Fellow-Redeemed,
St. Augustine observed that the spiritual world often mirrors the visible world. With that shared insight, our Savior often taught by parables. These back-to-back parables about church growth in the correct sense mirror the secret and significant growth of seeds.
The false premise is lurking around parts of visible Christianity that the church grows via human dynamics, or people power. In a sense, we would have to say that is true. Jesus’ parables are not addressing the church in its numerical growth as a visible organization. They address the kingdom of God, or the invisible body of all believers in Christ. The communion of saints does not grow by any sense through people power. The power of growth lies only in the gospel of Christ just as the power of growth lies only in the seed.
This parable pair is the text for the first sermon I wrote in the Seminary. This is not the same sermon. Jesus’ lesson is the same, however. For our theme on the Lord’s words, we repeat his question, “What Shall We Say the Kingdom of God is Like? First, it is like the seed that grows secretly; second, it is like the small seed that grows into a large plant.
There is a difference in meaning in the two parables. The first speaks about the inner unseen growth that takes place in the seed. We could call that secret growth from seed through stalk to head then grain. The second speaks to the relative size from small seed to large plant, the mustard seed in Jesus’ example.
The kingdom of God our Savior teaches us about here is not a place with visible demarcation lines. It is not a synod, denomination, or church body. The kingdom of God is Jesus rule over the heart of the believer through the gospel of forgiveness. When we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come,’ we are asking God to call unbelievers to faith by the means of grace and to strengthen and preserve believers’ hearts in faith by the means of grace. Our Father in heaven answers that prayer as he sends his Holy Spirit through the gospel in Word and sacrament and achieves real church growth in hearts.
This creating and preserving in faith is something we cannot see as the Spirit does his work in hearts. That mirrors the farmer who scatters the seed, sleeps and gets up, goes about his daily chores as inwardly and secretly the seed comes to life to produce the stalk then head then grain. We Christians scatter the seed of full forgiveness for all of our sins in Christ. We sleep and get up and go about our daily labors as the Holy Spirit brings to life faith in unbelieving hearts converting them to Christ. We cannot see the Holy Spirit doing his work but we know he is as that word of forgiveness comes to us and preserves us in faith. Can you see the Spirit strengthening your fellow believers’ faith as they receive the true body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sin in the Lord’s Supper then return to their chairs? Can they see that in you? No, but “this is what the kingdom of God is like.”
This parable explains the difference between Lutherans and other Christians. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Jesus’ blood cleanses us from all sins, as Nathan told David. This gospel is the powerful seed that produces the crop of faith with all of its fruits. The gospel is not merely information that first I must understand with my human reason then decide to accept or not. The gospel is not merely the historical will of men and councils in a visible church set above God’s Word; a collective will, they say, I must follow and confess in order to be saved.
Jesus follows this parable with one about a different aspect of the kingdom of God’s growth. What is the kingdom of God like? “It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.”
The kingdom of God started out in the hearts of two believers, Adam and Eve. They believed the promise we heard last week. God told Satan he would crush Satan’s head, his power, but to do that Satan would bruise the heal of Eve’s seed, Jesus, God’s eternal Son in the flesh. From God’s garden in Eden, most likely in present day Iraq, the kingdom of God, the holy Christian Church, has grown into the large plant of the universal church spread across the face of the globe. It knows no boundaries of geography, race, or language.
After Pentecost, believers took the gospel seed with its secret inner power and scattered it across their homelands so that the small church grew larger and larger. More and more sinners like the Ninevites, also in Iraq, repented of their sins, heard other Jonahs and with hearts trusting in Jesus’ cross and empty tomb were saved. In the early centuries after Jesus’ Ascension and Pentecost, there were Christians from Palestine to China. Christians lived all along the northern coast of Africa. Finally, the church expanded into Europe and the Americas.
Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed was his promise to the disciples that their work would not be in vain. The twelve and others would know that the Great Commission Jesus would later give them was not only possible and laudable but also actual. The promise remains true as the Holy Spirit continues to add daily to the church those who are being saved. The mustard tree may not be a cedar in Lebanon but the church continues to grow large branches so that sinners of all kinds can rest in her branches.
Jesus knew his Old Testament. He here refers back to the prophet Ezekiel about church growth. God promised through Ezekiel to the exiles in Babylon, “I myself will take a shoot from the top of a cedar…and I will plant it; it will produce branches and bear fruit and become a splendid cedar. Birds of every kind will nest in it; they will find shelter in the shade of its branches.” 17:22, 23 From that small remnant of the church the New Testament church continues to grow large.
Luther said we should pray the Lord’s Prayer daily. That would include of course, Your Kingdom Come. What a good prayer even though the kingdom will come even without our prayer. With our petition, we acknowledge to God that we will not be lazy in our sowing and only trust in the gospel’s power to sprout and grow the kingdom of God just as Jesus promised. Amen. <SDG>