The Kingdom of God is Like an Invasive Weed.

“The kingdom of God is like…” and the listeners lean forward with baited breath, wondering what Jesus - the one who is ushering in the kingdom of God - to hear what the kingdom of God is like.  And Jesus continues:  “The kingdom of God is like an invasive weed.”  It would be much easier Mark talked about it being like a treasure in a field someone hid or a priceless pearl or a net that caught fish of every kind in it, but no, the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed - an invasive weed that people do not want on their property.

Though it sounds much nicer to call it a treasure or a pearl or a net that catches lots of fish, I actually like the imagery of it being a mustard seed.  I think it tells the truth about the kingdom of God in a way that no other story tells the truth about the kingdom of God.  This itty bitty little seed grows into a plant that is nearly impossible to get rid of. 

The thing about mustard plants is that they aren’t particularly wanted and they aren’t particularly attractive.  And here’s where I like the parable: it gives me hope for all of us.  The kingdom of God, so often, is something that seems so far away, so other, something that we can only dream of and tell ourselves that it is the place where none of the stuff that we deal with on earth exists.  We make the kingdom of God into our own idea of utopia.  How often do we imagine that the kingdom of God is the place where good is rewarded and evil is punished?  How often do we imagine the kingdom of God is the place where Jesus has finally taken care of all or our enemies? 

Ah, but Jesus does not say, “The kingdom of God is like the judicial system,” or, “The kingdom of God is like something that you can relate to.”  I think this is why, when the kingdom of God comes up, Jesus tells us about these zany situations and speaks in parables.  My grandfather was a farmer.  He could - and would - tell you it would be sheer craziness to simply walk outside his back door and throw corn seeds all over the place.  It is sheer foolishness.  It is also foolishness to liken the kingdom of God to an invasive weed.  It’s disrespectful.  But Jesus doesn’t say, “The kingdom of God is like corn planted neatly in rows.”  He doesn’t say “The kingdom of God is like something that makes sense.”

Jesus may as well have said, “The kingdom of God is like algebra.”  Good luck.  Since it’s Father’s Day, and since my dad is here, I should probably take advantage of the situation and tell a story about him.  When I was in 8^th grade, I took algebra.  My dad spent countless hours and countless nights after school trying to teach me how letters could represent numbers and wracking his brain trying to figure out how to make me understand that the rules of algebra were different than the rules I had known up to now for math.  Finally, out of sheer desperation, he said, “Mandy, the rules don’t have to make sense.” 

The truth is that we want it to make sense.  We want God to work the way we work and the kingdom of God to work like a sort of tally sheet in which we can total up the good marks and bad marks and figure out how we measure up, where addition and subtraction are sufficient for understanding how it works.  Instead, Jesus tells us the kingdom of God is like an invasive weed.

You, dear brothers and sisters, are like little invasive weeds that God planted in the world.  And it doesn’t make sense.  You’re supposed to sound a little crazy because this God of our sounds a little crazy.  I can just see God with a bag full of weed seeds, throwing them about the earth, giggling like a schoolgirl, “Wonder what they’ll do with these!”

Paul gets it right.  Not even speaking in complete sentences, with complete disregard for good grammar, he says: “If someone is in Christ, NEW CREATION!”  I can almost hear him laughing as the words leave his mouth.  I imagine him preaching, watching people falling asleep just as he’s getting going and says, “If someone is in Christ,” (yawn) “NEW CREATION.”  The lady who has been nodding off since the second hymn stands up in the middle of church, opening her hymnal because she figures she's been sleeping about that long.  This is like nothing we have ever seen.

All of you: NEW CREATION!  You have been made new.  It’s so hard to believe that we have been made new when everything around us looks the same as it did before.  That’s the thing about faith.  On the one hand, everything looks the same as it did before this insidious little weed came into your life, but on the other hand, everything has changed.  Your life has been claimed.  Your death has been claimed.  Your lives are no longer your own.  If your death belongs to Christ, so then does your life.  If Jesus has decided that the kingdom of God is like an invasive weed, we had better all make our peace with a God that is so foreign, so other, that we cannot begin to understand Him.

Everything has been made new.  What sort of God looks at a mustard seed and says, “Yes, my kingdom is like that.”  Or what sort of God looks at people who not able not to sin and says, “Yes, I think I will work through those.”  Truly, God looks at you and yells, “NEW CREATION.”  On some level, I don’t think he had a choice.  Whether you feel as though God has made you new or not, you are a new creation.  Even if it seems like nothing in your external life has changed, the kingdom of God starts springing up all around you.  And strangely, it is when everything seems to be going crazy and spinning out of control, it is in these very moments that we are called to look around us for God at work.  The kingdom of God is like an invasive weed.  You, dear brothers and sisters, are like mustard seeds.  The mustard seed looks at it self and says, “But I’m just a mustard seed.”  God looks at a mustard seed and chuckles and says, “Yes, I like it.”  You have a God who, out of sheer extravagance, throws the seeds of the kingdom all around us.  God looks at a bunch of mustard seeds and, instead of making the mustard seeds something different, looks at them and proclaims them a new creation.

What makes it new?  It certainly isn’t us.  We come, broken and empty-handed, realizing that we have nothing to offer, and receive more than what we could have ever asked for.  God knows that you’ll forget that you have been made new.  That is why the seeds of the kingdom have been planted all around you so that, when you least expect it, the Word and work of God springs up in your life.  It is at the very moment when you are ready to throw up your hands and leave it all behind that God, laughing to himself, yells “NEW CREATION!”  Not even able to complete his sentences for the joy of having been made new, St. Paul gets it right.  In Christ, all is new.  The kingdom of God, indeed, is like an invasive weed.  Our foolish God has sewn these seeds all over creation out of sheer extravagance and love and knowing that if he told us once or even a thousand times, it would never make sense to us because, finally, the love that makes you new, that gives forgiveness over and over and loves despite all our faults, is a love that you cannot fathom or manufacture.  This love blows your expectations and your ideas of how God and the kingdom of God ought to work out of the water.  This is the love that would look at a mustard seed people and say, “Yes, the kingdom of God is like that…” and laughs with the whole heaven at the delightful absurdity of it all.  Our God is completely ridiculous… and has invited you to join with the laughter of all creation out of the sheer joy of God having made it so.