The Parable Of The Growing Seed: The Growth Of God's Kingdom Vs. The Kingdom Of Babylon Series

“Lloyd was proud of his architectural marvel. He called it Taliesin in honor of a Welsh bard and his romantic poems. The Chicago architect planned to enjoy plenty of romance in his Wisconsin getaway. And that’s exactly why the locals were scandalized. Whenever they spoke about Lloyd’s house, they put the emphasis on the last syllable: Talie-sin. Some tried to get up a petition to bulldoze it. Others threatened to burn it down. The school superintendent warned that the goings-on there would corrupt the morals of area children.

What caused this firestorm? After Lloyd had finished the house of a wealthy client, he stole the man’s wife. When he ran off to Europe with Mamah Borthwick, he abandoned his wife and six children. That was scandalous enough in the big city of Chicago. But there was outrage in Spring Green when he built a love cottage for his mistress. Lloyd couldn’t care less. He was the world’s greatest architect. Laws and rules applied to lesser people. He once said to a reporter, “Two women were necessary for a man of artistic mind —one to be mother of his children and the other to be his mental companion, his inspiration and soul mate.” But Lloyd’s plans would be turned upside down on August 15, 1914.

Lloyd was away when his mistress and two of her children sat down to lunch on the porch at Taliesin. Workers were eating in the dining room. Barbados native Julian Carlton was serving lunch. After Julian served the soup, he took an ax outside, where he hacked Lloyd’s mistress and her children to death. Meanwhile, the workers in the dining room saw fluid spreading across the floor. Suddenly, the liquid erupted into a blazing inferno, and the door to the dining room was shut and locked. Some of the workers managed to bust through the door, only to be met by Julian with his bloodied ax. By the time townspeople arrived at the burning love cottage, seven people, including three children, had been brutally murdered. Julian had swallowed muriatic acid. It would take him seven agonizing weeks to die.

The conventional wisdom in 1914 was that Mamah got what she deserved for breaking up Lloyd’s happy family. But what about the man who was above convention? He immediately set about to rebuild his love cottage. A year later he moved in with another lover. The world remembers Frank Lloyd Wright for his wondrous architecture. But few folks remember the getaway that he built in Spring Green or what happened there. Maybe the Taliesin tragedy is a morality tale. Certainly, we ought to grieve for the innocent victims. But we should also question Lloyd’s assumption that we can ignore the laws indelibly written into creation by its Creator. When we are tempted to think that we are the exception to the rule, we ought to recall something Robert Louis Stevenson wrote:

Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.” -Robert Petterson, One Year Book of Amazing Stories

Today we find ourselves in the gospel of Mark, which is the only place in the four gospels where our parable today is located.

Our parable today is nestled within a discourse of Jesus the messiah, where he teaches several parables in rapid succession. He teaches the parable of the sower, the parable of the lamp under a bushel, then our parable for today.

Jesus defines the meaning of the parable this way: “This is what the kingdom of God is like.”

Just like last week, the parable describes the kingdom of God, and in particular, how the growth of the kingdom of God works.

Last week we saw that the kingdom of God is like a tiny mustard seed that grows into a mighty tree, or like yeast that causes bread to rise. Today, we see the picture of a man growing a crop.

This is what Jesus says, in Mark 4:26-29 “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. 28 All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. 29 As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

Here Jesus is speaking again about the growth of the kingdom of God, and how it works.

When you think of a profession like someone who builds houses for a living, him and his work crew, they put in their bids to build houses, and someone selects their offer, pays them, and they get to work. They come everyday to the worksite building the house.

I recall last year in town Scott and I would go over to starbucks for coffee in the mornings during kettle season and we’d see the progress the workers were making on the Frankenmuth credit union by home depot. Slowly but surely they got the work done.