The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 6B - The Rev. Jennifer B. Cleveland 6.16.24
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, Psalm 20, 2 Corinthians 5:6-10 [11-13] 14-17 Mark 4: 26-34

About ten years ago, Dr. David Haskell, a biologist at the University of the South who studies forest ecosystems, decided to mark out a circular meter in the old-growth forest on the Western slope of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee and spend a year observing that one small patch. He wanted to see what he might learn by focusing on a demarcated spot over the weeks and months of the seasons. Professor Haskell’s choice of what one meter patch to study was random. He took a walk in the forest that surrounds the University and basically threw a hula hoop. Where it landed: that was the spot. He had his students do it, too. But they didn’t start with flinging hula hoops in the old-growth forest that is tucked away in the 13,000 acres that make up what the University affectionately calls The Domain. 

He and his students didn’t start by going to the forest at all. They started by going to watch Tibetan monks, over the course of several days, pour sand to create mandalas about the same size as the hula hoops. They started with mandalas, which hold the idea that the path of life and the core of the whole universe can be seen through any one of these circles. In The Forest Unseen, Professor Haskell’s book about what he learned during his year of watching, he says, “I believe that the forest’s ecological stories are all present in a mandala-sized area. Indeed, the truth of the forest may be more clearly and vividly revealed by the contemplation of a small area than it could be by donning ten-league boots, covering a continent but uncovering little.” (p. xii) He set some simple rules at the outset of this year of study of the forest mandala: “visit often…be quiet, keep disturbance to a minimum; no killing, no removal of creatures, no digging in or crawling over the mandala. The occasional thoughtful touch is enough…Have no schedule for visits, but…watch…many times each week.” (The Forest Unseen, p. xiv) 

As we enter the world of this morning’s parable, we enter a place that is similarly small and contained. The cast of characters include the mustard seed that is somehow sown and the birds that make their nests in it when it is grown. That’s it. Just as with the forest mandala patch, we might need to watch closely, though, beyond the sparse details of the parable: if the mustard seed grew, then the sun, the rain, the soil, the worms, and materials the birds used to build those nests are also present. And maybe it was a person who sowed the seed, but it is perhaps more likely that the wind blew it there, to that particular place. Upon closer examination, however, the world of this parable is teeming with life: the seed breaks through its coat and begins to unfurl and take root. The mineral particles, organic materials and living organisms in the soil do their part, slowly, yet constantly. And the birds fill the air with songs. Nothing in the parable lives in isolation. This is a world that thrives on connection and relationship. One of the translations for the word mandala (in sanskrit) is community. So mandalas, although small, reflect and reveal the fullness of community. Similarly, parables, although small, reflect and reveal the fullness of the kingdom of God—community of God. 

As compact as this parable is, we could go even smaller and truth would still be there. Some years ago, I had the honor of accompanying a friend and colleague as she grieved the loss of her spouse of many years to cancer. She gifted me with a poem that printed on homemade seed paper, cut out in the shape of a leaf. [Like this.] The haiku-like poem is so simple: Holding, as branches hold birds. ” Poems and parables are similar in that I think we have to live with them in order to begin to understand them, in order for them to begin to unfurl within us. And this particular poem is so evocative of the image of the grown (but maybe still growing) mustard shrub, filled with birds building nests. There is so much holding in this parable and it makes me wonder about the kingdom (community) of God, which Jesus tells us this parable is about. Gently holding seems to be at the core of what the soil does for the shrub; what the shrub does for the nests; what the branches do for the nests; what the nests do for the birds and their eggs. Gently holding, in community, seems to be at the core of kingdom values. 

As you know, next Sunday we’ll have a whole different set of readings. I wish we could stay here and watch this parable together for a few more weeks. I don’t always or often wish that, but this week, I do. But just because our Sunday readings move on doesn’t mean you cannot return to this parable, through this season of Ordinary Time, to keep watching it to see what it tells you about who you are, who God is and about this Kingdom community that Jesus keeps describing for us in so many ways. What other kingdom values do you notice? Where is the good news of Love incarnate? What does this tell us about our relationships with one another and the Holy One? We might share our observations and hunches because another truth of mandalas and parables is that there is so much going on, no one character, if you will, can see all the action.