragging about the quality—and the cost—of the patio. Italian crushed limestone, all hand-laid, had cost a fortune, but was worth it. The patio was indestructible; it could withstand an earthquake, a volcano. Those things may be true, but it turns out there was one thing it couldn’t withstand. Because that morning as Dave looked out his window he noticed something he had missed the night before. Right in the middle of the Turlingtons’ hand-laid, crushed Italian limestone patio, so precisely centered as to look planned, poked the very beginning of a tiny sprout of Mexican Climbing Mint.
I don’t want to ruin the ending, and also I don’t really remember how it ends, so I’ll stop there. But Mark’s parable of the mustard seed describes the kingdom of God as being like Dave’s experience with the Mexican Climbing Mint, seemingly small and fragile, but in fact strong, tenacious, and all but impossible to eradicate. Theologian Matt Skinner, who’s commentary I read this week, remarked, “Be careful what you pray for when you say, ‘Your kingdom come.’”
Our Gospel this morning gave us two parables. The first is sometimes called “The parable of the seed growing on its own.” Skinner described it, fondly I would add, as “boring. Its plot has all the suspenseful drama of an ordinary elementary-school life sciences textbook.” The sower sowed the seed, and then left it to the earth which “produced on its own,” until it was time for the harvest. Skinner thinks this parable is to act as a corrective to the parable of the sower earlier in chapter four. That’s the very famous parable where the sower sowed seed a different kinds of soil, and only in the good soil did it take root and grow. The point of that parable is the abundance of the sower, but lest the hearer worry that the kingdom of God require very precise growing conditions, this story of seeds growing without the sower’s help is comfort for that.
What this parable assures us is that the kingdom of God is not dependent on us. It will grow whether we know what it is doing or not, because that is what it does, that is it’s nature. This does not mean that there is not a role for us to do in growing the kingdom of God, it does mean that there is not work for us in the kingdom of God, but it does mean that the success of that growth is not our doing. The earth produces of its own; God is growing the kingdom of God no matter how much effort and intention we put into it.
I don’t know about you friends, but in this time and place where every decision, every effort, every choice and idea and attempt, feels fraught with the risk of collapsing this whole house of cards down around us, this parable feels not just like good news, but like a gift. Because what this parable says is that the world already has a savior, and that savior is not us. At the congregational meeting a couple weeks ago I mentioned that the budget is not booming, but it’s OK again and I have absolutely no idea how that happened. That is not an invitation to apathy, but it does feel like a promise that clearly the Holy Spirit is not done with us yet, so we might as well put the fear of failure aside and get on with the work of being the people of God. The earth produces of its own, and as long as we are producing, we will be here, so rather than waste our energy on worrying, let’s be about the work of production.
And the parable of the mustard seed tells us not just about the tenacity of the kingdom, but also about the unexpectedness of its appearance. The Ezekiel reading this morning talked about the mighty cedars of Lebanon, a common image to described imperial power. And if you’ve seen a cedar tree, you know they are impressive. Tall and majestic, standing like a statue over all the other trees in the forest. If the goal is to impress, the cedar is a good image for the kingdom of God.
But Jesus described the kingdom of God as a mustard plant, “the greatest of all the shrubs.” A comment that must have had his audience snorting with laughter; shrubs after all being not the most impressive of plants. But while a cedar may stand tall and mighty in the sky, it takes up very little space on the ground. A mustard plant on the other hand, is ground cover. It will spread like wildfire, taking over anything in its path. And good luck trying to keep it out of your garden. Skinner remarked, “As a result, some people will want to burn it all down in a pointless attempt to restore their fields.”
Dear people of God, spreading the kingdom of God is good work, it is hard work, and it is our work, but it is not solely our work. That is to say, the success of that work is not dependent on us. The world already has a savior, and that savior is not us. So let’s feel free to try new things, to fail, to take risks, and to sow the seeds of the kingdom widely, trusting that the earth will produce of its own, without our doing. In the words of one of my favorite poems by Bishop Ken Utener, “We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs, we are prophets of a future not our own.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
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