Planting Seeds

Proper 6 2009

Mark 4:26-34

We’ve entered ordinary time, this long season after Pentecost.  And while for some this time in the liturgical year is not quite so exciting—no candles to light like at Advent, no vibrant celebration like at Easter—this long green season is all about the growing season.  It’s about how we live our lives of faith in a meaningful and real way.  It’s about growth.  

And growth is what is happening around us.  Certainly we see it in our yards, it’s amazing what some moisture and sunshine will do for both flowers and plants we hope will grow, never mind the weeds that seem to spring up overnight.  Growth during the spring and summer give us sustenance and ways to enjoy God’s creation, even when that means heading out yet again to weed a flower bed. 

But growth is also happening in the events of the next couple of weeks.  Like the Vacation Bible School program under Melissa and Catie’s leadership with a great number of folks helping who have caught a vision about what this program could be.  What began as a seed of an idea, Melissa saying that we should make VBS an outreach for our community and offer it at a different time to help do that, has exploded into some 45 kids registered to attend and a great cadre of volunteers who are doing all of the tasks needed to make this program a success.  That’s growth.

Growth is taking place as well with our youth, many of whom will be heading out in a week with Laurie Talley and me on our 2^nd annual youth mission trip.  These young adults will travel to the Navajo Nation in Arizona to share the love of Christ through work done on homes and in providing a summer Christian Education program for local children.  They’ll be growing themselves in their faith in Christ—putting your faith in action is like spreading some fertilizer and turning on the sprinkler system.  Almost immediate results.  That’s growth.

And as a parish we are going through a time of revisioning, of discerning where God is leading us into the future.  The vestry is taking the input of parishioners last week as we reflected on our past to see what might be important for our future.  And we heard our parish say that we need to continue doing more outreach, that we should be less concerned about numbers and more concerned about spiritual deepening, that when we have strong leaders we thrive.  We heard about some of the challenges in those things, that at times people underestimate their God-given gifts and don’t share in ministry, that we have tended to focus on numbers and that leads to easy frustration, that outreach can tend to be primarily monetary donations and not enough hands-on and relationship building.  No church is the full kingdom of God, and there is work to be done, but that is the beauty of this time.  It’s a time for growth, for being open to God’s leading.

These parables of Jesus about the kingdom of God are worth some reflection.  While they may seem pretty straight-forward at first, there is a depth and richness in them that is worth exploring.  The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, Jesus tells us, that tiny seed that grows into a large bush and gives cover for the birds.  Most of us living here in America have never seen a mustard bush, and while we may use mustard seeds in recipes, we don’t really know how big they are or their significance in Palestine.  

Mustard bushes are everywhere in the Holy Land.  You can see fields of them all over.  And while I’ve not been to the Holy Lands yet, I’ve seen pictures from friends who have been there, and also seen images online.  Think of fields of lavender from Southern France.  Except bigger.  These bushes can grow to be a good 8 feet tall or more.  And they grow pretty quickly, to a good height in just a couple of weeks.  The seeds are used of course as a spice to season meat.  And the bushes provide cover for partridge birds, who nest under them, and in the complex entanglement of  their branches.  

But there is one thing that we don’t get.  Mustard bushes are insidious.  Think weeds, times 1000.  Think that song that gets stuck in your head and just refuses to get out (like the theme song from “Dora the Explorer” for me, given the phase of life I’m in).  By the way, you can find a top 10 list of these songs, they’re called earworms, online, like Chili’s Baby Back Ribs jingle, or “Who Let the Dogs Out,” or the classic, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”  (And now I know what you will be thinking of the rest of the sermon.  You’re welcome.)  Insidious like that.  You can’t get rid of it.  And once a mustard seed makes its way to your field or yard, give it up.  It’ll take over.

The kingdom of God is like that, Jesus says.  It starts out small, but once it gets into you, you can’t get it out.  It spreads and grows and is almost impossible to get rid of.  That’s what God does to people.  When God gets a hold of us, he won’t let go.  When we give just an inch to God, our whole lives get taken over.

Jesus gives a bit of insight in the other parable as well, the one about the seed being sown and then, frankly, forgotten.  If we try to figure out in a one-to-one correlation who is scattering the seed, what the seed is, who gets the harvest, it doesn’t come out in a neat one-to-one correlation.  But the kingdom of God is like that seed, Jesus says.  It goes out sort of willy-nilly, seemingly half-intentional, but then it gets forgotten.  But something happens.  The seed begins to grow, and you know what, we have no idea how it does. 

It’s like when I preach and someone says later, remember when you said such and such.  I smile and nod my head and say tell me more, and they explain how some phrase or idea impacted their lives.  Except I’m thinking to myself that I didn’t ever say what they’re talking about, but it was what they heard.  The Spirit said something to them.  The Spirit of God moved in ways I couldn’t begin to understand or imagine. 

We sometimes think that we have to do all the work.  That we have to plant the seed of faith in someone’s life, and water it and prune it and reap the harvest as well.  We make it seem like if we don’t do the work, it’ll never get done.  We forget that maybe something we said once to someone, an encouraging word, may come back years later to be something they remembered and it made all the difference in their lives.  Or that a small gesture of appreciation goes a long way toward bringing healing to someone that was feeling worthless. 

It is useful to remember the words of Archbishop Bishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador in the context of this parable.  “It helps now and then,” he said “to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.” 

Archbishop Romero deeply understood this. It wasn’t too long after he spoke these words, that he was gunned down while celebrating the Eucharist because of his desire to help the poor and the victims of the Salvadoran civil war, yet his work continues to grow.

We scatter seeds.  Seeds of faith, of mercy, of love.  We do not know how they grow, but we keep scattering and look for the harvest that God produces, we look for future promise.  That is our call.  That is the Kingdom of God.  Amen.