The kingdom of God is described in many different ways in the Bible. In Mark 4, the kingdom of God is described in terms of small seeds quietly planted by a farmer. The seeds can grow to great size, like a mustard plant which in ancient Israel became one of the largest of bushes. Small beginnings can have great endings.
Before looking further at this slow but potentially great growth in Mark 4:26-34, it helps to look at the context of our text, the passage before the two parables of the slow growing seeds, namely the parable of the four soils. In this parable in Mark 4:1-20, Jesus says that the response to the word of God is like four soils. In all three parables, Jesus points to our response to the word of God. In the first parable he says that we are called by God to be good soil. In the second and third parables, Jesus says that we are called to respond to God by being good farmers.
Our Response Is Like Four Soils
Before looking at the slow, quiet but great growth in our text, let us look at the front side context of the parables of the slow-growing seed and the mustard seed. The front side context is the parable of the four soils in Mark 4:1-20. Jesus says that there are four kinds of response to his word about the kingdom of God. People's attitudes are like four kinds of soil in which the seeds are scattered. In ancient times, the sower threw the seeds in every direction. Some landed on hard soil, some on rocky soil, some on thorny soil, and some fell on good ground. Jesus was instructing his apostles about how people responded to the Gospel as he presented it and how people would respond to their preaching of the word after he was gone. Some seed fell on a path. A path is trodden down. Here the seed did not enter the soil. Soon the birds of the air came along and ate the seed because it had never entered the soil. Some people are so hardened against what Jesus says about the kingdom of God that they will not receive it. They will not produce fruit of the kingdom because they are too busy, too preoccupied by the things of this world or their own ideas, or too hurt by suffering to accept the word of God. In other words, some people will reject the truth, even though it is for their own good. Activism, materialism, stubborn resistance to something new and hard-heartedness due to hurt all keep people out of the kingdom of God.
Some seed fell on rocky ground. There are people who, like rocky ground, at first seem to receive the seeds of the kingdom, but soon the plants wither because the upper layer of soil is shallow. Hidden from sight there is the layer of rock which prohibits growth. In a desert area like Israel, this layer of rock was a real problem for farmers. When I lived in Arizona, we faced the same kind of problem. We planted trees, plants, and shrubs which initially started to grow but died off quickly because of the concrete-like soil called caliche beneath the shallow top soil. Some people are like that. They are dramatic starters, but with no depth. They are superficial Christians. Some people are like thorny soil. Here the seed falls, starts to grow, but soon dies because of the temptations of the world, which are like unpulled weeds. Weeds are temptations which distract us from the kingdom of God. They can be temptation toward materialism, tensions about how unfair life is, or unresolved resentments about how life treats us. When you plant the seeds of faith, you also have to tend to the weeds, Jesus says.
Some people are like the good soil. They "hear the word of God, accept it, and produce a crop -- thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown" (Mark 4:20). The key to understanding how the kingdom of God works in people's lives is to recognize that not everyone will be good soil. The key question is: "Do people really accept the word of God and produce the fruits of faithfulness?" Good soil bears much fruit. That is how Jesus describes positive response in the first parable, individually and in our families. The question he asks is: "Will you grow like good soil?" He is talking about positive response to his word.
Our Response Is Like Planting And Nurturing
In the second and third parables in Mark 4, Jesus describes positive response in terms of a good farmer patiently planting and nurturing the seeds he plants. Jesus changes metaphors from the Christian as good soil to the Christian as a good farmer with patience. The consistent factors in all three parables of response in Mark 4 are: the word of God is like a seed; God alone can give the growth; and great growth is possible in God's kingdom. The word had to take root in us in a slow-moving process, so it will be a slow-moving process in others. That's why we need patience like Jesus had. If when Jesus planted seeds of the word, there were different responses, so it will be when we plant seeds. We should not expect that all seeds which we plant will take root and bear fruit. Our job is to plant and nurture. Only God can produce the fruit. We are called to do what we can do -- plant and nurture. God will do what only God can do -- produce the growth.
I knew very little about farming as a boy growing up in Chicago. This city boy grew up thinking that food was stuff you bought at a supermarket, not seeds you planted which grew into a crop. God had a sense of humor. In my first call out of the seminary, God put me in Lebanon, Indiana, a small farm town. I had to get educated quickly about planting and nurturing crops. In my third call, my education about agriculture increased considerably. My third call was to St. Paul Church in Davenport, Iowa, where well over half the parishioners were farmers or in the farm implement business. There are three things I learned about farming in Lebanon, Indiana, and Davenport, Iowa, which connect directly with the parables in Mark 4: (1) growth depends on God, (2) we are called to plant and nurture, and (3) small beginnings can have great endings.
First, my farming friends taught me that planting seeds means that we recognize what we can do and what we cannot do. We do not produce the growth. Only God can do that whether we live in first century Israel or twentieth century America. God alone produces the growth. "Night and day, whether he (the farmer) sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he doesn't know how. All by itself the soil produces grain -- first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head" (Mark 4:27-28). It is not our job to make disciples. Only God can do that. It is our job to scatter the seeds of faith, see to it that the plants get water and sun, and tend to the weeds that grow which try to choke out the growing plants. That's what nurture is all about.
Saint Paul puts is this way:
I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building. -- 1 Corinthians 3:6-9
When it comes to being God's fellow workers, the first thing to realize is that we are not in control of the growth. We are called to plant. God gives the growth. God gets the credit. We cannot boast about the success that comes when the seeds are planted. We must be very cautious about taking too much credit for apparent success in the spiritual area. A visitor to the Vatican was quite impressed with the beauty and power of the place. He asked Pope John XXIII this question: "How many people do you have working here?" With a twinkle in his eye, the pope replied, "About half of them." We must never get puffed up with ourselves in the spiritual realm. Only God produces growth. Real spiritual growth comes from God. We just plant seeds and try to nurture them as my farmer friends have taught me over the years.
Second, in both agriculture and spiritual growth, we discover that we are called to plant and nurture the field God gives us. The planting and nurturing can produce great growth if we are patient, hard-working farmers. A farmer was admiring the beautiful field of his neighbor, remembering that he had been told that the field used to be nothing but rocks and weeds. "George," he said, "look at how God has turned this field into a thing of beauty." "Yes," said George, "but you should have seen it when God had it alone." God alone gives the growth, but we have an important role as God's fellow workers to plant, nurture, and weed the field. This text is about our response as farmers in partnership with God. When this partnership works well, the growth of the word of God may be slow, but it can be highly productive. One of the places where we see this growth of the word is in the Christian family.
Hundreds of good Christian parents have told me that they are very concerned about their adult children who have stopped attending church and no longer practice the faith they learned in their homes. While this is a great concern, there really isn't much we can do to keep our children in the faith, once they are grown. We can plant the seeds and nurture them. We can weed the garden of faith when children are little, but we cannot guarantee that children will practice the faith when they grow up. Parents of small children have their work cut out for them today with so many pressures on families. Keeping families together, nurturing the children in the faith, and teaching the truths of Christ in the home as well as the church are essential in the times in which we live. The immorality in the world is frightening. The pull on children in our schools toward drinking, drugs, and immoral behavior is staggering. That's why the Christian home is so important. Weed pulling and positive influence in the Christian family cannot be overemphasized.
As parents plant the seeds of faith in their children, great growth is a possibility. The mother has a nurturing role in this growth. So does the father. One of the major problems in the modern home is the absence of a nurturing father. The immorality out there in the schools and the world is frightening. The absence of many fathers in today's home is alarming. David Blankenhorn of the Institute of American Values says:
Fatherlessness is ... the most important predictor of juvenile crime -- a greater predictor than either race or income. The major reason the ghettos are the focus of violent crime is that they have the highest rates of illegitimacy ...
So if we're worried about crime, there's something we can do about it: We can bring biblical ideals of marriage and family to our own neighborhoods, our own high schools.1
Since the 1960s, America has seen a staggering increase in broken families. Liberal social scientists don't like to use phrases like "broken families"; they glibly describe them in neutral terms like "new family forms" and "single-parent homes." But in the eyes of a child, what's nearly always happening is the loss of a father ... But a missing father means much more than a missing paycheck. A father's love and discipline are crucial to character formation. And for children growing up without that love, the statistics are grim. Fatherless children display more antisocial behavior, do worse in school, and are twice as likely to drop out than children from intact families. They are more likely to use drugs and become sexually active at an early age. Approximately seventy percent of juveniles who end up in long-term correctional facilities grew up without a father at home. There's a reason God created the family the way he did. Children need fathers as well as mothers in order to thrive. And even more important, in order to learn to trust God as their heavenly Father.2
How much nurture for growth is there among American fathers today? Not enough! With major credit to single family homes where the mother has to play both roles and/or find a father-figure to help with children, we focus today on the importance of the positive impact of the father who is truly present for the children and the negative impact of the absent father.
James Nestingen, a Lutheran theologian, recently remarked that each day the average American child spends six hours in front of the television which distorts reality, bringing violence and sex into little minds with major distortions. The average child in America averages only six seconds a day of personal time with his or her father. The importance of nurturing parents cannot be overemphasized today. But in the last analysis, even the best Christian parents can only plant the seeds and nurture them. We cannot assure that the seeds will grow to harvest. One child may get it; another may not. One child may become a minister; another a criminal. Some seeds do not bear fruit. Others grow quietly and slowly to maturity.
Third, I learned in farm communities that small beginnings can have great endings, like the mustard seed. Not all planted seeds grow to great maturity like the mustard seeds, but some do. These seeds start out very small, but when they mature they produce a bush which is large enough for the birds of the air to build a nest in. Growth in the kingdom of God which comes from scattered seeds, is quiet and slow but can produce great growth, growth beyond what we would predict. A little mustard seed can become a very large mustard bush with such big branches that the birds of the air can find shade there. Of course, a big bush is not the biggest thing in the world.
Texan was bragging to an Iowa farmer about how big his ranch had become. He looked at the 100-acre farm of his friend and said, "In Texas my ranch is so big that I can get in my car at 6 a.m. at one side of the ranch and by 6 p.m. I still haven't reached the other side. Now that is big!" The Iowa farmer replied, "I used to have a car like that too." When Jesus talks about the mustard seed and bush, he isn't bragging about how big his kingdom is geographically, but how important it can be. He's pointing to small beginnings which can have great endings.
Nurturing Christian witnesses and parents can and should scatter the small seeds of God's kingdom, nurture these seeds, and pull the weeds as best they can. Great growth is possible. The kingdom of God means growth like a seed entering and being nurtured in good soil so that it might mature. Christian maturity takes place by Christian witnesses and parents pointing to what Jesus did by suffering and dying for us on the cross. When the seed blossoms to maturity, it can be a thing of beauty. Small beginnings can have great endings.
Some years ago Charlie Miller was one of my poorer confirmation students. He just didn't seem to get the information I was teaching. He was a discipline problem. "Real thorny ground," I remember thinking when I thought about Charlie. His father had died when a jacked-up car fell on him and killed him. Charlie grew up in a fatherless home. His family was poor. Some of his brothers got in trouble with the law. Charlie passed the confirmation tests, but just barely. He got the memory work, but only with a lot of extra time I gave him. After he was confirmed and I moved on to another church, I thought very little about Charlie until I got a letter from him about twenty years after I taught the class in which he was a student. "You probably don't remember me," Charlie wrote, "but I recently read one of your books and I decided to write this letter. I want you to know that something you said to me in confirmation class years ago changed the course of my life. You said that Jesus points the arrow of justice at us and then runs ahead of the arrow, receives the arrow in our place and dies for us. You may not have realized it at the time, but that meant a lot to me because I was always getting into trouble and I knew I deserved only punishment. That stuck with me and eventually changed me. Thanks for planting the seeds of faith." Sincerely yours, The Reverend Charlie Miller
1. Quoted from Charles Colson, A Dangerous Grace (Dallas, Texas: Word, 1994), p. 189.
2. Op. cit., pp. 195-196.
3. Charlie Miller is a pseudonym for my young friend's real name.