When we zoom in on one passage of the Bible, as we often do, it is easy for us to lose sight of the big picture of our story, the story of God and his love for each of us. It’s rare that we get to zoom out to see more clearly the heart of the story of God’s love for us. So before we get out the microscope to zoom in on the small mustard seed from today’s Gospel reading, let us first zoom out to see how Jesus’ mustard seed parable fits into the bigger picture story.
Getting back to very good. At the beginning of the Bible, God created Adam out of the dust. God takes something as small as a speck of dust from the ground and turns it into being part of something much bigger. From the dust, he lifts up the lowly. God then breathed life into this being made in his own image and likeness and created Adam. What did God say after creating man in this state of original blessing? God said this of his creation, it was very good.
Then the devil comes on the scene and tries to deceive Adam and Eve into settling for good enough. The devil plants the weed of unbelief in our human hearts and Adam and Eve sin turning away from God.
From that moment on, God has been trying to get things back to very good with us. God is willing to do whatever it takes for each of us to get back to very good with him. After Adam and Eve sinned, they were misled into thinking it was a good idea to hide from God in the Garden of Eden. Every time we have sinned since, we have been misled further into hiding until we find ourselves feeling completely lost as if we are in a forest wondering how in the world we got here. The good news is that God has been pursuing each of us much like a father on a rescue mission for his lost child.
As he approaches us, like a good father who wants to connect with his children, God comes down to our level. He meets us where we’re at. So since Adam was formed by God out of the ground, Jesus uses this word “ground” to represent each of us in his mustard seed parable and Jesus is represented as the small mustard seed coming down to our level.
It’s really quite remarkable that our God, who is immeasurable in all his greatness, humbled himself to share in our humanity by becoming small like a mustard seed, which can be measured in millimeters. In trying to describe the Kingdom of God to his disciples, Jesus says it is like this mustard seed, which is one of the smallest objects that the disciples would have been familiar with. The human equivalent of the mustard seed that disciples would have understood was a baby. This is how God enters into our world to be with us, in a small way, in the person of baby Jesus.
So Jesus as the small mustard seed comes down to our ground level, because God wants us to be just like we were originally, ground he can use to bring us into becoming fully alive. By being fertile soil, we can receive the small mustard seed of Jesus into our lives like a child receives a gift from the father.
But the devil who appeared in the Garden as a serpent continues to try to slither back into our lives, doesn’t he? The devil wants nothing more than to keep us separated from God. The devil wants us to remain lifeless ground and for Jesus who surrendered his life for us to remain buried. The serpent wants to have dominion over us and Jesus so he can slither over top of us for all eternity.
But God has a different plan. While God was willing to make himself small to meet us at our level, he didn’t intend to stay small forever. It was precisely out of the depths of death, of being buried, that Jesus rises and makes life spring forth. Jesus, in all his smallness, was and is meant to be planted in the fertile soil of our lives so Jesus can help each of us grow into a deeper, fuller and more expansive relationship with God.
One of our Church fathers, St. Athanasius, puts it this way, “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” You see, we were made for the Kingdom of God. This kingdom of God is the reuniting of God and humanity. We see this uniting of God and humanity in the person of Jesus. We see God and humanity coming together in his church and its sacraments. Each of us also hope to see our own humanity reunited with God in heaven to go home to the Lord, using the words we heard from St. Paul today. This is how we find our way back to very good. This is how we find our way back home, the home of God’s family. God the Father wants his family and all those who are a part of it to thrive. The Kingdom of God thrives on the faith of its inhabitants.
So today, let us give thanks to God the Father for giving us this home in which to worship and encounter him. Today, we honor God who loves each us for who we are, his beloved sons and daughters. God, being the good Father he is knows the best gift he can give his children is a sibling, so we thank God for giving us the gift of his son Jesus. Today, we also express our gratitude for all those who have served as good earthly fathers in our lives, especially those who have helped plant and cultivate the mustard seed of Jesus into the soil of our lives. And today, we ask God to help the mustard seed of Jesus grow in each us so that our lives produce more mustard seeds to be planted in the lives of others. After all, this is the end of our story of getting back to very good with God.
Year B 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, #fathersday June 17, 2018, Mark 4:26-34
