Jesus
said to the crowds: “This is how it is with the kingdom of God; it is as if a
man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day and
through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own
accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full
grain in the ear. And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for
the harvest has come.”
Mark 4
Christians
often talk about their obligation to bring about the Kingdom of God on
Earth. In this reading, however, Jesus
seems to be saying we can relax and let it take care of itself. This may seem like inexcusable sloth and the
result of learned helplessness in the face of an enormous task. What ever happened to lighting a candle
instead of cursing the darkness?
I
believe this supports one of the primary ideas of this blog (and my book): The Gospels
and the Old Testaments are principally concerned with describing God’s morality, not commanding our morality. In this passage, God is describing what He
will do and expressly inviting us to stand down, not to get in the way, to
avoid causing collateral damage (as in the Parable of the Weeds and the Wheat),
and that we need do nothing but be still (to quote Exodus).
This
is only the first half of the Gospel reading for this week. I explored the second half, the Parable of
the Mustard Seed – but as told by Matthew, in my July 20, 2017 post. That post is quickly becoming the most
popular in the three-year history of this blog, threatening to overtake even
provocatively entitled blogs like “Predestination” (July 25, 2017) and “Proof
of God’s Existence” (April 21, 2017).
Image: The Jordan River
