You gotta love parables… they hold some of the most vivid imagery in the Bible and their metaphors draw us in to different ways of thinking about the text and about our faith. There are really two parables in our scripture reading today and they're about the kingdom of God. In the first parable the kingdom is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground… in the second parable the kingdom is like a mustard seed. When I read that, immediately the questions start popping up, what do we know about the mustard seed that will help us figure out the kingdom of God? … what is it about scattering seed?… What does that mean, how is the kingdom of God like that? And part of the wonderful thing about parables is that they're informed by what we bring to them. If we were farmers, we might know something about scattering seed that would draw out a whole new insight into the kingdom of God. If we've ever seen a mustard seed and a mustard plant, we might have a whole different understanding of what Jesus meant in that comparison.
Something special happens when the people of God gather together to
think about these things: understanding grows, community grows and
faith grows as people share what they notice and share what they
wonder… We all bring different perspectives and different life
experience to the text. When it comes to interpreting the parables,
there's not one right answer.
There's not one way of looking
at them because they point to something that is much greater than
themselves. With that in mind, listen for the word of God from the
gospel
of Mark
4:26-34 (NRSV):
26[Jesus] said, The kingdom of God is as if
someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27and would sleep
and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does
not know how. 28The earth produces of itself, first the
stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the
head. 29But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in
with his sickle, because the harvest has come.
30He
also said, With what can we compare the kingdom of God,
or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard
seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the
seeds on earth; 32yet 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.
33With many such parables he spoke the word to
them, as they were able to hear it; 34he did not speak to
them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his
disciples.
Out of the multitude of possibilities what stands out to me when I read and when I prayed with the scripture this week is an invitation for our faith community. And it comes in the form of two stories. The first is from my life and it happened about a year and a half ago. The second which we'll get to in a while, is the story of a song.
Many of you know that Rebecca and I built a house before we came here.
Now when you build your own house, all sorts of problems creep up that
you weren't necessarily expecting… and this is the story of one
of them. There was a hill in our front yard, a big one. When we
bought the property, we knew that we were going to cut into the
hillside to make room for the house and we thought we'd be able to
build a nice rock wall, to give ourselves more of a front yard. Well,
to make a long story short, the county regulators came out and
said you can't just put a rock wall here. You really need to
rebuild the hill.
And so we did… and when we rebuilt the
hill, we realized that it might cause a bit of an erosion problem, so
we also hired an environmental biologist to come up with a vegetation
plan so the whole hillside wouldn't just wash down onto our front
porch when the winter rains came. The key to the plan was a little
plant that must have had a real name but I only remember its nickname
because that's what everyone called it: lowfast
because that's
how it grew, low and fast.
They told me It's a ground-cover that's especially well suited to
prevent erosion on hillsides.
We went to the local nursery and
bought every one they had. It was over a thousand dollars worth of
lowfast
that would hold our hillside in place… We
ordered a truckload of special, nutrient rich soil to spread on the
hill so that the lowfast
would have everything it needed to
live up to its name. My father-in-law and I spent a full day, nearly
sunrise till sundown, walking up and down the hillside following
instructions precisely: making holes to the perfect depth, putting in
just the right amount of miracle grow, saturating the new hole with
water, gently placing a lowfast plant into each hole and praying that
by the time winter rolled around those plants would hold the rebuilt
hillside in place.
I think it was April when we planted them, it might have been early
May. The people at the nursery said be sure to not let them dry
out.
So every night, throughout the late spring and summer, as
the sun went down, either Rebecca or I could be found standing in our
front yard watering hundreds of plants. When we were out of town, I
called my parents and they watered the plants. Now, I knew that
growth would take time… but when the end of June rolled around,
I was a little concerned. Only about 10% of the plants looked like
they were doing OK in their new home on the hillside and only a few
looked like they were growing anywhere near the promised rate. I
called around to see if there was anything I could do. The biologist
recommended one thing and we did it. The folks at the nursery
recommended a few things and we did them too… and by the time
fall was ending, you know what happened? Sure enough, not one thing.
Nothing. Not only did the lowfast not grow low and fast, but the vast
majority of them hadn't grown at all.
We did everything right. We did everything that the experts said to do and from my perspective there was pretty much nothing to show for it. That winter we happened to have a record rain storm in the greater Seattle area and sure enough, much of the hillside ended up in our front yard. It was humbling and frustrating that we spent countless hours and thousands of dollars following the plan… but nothing I did could make those little lowfast plants live up to their name. As I prayed with these two parables this week, I was struck by a realization that isn't new but is something I need to hear over and over again: Growth isn't up to me. Growth isn't up to us.
That winter I did minimal maintenance on the hillside. By the time spring rolled around, I was busy with other projects… I didn't really have the time or energy to worry about it. And sure enough I didn't have to. We sold the house in June, and the hillside was lush with vegetation… now it wasn't lowfast plants… Out of the hundreds of lowfast we planted, I don't think a single one is still alive on that hillside, but the goal never was lowfast plants… The goal was a stable hillside…
In the first parable the goal isn't that the farmer makes the seed
grow… the goal is the harvest of the ripe grain. Richard
Swanson translates verses 26 and 7 of our text by saying Suppose a
person should dump seed on the ground and then sleep and get up night
after night, day after day. The seed sprouts and grows, who knows
how?
The growth isn't up to the farmer. The growth isn't up to
the worker. The growth belongs to God and because of that we can
trust that good things are going on even when they're hard to see.
There is always a growing season between the time of sowing the seeds
and the time of the harvest. Like no other time, that growing season
is the time to trust God, and the season of growth is the focus of the
first parable.
The second parable also deals with growth but it looks more at how that growth happens. The most obvious aspect is contrast between the mustard seed as the smallest of all the seeds of the earth and the shrub it will become which is the greatest of all shrubs. Even the littlest of things have the potential to become great works for the kingdom of God. I think of A Sunday school teacher who sometimes wonders if anything good is happening while she does her best to keep order with a handful of kiddos who are bouncing off the walls; I think of Volunteers who come back from one of our mission projects exhausted after a long day of work, praying that the time they spent in the grime covered kitchen and the poison ivy infested back yard gave a little bit of hope to the people who live there; I even think of members of a church committee who show up every month on a Tuesday night or a Saturday morning to attend a meeting where lots of things are discussed and delegated… most of which don't seem very earth shaking, but they take small steps in the direction of where we think God is leading us as a church.
Little by little, these unspectacular mustard seed
actions grow
day after day. But that contrast isn't the only thing that we can
learn from the mustard seed. Both sides of the contrast are
hyperbole, by the way… the mustard seed is small, but not the
smallest seed, the shrub is big, but not the biggest shrub. One
person who writes on this passage points out that Jesus may have used
the imagery of the mustard plant because it's impossible to have just
a little bit of mustard in your field… Mustard is
uncontrollable and disorderly. It doesn't act like you would expect
and it spreads easier than you would think. But isn't that the way
the kingdom of God grows among us and even in us. I've heard it said
that faith is more caught than taught… and I think that's
right. But how is faith caught except by coming in contact with
someone who is alive in their relationship with the living God.
That brings us to the second story I have today. It's the story of a song that was written in the UK about 10 years ago. It came out of the mustard seed experience of one congregation. It was a relatively large congregation and part of the draw was the worship band. The band was good and their services were characterized by lots of time for worshipping through music, but over time they began to notice something. As the worship leader put it:
It dawned on us that we´d lost something. The fire that used to
characterize our worship had somehow grown cold. Everything looked
great. We had some wonderful musicians, a good sound system and lots
of new songs. But somehow it seemed like we´d almost started to rely
on these things too much, and they´d become distractions… We
realized some of the things we thought were helping us in our worship
were actually hindering us … It used to be that people would
enter into worship no matter what, but now people were getting caught
up in how good the band sounded, which songs were chosen, things like
that...
They knew it was time to do something different. And the decision was made that the next Sunday the band wouldn't play. So everyone turned up at church as usual and there was no sound system, and no band. Instead of the almost concert type of atmosphere, the worshippers were greeted by silence. You can imagine it probably felt a bit awkward. It wasn't what they expected.
The pastor started the service by asking, When you come through the
doors of the church, what is it that you are bringing? What is it
that you're offering to God?
Because really, worship is about
what' s going on in our hearts.
For a couple of weeks there were long periods of silence, but the seed
was planted. Most people stuck through the awkwardness and after a
few worship services they started to learn how to bring a different
kind of offering to God, without the external trappings they'd gotten
used to. Someone would lead a song a capella from their
seat. Someone else might read scripture. By stripping everything
away, they slowly started to rediscover that what was missing was
trusting God… and according to the worship leader that
discovery led them into a real season of growth. The songs of our
hearts had finally caught up with the songs of our lips.
He said.
And in response, he wrote the song called The Heart of Worship.
As I understand it, it was the first song the band sang when they came
back to lead worship. And God has used that song as a sort of worship
revival. It's been recorded in multiple languages and it's been sung
in worship services around the world, and today it will be sung in
ours.
Through that experience that was started by a little thing and grew from there, the congregation heard an invitation that today's scripture offers to us as well. The first parable gives the assurance that ultimately, growth belongs to God and comes from God. It's not our work that's going to bring in the kingdom… we don't have to understand it… in fact maybe we can't… but that's OK because it's God's kingdom. The second parable lets us know that no matter how small or insignificant our actions as followers of Christ may seem, the potential in them is great because God is the one who can take those things and grow them like the mustard seed: it may not be what we expect… but again, that's OK because it's God's kingdom. So the invitation is for the growing season: between sowing the seed and harvesting the grain, trust that growth will come and even trust that it's already happening because God is God and God is trustworthy. And in the meantime, while we wait for the harvest, choose over and over again to do the little things, things that are good and right because those are the mustard seeds and that's how God works through us. Amen.
Heart of Worship
by Matt Redman
When the music fades,
All is stripped away,
And I simply come;
Longing just to bring something that´s of worth
That will bless Your heart.
I´ll bring You more than a song,
For a song in itself
Is not what You have required.
You search much deeper within
Through the way things appear;
You´re looking into my heart.
I´m coming back to the heart of worship,
And it´s all about You,
All about You, Jesus.
I´m sorry, Lord, for the thing I´ve made it,
When it´s all about You,
All about You, Jesus.
The foregoing sermon was given on June 14, 2009, by Rev. Dan Holland at the United Parish of Bowie.
© 2009 Daniel Holland
