A sermon preached at Croydon Minster on 2nd Sunday after Trinity. Readings: Ezekiel 17.22-end; Mark 4.26-34
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What is the
Kingdom of God like?
The Kingdom
of God is a major concept in the teaching of Jesus. It sounds like a place or
destination, but Jesus is clear it’s not like that. Or it sounds like a
monarchy, the Kingdom of God, but
it’s not to be confused with the trappings of royal power.
Perhaps the
Kingdom of God is better thought of as the ‘reign of God’ or the ‘time of God’.
The time of
God is both internal - within you – and external, a social and practical reality;
it’s here already but yet fully to be revealed; it straddles earth and heaven:
hence Jesus teaches us to pray, ‘Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven’.
In finding
out what the Kingdom might look like Jesus gives us the parables. These are short
stories and images from which we can extract deeper meaning. They speak to our
imaginations and hearts first of all. Intellectual dissection of them deadens
their impact. Just go with them!
The
parables give us perspectives on the Kingdom and glimpses of it. ‘What can I
compare the Kingdom to,’ Jesus asks, ‘what can I say it’s like? Well, it’s as
if…’
A parable
is Jesus’ way of saying ‘come with me into the reign and time of God’.
Today we’re
given seeds; sprouting seeds; growing seeds; fruitful seeds.
Much of the
growth of a seed is utterly unseen, hidden. Deep and sustaining spiritual growth
happens hidden and unseen from the world, even from ourselves.
This deep
growth is rooted in prayer and faithful understanding of God’s purpose. Like
the seed underground it grows despite our activity, or lack of. It’s this
spirit that monastic and religious communities adopt. It’s a feature of the
monastic life. As a contemplative community of nuns, the Trappistines, says of
their life: ‘ordinary, obscure, laborious’.
Our Church
of England has been seduced, in recent years, into thinking that glitzy,
eye-catching growth is what it’s all about. We have become a church obsessed
with harvest and not with the sowing of the seed and the deep patient growth
associated with it.
TS Eliot
said, ‘Take no thought of the harvest but only of the proper sowing’. We’re not
in a high yield results game, but about the Kingdom of God, and that needs proper
sowing and cultivation.
Deep roots
make for greater growth.
And at the
end the harvest is undertaken, not by a ‘grim reaper’, but by Jesus Christ who
celebrates the fruitfulness of the adoration of God, acts of love and mercy,
moments of revealing the light and presence of God in dark and despairing
situations: the time of God.
That
fruitfulness comes from patient, prayerful growth: ordinary; hidden; unseen.
This first
parable tells us that God’s Kingdom, and being part of it, is about growth with
deep roots.
After all,
a tree can grow a huge canopy, but without deep roots it has no anchor in the
storm and it topples over or in a drought has nothing to draw on.
That’s true
of each of us and the church. Without deep roots we topple over, we whither,
and this leads to spiritual death. Prayer, faithful receiving of the
sacraments, adoration of Christ deepens those roots.
The second
parable assumes those deep roots but focuses more on the canopy of the tree.
But first
it tells us that great things can come from small beginnings. We see that in
Christ. The helpless baby in the manger, is the cosmic Saviour of the world! Twelve
disciples propel the Gospel to the ends of the earth. St Therese of Lisieux
encourages us: ‘do little things with great love’.
We also
learnt that the canopy of the great tree doesn’t just exist for the benefit of
the tree. Of course, the branches and leaves exist both to keep the tree alive
– photosynthesis and all that – but they also exist to provide shelter to those
outside themselves.
In the
parable the birds of the air make nests in the shade of its branches. What a
beautiful image of the hospitality the church is called to give to people,
shading them from the heat of the day and scorching sun. Helping them find their place in the Kingdom of God.
How can we
give shade in the scorching sun to the person who is a refugee, homeless, a
spiritual searcher, a fugitive or someone whose life has messed up beyond
recognition?
These two
little parables speak of us being, like a tree, rooted in reality, in the
earth, and yet reaching to the heavens.
The cross
on which Christ died is similarly planted in the earth and yet reaches to the
heavens. Christ’s humanity and divinity laid bare before us.
The arms of
Jesus Christ stretched out on that cross, become like branches that invite us
to shelter under the canopy of God.
His loving,
Sacred Heart wounded and bleeding for us is revealed to the world so that
‘Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith – so that being rooted and
grounded in love, [we] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what
is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge, that [we] may be filled with all the fullness of God’
(Ephesians 3.17-19).
This
reality and mystery we meet now in receiving his body and blood in the Blessed
Sacrament and so doing we are standing in the Kingdom, the reign, the time of
God.
Here are
some words of the prophet Jeremiah to conclude:
Blessed are those who
trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree
planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when
heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it
is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17.7-8)
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