4th Sunday After Pentecost June 17, 2018
Mark 4:26-34, 2 Corinthians 5:6-17 Panzer Liturgical Service
I do love Spring. We have a garden in our backyard. In previous summers we have planted small seedlings from the garden center. But this year, everything we planted came from seeds. Before Easter, Shawn planted little dirt disks with 2 kinds of tomatoes, butternut squash, watermelon, cantaloupe, brussels sprouts, and sunflowers. Every day he would look under the clear plastic dome to see if there was any action.
It didn’t take long for something happen. The tiny seeds sprouted, breaking through the dirt and soon, small pairs of leaves were leaning toward the light. A month later, we transplanted our little seedlings to bigger containers and started acclimating them to the outside weather. One month ago, we planted them in our garden. The tomatoes and squash are doing best, growing visibly every day. In a couple of months, we will hopefully have a good harvest. And each plant came from just one seed.
How does this happen? A seed gets planted in the ground and sooner or later, a crop is ready to be harvested. Oh, we do a little – make sure there is good soil, take away the weeds, give water and sometimes shelter them from an unexpected cold. But the process of growing is really out of our hands unless we kill our crop from benign neglect. What a miracle to watch fruits and vegetable and grains come into their full potential all around us. All we have to do is sow and get ready for the harvest.
I don’t know if you have ever read through Mark’s gospel in one sitting. You should try it. It’s only a little over 600 verses and reads like a superhero story, with Jesus in the staring role. Only he isn’t very hero-like, and his sidekicks, the disciples, are clearly clueless most of the time. This first parable actually gives us some hope that if we just keep at it – working for the Kingdom – we won’t mess it up too much if we remember that God is the master gardener. It is the nature of God’s reign to manifest itself. That’s what it does.[ii]
And that’s the easy part of the lesson. But there is a more difficult message embedded in this second parable… difficult if you like your Kingdom of God neat and orderly and the way it’s always been. If you ask any farmer in the Middle East about the mustard tree or shrub, he will tell you that once it gets in your garden you may never get rid of it, sort of like dandelions, but bigger.
So maybe one of the first questions a person in Jesus’ audience would ask is, “Why would you intentionally plant mustard seeds in your garden?” Not only is it an ugly weed, but when it grows large enough for birds to come and roost in its branches, those birds are going to do a lot of damage. Roosting birds in a garden will wake you up early, eat your crop, and leave little presents behind … it’s hard to imagine a world where you invite them to come to make a home with you.
But that’s exactly what Jesus did. He invited everyone to come and follow him. The passage that we read from 2 Corinthians is pretty complicated and convoluted, but it ends with a declarative statement. Paul writes:
For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died… So, if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 2 Corinthians 5:14,17 (NRSV)
Paul said a lot of things that we as the church declare as definitive – absolute must-follows for faith. Well, I think we need to add this one to the list. Here Paul echoes the message of the parable. Jesus came and died for everyone… for you, for me, for the person next door, for the guy who parks at the end of your driveway blocking you in, for the parents and children seeking asylum, for those who want to turn them away, for those who haven’t even heard of him yet, even for those who don’t yet believe. And when people do commit themselves to Jesus, they are a part of our family, whether we like it or not.
But do we really believe this? Do we believe that every person who has walked on this earth has value simply because “Christ died for all”? Do we believe that just because Jesus was willing to die for everyone, that gives their lives intrinsic value? Even at my most optimistic, I would have to say, No, we don’t.
Author and pastor Dawn Chesser put it this way:
Paul says that each person’s value has already been established through Christ’s death… We don’t need to know whether or not a person has confessed Christ as his or her personal Lord and Savior before we decide to treat him or her with dignity and respect… We don’t need to know anything about the person, because we already know all we need to know: he or she is valuable because Christ died FOR him or her, just as for us.[iii]
It’s easy to get caught up in a “them vs us” mentality. In our worlds of education, position, income and status, we forget that
the original followers of Jesus were, in the eyes of the culture, all pretty much losers – lowly fishermen, despised tax collectors, prostitutes and criminals, lowlifes loathed by the religious establishment. [But] maybe that’s the way the followers of Jesus have always looked to the rest of the world – those people desperate enough, lowly enough, to find hope in Jesus’ message.[iv]
So where is our hope? When we are struggling, experience loss, or just can’t find our footing - when we wonder what the future holds and if this Jesus-life is really for us, Jesus reminds us that the Kingdom of God comes of its own…and it comes for us. There is room for everyone in this kingdom. Jesus’ parables tell us that all things are possible because our God is great. We think the work of faith is difficult, but when we recognize our own needs and the needs of others are the same, everything is possible through the love and power of God.
Someone asked me the other day what I do for a living and I answered, “I read.” I read books, I read articles, I listen to podcasts [which is like reading with your ears], and then I look up resources on the stuff that I’ve already read. I also subscribe to a bunch of faith-related newsletters from a variety of sources. I guess that 40-50% of these newsletters address the topic of boosting church attendance. Now I’m all for having more people in church, but I am more convinced than ever that this will not solve the institutional church’s problems.
Church is not just the building or the people who have gathered inside. Church is just not about how we ourselves come to faith in Jesus or the strategies we will employ to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. The growth of our religious institutions is not the measuring stick which will determine our faithfulness. Instead, we are called to see our place in the biblical story, and in the process, hear Jesus’ call to live our lives in the shadow and protection of God’s greatest gift – love.
Today’s readings inspire us to see God in unexpected people and places. We are called to look beyond the obvious to discover God everywhere, in everyone. And while the life unfolding around us often feels precarious and unimportant – and our role infinitesimal – a great harvest and great possibilities are on the horizon for those who see from a God’s eye view, through the eyes of faith. Great things do come from small beginnings.[v]
I originally intended to end with the story of Johnny Appleseed.[vi] It’s a wonderful tale in it’s simplest form and gives a good snapshot of a person who dedicated his whole life to the love of God, neighbor, and nature. But the events of the week could not be chased from my mind or heart as so often happens these days. And when I was looking through my library for a book I own about a village in France that operated an underground railroad for Jews during World War II[vii], I found something even better.
I encountered writer Ina Hughs through a book on a bargain sale table at a brick and morter bookstore. It is a collection of columns she wrote for the Knoxville News Sentinel in the early 1990’s, mostly about children and divided into three sections: Yours, Mine and Ours. These essays are about children she knows and ones she never met. Some are laugh-out-loud funny and others will bring a tear to your eye. In the front of the books is a poem – a prayer for children. I’m going to end the sermon with this poem, this prayer today.
These are the children Jesus invites to the Kingdom of God. This is who we are called to love.[viii]
Amen.
[vi] Wikipedia, Johnny Appleseed, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed
[vii] Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, Harper Perennial, 1994.
[viii] Ina Hughs, A Prayer for Children, William Morrow Publishers, 1995.
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