Sermon: The Kingdom of God

Do you have any secrets?

If you find out there is a secret the first thing you want to do is get in on it. If you sense someone is not telling you something you automatically want to know what it is, don’t you?

A parable is a kind of secret. It’s a sort of riddle. It’s a funny story, a story with meaning. It is a way of saying something controversial. It’s a way of saying something without actually saying it – like a secret code. It is a way of “reflecting” reality back to people. It is a way of questioning the truth. It is all of these things and more.

But, why did Jesus have to speak in parables, in riddles? Why could he not just have spoken plain sense, easy to understand, straight forward stuff?

Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God; which is a riddle in itself. “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like...?” (Mark 4.30) he says.

The kingdom of God? What is a king?

The kingdom of God, or the reign of God, is a riddle in itself; what kind of a king is God? Where is God’s reign, where is God’s rule felt, where is God’s taxation? How does one serve as a loyal subject of God?

I had a splendid lunch with some farmers this week who were explaining, for me, all sorts of farming realities. Like the economic annual cycle of arable farming and the monthly milk cheque. This meeting for lunch had come about partly due to the collapse of the cooperative, “Dairy Farmers of Britain,” a cooperative of 18,000 milk suppliers.

And in the conversation about profit and yield and production I started to wonder what the Church was producing; what is the Church attempting to plant, what is the Church looking to harvest (harvest being a very biblical theme). What kind of profit is the Church after I wondered? And the answer came in the readings for this week in the season of Pentecost.

The Church is after the Kingdom of God. Or, in translation: “the reign of God,” the place where God is, and has dominion; the time when God makes things happen and is known.

As R.S Thomas wrote in his poem entitled The Kingdom:

It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on:

Festivals at which the poor man

Is king and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off, but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you will purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.

R.S. Thomas

And as you can appreciate the kingdom of God is not as “clear cut” as the business of agriculture, or any business for that matter, although Jesus himself talked about the reign of God in agricultural terms.

When Jesus talks of the kingdom of God he is alluding to something. He is alluding to something which cannot be said. Something which has to be discovered for oneself, something beyond words.

What do we notice about the reign of God from today’s readings? (Ezekiel 17.22-24, Mark 4.26-34)

It is not something spectacular or impressive, far from it. The mustard seed is the smallest seed. It is not even something very noticeable: “A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows...” (Mark 4.26, 27) He doesn’t even know how it grows, he doesn’t understand.

It is quite clear that God’s ways, the reign of God, is something we just cannot control. It seems that is has nothing at all to do with our efforts

(how radical that sounds to a society obsessed with doing things and controlling things, risk assessing things and setting targets)

“All by itself the soil produces corn – first the stalk, then the ear, then the full grain...” (Mark 4.28)

Could we dare to loose control of our lives so that God can reign? Could we get behind the riddle of the kingdom of God and stay there, in communion with God? Could we tease others into greater communion with God “through” the riddle of the kingdom of God?