This evening we looked at another question Jesus asked, this time about the kingdom of God: ‘What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it?’ (Mark 4:30) It’s fitting to think about the topic of the kingdom of God on Palm Sunday, for it was on that day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling prophecy (Zech 9:9) and in this manner proclaiming that He was God’s Messiah (see Mark 11:9-10), yet showing us that His kingdom would not be like everyone expected.
To answer this question, Jesus told parables. A parable is ‘a simple story used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.’ It deals with a concrete story: a farmer sowing seed, a woman searching for a coin, a shepherd looking for a sheep, a business man selling a field to go and buy something more valuable. On the surface level, a parable is easy to understand because it’s telling a story about things we easily understand. Because of this, we are drawn into the story, and we become engaged in it. But a parable has a punch line which leaves us understanding that there is much more to the story than seems at first sight.
Jesus tells a number of parables in Mark 4. He starts with the Parable of the Sower, one of the most famous parables, and goes on to talk about the parable of the growing seed and of the mustard seed; in the parallel chapter in Matthew’s Gospel (Matt 13), He also tells parables about a fishing net and hidden treasure. In each of these stories, we hear the phrase ‘this is what the kingdom of God is like’ (Mark 4:26) or ‘the kingdom of heaven is like…’ (Matt 13:31, 33, 44, 45, 47) This figure of speech is known as a simile, where we compare two things and say one is like something else, and this kind of comparison helps us to understand spiritual truth by comparing it to something ordinary.
The Parable of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29) reminds us that God is at work all the time in our world, even if we don’t see this easily or understand how He works. We have a role to play in God’s kingdom; we are co-workers with God, Paul says, but at the end of the day, God is the one who makes things grow. (1 Cor 3:6-7) God is in control. He is building His church and His kingdom. (Matt 16:18)
In the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Mark 4:31-32), Jesus reminds us that the kingdom of God may not look much – a mustard seed is tiny – but will grow and flourish. Growth is hard-wired into our universe by God, and we need to understand the difference between what we plant and what we reap (see 1 Cor 15:36-38). Growth happens in the natural world through apparent death: you plant a seed and see nothing for weeks or months. Yet in due time, God will bring growth out of this planting, and we will see something completely different to what we planted. Similarly, the work God is doing in the world is often invisible to the natural eye and bears little resemblance to what we imagine.
The kingdom of God doesn’t necessarily look very impressive. It’s not full of ‘pomp and circumstance’. It’s not like the royal pageantry we are used to, with golden carriages, crowns, jewels, magnificent clothing.) The kingdom of God is a topsy-turvy kingdom, where values and principles are not necessarily what we would expect, but where God is at work in the humble and servant-like attitudes of the King who rode on a donkey.