The Thistle King

Scripture: The Third Sunday After Pentecost (Lectionary 11), A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Jesus Christ is our King. And indeed, He’s not just any king, but the one true King, the King of Kings. Yet in the Gospels nobody seems to recognize this because He doesn’t look like any of the sorts of kings they’ve been expecting, and His Kingdom hardly seems a proper kingdom at all. Imagine waiting for something for hundreds upon hundreds of years, only to have it show up in such a way that you can’t even recognize what it is. That’s the Kingdom of God.

Here’s the deal. Long ago, God chose the people of Israel to be His special possession. They had a mission that would result in God blessing all the peoples of the earth. And so, the people of Israel grew from one elderly couple into 12 tribes, then into a great nation, and finally into a true kingdom at the crossroads of the world. But that kingdom fell, and they lost everything: their land, their wealth, their temple, their army, even their king. They lost so much, in fact, that they thought they’d lost their God as well.

But new prophets arose with startling new revelations. As the people of Israel were led into exile in a foreign land, God went into exile with them. He remained faithful even to the people who had abandoned Him. They would be a new sort of kingdom now, a captive kingdom, standing as a light of truth among the nations. And the prophets promised that God had something big in store, something truly world-changing. Soon, they promised, God would gather His people back together and bring them home. And after a prophesied period of time—70 by seven years—God would send a new King from Heaven, a King unlike any other. And this King, this Messiah, would inaugurate the eternal Kingdom of God on earth.

Pretty exciting stuff, isn’t it? And some pretty wild promises. But one by one those promises were fulfilled and the prophecies came to pass. And so Israel returned home, returned to their land and their temple, and awaited the Messiah who would bring about the eternal Kingdom of God.

Now one of the Bible’s more common images for a kingdom is that of a tree. A great kingdom is like a great tree that towers high and mighty in the land. A great kingdom protects her vassals, as a great tree shelters birds. A great kingdom feeds and provides for her people, as a great tree produces good fruit. This is what God is talking about in our reading from Ezekiel this morning. “I bring low the high tree and make high the low,” sayeth the Lord. “I dry up the green tree and make the dry tree flourish.” So, even as the great kingdoms of the earth pass away, the Kingdom of God, seemingly small and dry, will grow lush and strong.

Jump forward now to the time of Jesus. The appointed period of waiting, the “70 weeks” of the prophet Daniel, have drawn to a close, and so—according to prophecy—the Messiah is scheduled to arrive at any moment to inaugurate God’s Kingdom. This is why, in the decades both before and after Jesus, everyone in the Holy Land seems so Messiah-crazed. People pop up all over the place, starting rebellions against the Roman Empire, claiming to be the Messiah and trying to establish the Kingdom of God by force. Theudas, Judas the Galilean, Bar Kochba—the messianic list goes on.

Then, right at the appointed hour, this Jesus fellow shows up, fresh out of the desert. John the Baptist, a powerful and famous preacher, practically hops up and down, yelling, “This is it! This is the guy! Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” And Jesus starts teaching with authority, healing the sick, performing great public miracles, even—good heavens—raising the dead. And they say that His birth was announced by a star, and they say that He has the blood of kings, and they say that even the winds and the seas obey His commands.

Jesus is a figure so astonishing, so remarkable, that people do not ask our Lord, “Who are you?” They ask, “What are you?” And so crowds follow Him everywhere, wondering, hoping, praying, that this Man, this Rabbi, might actually be the Messiah, the Christ of God. But if He is the Christ, then where is His Kingdom?

This is the crux, if you will, of Jesus’ ministry. People are more than willing to believe that He is the Messiah, the Son of David. They proclaim this in droves. That’s what terrifies Herod. That’s what worries the Great Sanhedrin. That’s what antagonizes Rome—another Messiah, another rebel, another would-be-king. But He doesn’t act like a king. Where is His army? Where is His sword? “Are you a king?” Pilate asks Jesus at His trial. “You say that I am,” Jesus replies. “But my Kingdom is not of this world.”

Kingship is what gets Jesus killed, mind you. Rome crucifies Him for being “King of the Jews,” as it says on the Cross. And Judas—poor, wicked Judas—Judas betrays Jesus, it seems clear to me, in order to force His hand. Judas knows that Jesus is the Christ; he knows that Jesus has come to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. But Judas is an Iscariot, a guerrilla fighter—a terrorist, if you will. He wants to see Jesus fight. He wants to see Jesus call down fire from Heaven and legions of angels. That’s the Kingdom he’s been expecting, been fighting for, all this time.

And when that doesn’t happen, when instead he watches the one true King suffer and die upon the Cross, he is so shattered by the magnitude of his sin that he renounces the blood money and hangs himself. Judas desperately yearned for the Kingdom of God—unfortunately, his was a very different Kingdom than the one God sent.

In our Gospel reading this morning, a large crowd has gathered themselves around Jesus, asking the same thing that everyone asks: “Are you the Messiah? Where then is the Kingdom we have come to expect?” And Jesus replies in parables. “The Kingdom of God,” He says, “is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all seeds on the earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

Mustard? Who’s talking about mustard? Is this some kind of joke? We want cedars, Jesus. We want great kingdoms. The greatest of shrubs is still a shrub, isn’t it?

Now, many exegetes studying this parable will tell us that the lesson is simply this: that great things often have small beginnings. A mustard seed is just 0.075 inches in diameter, yet can grow to be anywhere from six to 12 to even 15 feet tall! Not bad for a little herb, wouldn’t you say? That makes for a pretty good tree after all. Font and Table, Word and Sacrament, may not seem as decisive or powerful as raising armies and waging war, but in time it will lead to the Kingdom of God on earth. That’s not a bad lesson, as far as it goes. But there’s more to this parable.

Mustard, mind you, is an unclean plant. For the Jewish people, the Israelites of the Bible, ritual cleanliness and right order represent holiness, the harmony of God’s Creation. Messiness and disorder, meanwhile, represent unholy chaos. Mustard is a chaotic plant, an unclean plant, and observant Jews were instructed to keep it out of their gardens, because once it gets in there, it gets everywhere. It’s like thistles or creeping Charlie, only far worse. It takes over where it is unwanted. You can uproot it, burn it, stomp it out, but it just pops up again a little further on.

Even though it seems weak, yielding, puny, unwanted, nevertheless its progress is inexorable. It’s a weed. It will take over, slowly and gently, no matter how you oppose it, no matter how it offends you. And that, right there, is the Kingdom of God. Armies can be crushed, blades can be broken, but weeds just keep on growing. You can’t kill something that keeps rising from the dead.

Let’s put this parable another way.

The Kingdom of God is like a starfish that was eating a fisherman’s clams. The fisherman caught the starfish and cut it in pieces, and threw the pieces into the sea. And each piece became a new starfish.

The Kingdom of God is like a lone dandelion that a man uprooted from the grass, and as he did so it released dozens of seeds throughout his lawn.

The Kingdom of God is like a long-expected King who finally came home, only to have no one recognize Him. So they put Him to death on a Cross, and figured that was that. But what they had thought was the end of the King was only the beginning of His Kingdom.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.