26 He also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” 30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.” 33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.
In this Sunday’s gospel we have two parables which tell us what the kingdom of God is like. God’s kingdom will arrive when God takes control of this world when, as we say in the “Our Father”, “thy will” is “done on earth as it is in heaven”. The vision of farming here is absurd: the farmer plants the seed and then does nothing until the harvest. Obviously, no real farm would survive this way. Jesus is not giving us a treatise on agriculture but rather a picture of how God works in this world. The focus is on the seed which contains within itself the ability to grow. The farmer knows the seed will grow but neither causes it to do so nor can he explain it. The development seems to happen automatically.
Jesus has proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God, but his disciples must be wondering why it does not seem to be happening. Here, Jesus seems to tell them that it will happen in God’s good time, which is not that of humans. We can do nothing either to hinder it or to help it and must leave everything to God. This is the essential lesson of the first parable.
But, of course, the best way to interpret the Bible is through other passages of the Bible and in other places Jesus sends his followers out to preach the word. So, the message here is not what it may at first appear to be. God’s subjects do have a significant role in spreading the word and should do so. Jesus’ point seems to be that we should not imagine that we can take over God’s work or that we can do everything for him. We cannot make God irrelevant through our actions and must be humble about our own role. It is his power, not ours, that will bring the kingdom into full existence. So we must proceed with our task with humility but we must also be confident that the harvest will come. God himself will produce it.
The second parable concerns the tiny mustard seed which, in Palestine, can grow to a height of three meters. Jesus uses this fact to illustrate the kingdom of God. It may look unimpressive at the start but great things will happen. Probably few people at the time saw the kingdom of God breaking into our world through a rag-tag group of villagers wandering around the countryside. Jesus’ relatively poor and uneducated followers had little power so they seemed unlikely candidates to change the world. Mark shows us clearly that few understood the importance of what was going on. Many of those outside the disciples discounted the movement while those within it were impatient to see change – particularly the change that they wanted. Mark’s point here, once again, is that God moves in his own way and does not follow our timeline. But the seed will grow.
The final verses of this section repeat what we’ve already been told: Jesus tells parables to everyone but leaves the explanations only for the disciples. We might be tempted to think that Jesus does not want everyone to understand, that he wants some people outside, but Mark adds the phrase: “as much as they could understand”. This echoes the parable of the sower and the ability of people to really listen.
As one scholar has pointed out, Mark gives us a threefold progression in responding to the word. First we must hear the word, then accept it and then we will bear fruit. This is a model for true discipleship. If we follow the model of Jesus we will bear a bountiful harvest. And yet evil still exists for we live between the resurrection and the second coming, between the planting and the harvest. The kingdom is here and yet its full manifestation is in the future. We are living in the now and the not yet. However, there are great grounds for hope, for the future will be so much greater than the present (which is also Paul’s point in the second reading). There is a contrast between appearance and reality for the seed is growing, even if it is not always obvious to the eye.
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