A sermon for Pride Month on Mark 4:26-34 🌈

Mark 4:26-34.

My eldest daughter has a new friend, whom she met at college. This friend is gay. My daughter told this friend that I’m training to be a priest in the Church of England, to which the friend replied, with dismay:  “I guess I won’t ever be welcome at your house then.”

Such is the perception of some LGBT people to Christians and the church. All are welcome, we are frequently heard to say, but is that true? And if it’s not, why not? It’s a discomforting thought. It certainly disrupted my perception of myself, my role in the church and what my calling might be to help change that perception.

We start like Jesus did; by telling and sharing stories that are unafraid to challenge, discomfit and disrupt. Parables. Riddles. Stories within stories. Coded tales. Lessons that are varied and contextual, that contain references that are alien to us. In-jokes that would have made sense to Jesus’ audience, but which we often fail to understand. At once complex and deceptively obvious, parables were used widely in ancient times to teach and to entertain. 

There are around 55 examples of parables in the gospels and the variety of them tells us something key about the nature of Jesus. He was no didactic, moralising autocrat, teaching strict lists of Do’s and Don’ts.   Instead he is playful in his teaching and patient. He wants us to reflect on and unpack what he’s trying to say. He wants us to come to our own conclusions and learn to think for ourselves. His parables are a gradual unveiling of a series of truths, rather than a sharp blow to the head with a rule book. 

The key point to remember about parables is that they are contextual, meaning they include references and themes that would have been recognisable and familiar to Jesus’ 1^st century audience, but perhaps aren’t as recognisable to us. So we have plenty of references to farming, to sowing seeds, plants and trees. Things that an agrarian population who lived off the land would have been all too familiar with. 

The two parables we heard today are about The Kingdom of Heaven. What is this kingdom? What does it feel like? How will we recognise it when we experience it? To use Jesus language, how can we cultivate it? 

The Kingdom of God is like a growing seed, Jesus says. It is sown and it grows for that is its nature. Its growth isn’t due to us or our efforts, though we can help by providing the right conditions for it to grow. What kind of seed is it? Presumably it’s not like the Himalayan poppy seeds I once tried to grow, which had to be propagated in the fridge and never, ever grew for me.

No, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. This could refer to two types of plant that we know grew in the area Jesus lived and walked. It could be the Brassica Nigra plant, or black mustard seed, which was a common crop. However, this plant didn’t grow into a tree – ‘the largest of all garden plants.’ 

Perhaps Jesus is talking about salvadora persica, which is like mustard but it grows into a large tree. Crucially, this plant can grow wild and once it is cultivated it behaves a lot like mint, or Japanese knotweed. In other words, when it takes hold it spreads irrepressibly all over the place, and is nigh on impossible to get rid of.

Isn’t that a wonderful analogy for the Kingdom of God? It’s not that it starts out small and becomes big, it is an invasive plant that repels all efforts to vanquish it and instead grows and spreads. Even when you think it’s gone, back up it comes, rejecting all attempts to prune or tame it. It is wild, unpredictable and unstoppable. 

Curiously, this kingdom tree has ‘such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.’ Very curious, because though I may have a limited knowledge of farming, I’m pretty sure you want to actively discourage birds from coming onto your plot, isn’t that why we have scarecrows? To stop the birds from coming and sharing the seeds and the crops? 

But the kingdom of God is like an invasive plant that grows so big that it attracts those who we might not want around; those characters who we have shunted to the margins perhaps. Those who we have excluded. Those who we have made to feel unwelcome. This kingdom tree opens its branches wide open and invites the unwanted in, because it knows they are not a threat. This tree – this kingdom - it is shelter. It is sanctuary. It is home. 

No, my daughter told her gay friend. My mum might be a Christian, she might be training to be a priest, but you are very welcome to come to our house. Come. Be welcomed. Make yourself at home. 

Church, let us be a place where we share stories that disrupt and unsettle. Let us be a people who provide shelter for the lonely and dispossessed, the people who are outcasts, pushed out to the margins because they don’t represent the norm. Let us be a people who are unafraid to pull the tent pegs up and out to stretch the canvas and make room for newcomers. Let us prioritise loving welcome and inclusion before anything else, and let that attitude spread vigorously so it covers the entire plot; so that it grows upwards to touch the sky, and then let us tie a rainbow ribbon to the very highest branch, a beacon for all to see, a symbol of hope that says ‘Come. Make yourself at home. You are so welcome here.’ Amen. 

Bibliography

Gooder, P. The Parables (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 2020.)