Mark 4.26-34

I am not sure what it means to be “the greatest” any more. I used to. When I was little, to be great meant to be powerful, like the Bionic Man. The Bionic Man was truly great. He could run very fast, lift heavy things, see very far. There was a sound that he made when he did his bionic thing. I used to make that sound when I would run. It is a mechanical sound, as if all the tiny wheels and cogs, the electrical wires and the nano batteries that made the bionics in the bionic man work began to whir and spin and hum. The sound was like this, “chun-chun-chun-chun, dun-dun-dun-dun, chun, chun, chun, chun, chun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, and it would alternate pitch as the muscles contracted and relaxed. The Bionic Man would do great things with his power, save people, defeat the bad buys, subvert the evil plot, and all in an hour’s time.

In the opening credits, the line reads, "Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster."

Steve Austin, the Bionic Man’s name, became the bionic man after a tragic plane crash. And the rest of the time between 1974 and 1978 was history. Boys across the country had Steve Austin dolls, with little fold back skin that revealed the inner workings of the bionics. I would spend my time at school drawing small patches of bionic wire and then taping them to my arms and legs. These were my own crude bionic designs, imitating Steve Austin’s true bionic design, bionics that made me powerful on the playground, more powerful than David Hartwell. David wore Star Trek uniforms to school and would try and use the Vulcan grip thing on us. But his powers were no match for our bionics.

It is funny to me, The Bionic Man. A TV show. Steve Austin was played by Lee Majors. It was based on a novel “Cyborg” by Martin Caidin. All of the core values that our society holds dear were wrapped up in it. In the Six Million Dollar Man story, we find the power of the human mind able to create a technology that improves upon the imperfect human being. Steve Austin is made better, stronger, faster by the work of the human mind. He uses his new power for good, for the betterment of his fellow humans who are admittedly lesser beings without their own bionics. As a boy I wanted that strength, that power. Boys go through a super power phase, brought on, I believe, by a repression of the truth, the reality of powerlessness. At some point in our development we realize the truth about ourselves, an inescapable truth, a true powerlessness that comes with our creation. We have brains, and muscles, and ego, and will. These are truths about us. And there is a hidden truth to the Bionic Man, a truth that they do not get to in the hour long show, the truth of the man part. His technological better half is still hobbled by his frail and perishable man half. Death comes for us all, and we have no power over it, it has power over us. We live underneath it, aware of it, repressing it, fantasizing that it does not exist. Or, that we can somehow beat it by creating a technology that will surpasses the dying. But the truth is we won’t. This is a hard lesson to learn, and many of us learn about it too early. When death comes for us and those we love it is always shocking that we are so vulnerable, so weak, so powerless. Like a little boy imitating a TV show, which is imitating a science that the culture wishes existed. Botox, steroids, plastic surgery, lipo suction, humanity redone, made better, stronger, faster, power filled. All of this is to say nothing about our love of money and the collection of financial power. All of these later turn to dust at the end of the day. The earth spins without our help, and time moves without our assistance. As created things we are dual in our nature. We are at once fantastic to behold, and at once fragile and fleeting. Power and powerlessness combined in every newborn child.

In his teachings, Jesus makes an observation about the way things work. Jesus paints a distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world. For Jesus, the Kingdom of this world was manifested in the Roman Empire. The Romans represented the power of the day. They held sway on the lives of everyone in Jesus’ world. Land use, food, shelter, all of the needs to stay alive, were held in the power of the Romans. They were fond of saying of themselves, “Pax Romana.” The Peace of Rome. But this peace was forged out of violence. The peace was kept in check through fear. A Roman legion would wipe out all things in its path. Step out of line, stand up to this power, and you and yours would be gone, erased from the earth.

The Kingdom of God was the opposite. The Kingdom of God was about peace as well, but peace that did not come from violence or fear but from love. The parables in Mark point to a new kingdom, a place where violence and fear do not exist. A place of safety, of salvation, a banquet where there is too much food, too much fellowship, too much God. This Kingdom is not found in the kingdom of this world. The Kingdom of God is found in your heart, your soul, in your love. Deep within each of us is the power of God. Jesus reveals this time and time again. The power that will last and be the greatest is the power of God in the smallest thing imaginable, something small like a mustard seed. Set it in a place and watch it grow to a place of greatness. And all that it does with its greatness is provide a place where others may come and take shelter in it.

"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade." These words in Mark are from words in Greek that literally say, “ a shrub plant which starts so small, becomes so mega, that the birds of heaven can pitch their tents in it.”

The power of God is a mystery. Even Bionic men and women are fleeting. All of us are fleeting, but we have a power that is endowed within us. We do not need anything, except to look deep within us and realize it. The kingdom of God does not create power that is used over people, the Kingdom of God creates power that is used for people. It takes us and makes us into places where the birds of heaven can pitch their tents, find shelter from the sun, rest from the day and realize safety during the night. There is no need for us to alter our bodies to find the power in the Kingdom of God, we need only to alter our vision in order to see the power of God working through us, doing more than we could possibly imagine.

Here is a vision of the Kingdom of God for our time. We are that place. Those who were before us nurtured it to create a place for others to pitch a tent. We are a place to provide shade and safety to anyone who would find it. Like the mustard tree which set in place so the birds of the air find it, and when they do, they find a place of shelter, a place of solace. We are that place. We are set in place, set here on the street, welcoming any that would come our way. We do not need to be Bionic to save the world. We do not need to alter ourselves in anyway, what it means to be the greatest is answered for us. Anything that welcomes the children of God is the greatest.

And we do that. We are a mega church without being mega. We are Bionic people, with out needing to be bionic. We do not imitate TV, we live in a reality of the power of God. We need to only look inside our hearts to find it. Our bionics come not from human hands, they come from the divine call. The heroes of our Gospel story are the people who decided to plant a church here. They each nurtured it in their own day. The goal was and is to create a place where the heavenly birds can pitch their tents. In our living and in our dying we are the people of God. We strive each day to make the Kingdom of God appear now. We do this out of love, aware of our frailties, and loving in spite of ourselves. We need to be no greater than a simple mustard plant. We need no other calling than to be a place of shelter for whoever might find their way into our shade. Amen.