Proper 6

Mark 4:26–34 (NIV84)

26 He also said, “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.” 30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade.” 33 With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. 34 He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

Jesus uses a lot of argicultural metaphors in his teaching.

And he obviously lived before the industrial revolution so it would be strange if he taught about machines

But even if he had that option I’m not sure he’d say “the kingdom of God is like a really great factory”

Because part of the point here, and in other parables, is that human beings can’t manufacture the kingdom like it’s a product that just needs the right systems and strategies

It is more like the organic growth of crops and vines and flowers

You cannot manufacture organic life.

Now, in our modern age we get pretty close to it and almost have farm factories and modify the seeds, etc., etc. and there’s a modern parable in that

But even in our modern age there is a part of the process, the most important part, that cannot be mechanized.

The farmer cannot go into the soil and force open each seed to produce the fruit he strategized

He simply has to wait and pray for the harvest.

It’s not that the farmer does NOTHING

He doesn’t buy acres and then say, “man sure would be cool if corn covered every square inch of this.”

He participates in the process.

So it is with the kingdom. We are like the farmers. And we participate in a process of new life and growth that is magical.

You’ve heard me talk about skills of receptivity before in relation to spiritual practices. This comes from Martin Laird’s book Into the Silent Land and I come back to it often because it’s so well said.

Spiritual practices are a skill, disciplines that facilitate a process that is out of one’s direct control, but it does not have the capacity to determine an outcome. A gardener for example, does not actually grow plants. The gardener practices finely honed skills, such as cultivating soil, watering, feeding, weeding, pruning. But there is nothing the gardener can do to make the plants grow. However, if the gardener does not do what a gardener is supposed to do, the plants are not as likely to flourish. In fact they might not grow at all … The skills are necessary but by themselves insufficient.

As it relates to this morning, I’ll talk about two practices. Preparing the soil and planting seeds

Just before this parable in Mark, we have Jesus telling the parable of the sower where the growth of the seed is ALL ABOUT the condition of the soil it falls on.

You know the one, there’s a hard path, a rocky soil, a soil choked by thorns, and a good soil.

The condition of the soil means everything and I’d suggest we DO have some control over this. Or at least some impact on it.

But again, we can’t mechanize or purchase good soil. It has to be cultivated.

Another of my favorite quotes comes from Dallas Willard who says - “We are like farmers who diligently plant crops but can't admit the existence of weeds and insects and can only think to pour on more fertilizer.”

In other words, we live in a mechanized age of abundance and entitlement and positiivity and all we know if bigger, faster, more. Who cares if if the growth is artificial and the strawberries are the size of my head and taste like water bigger faster more

That’s true in our food sources and in the church

When in reality much of the issue is that the soil in unhealthy and damaged

And if we’d address it we’d see something beautiful and real grow

If anything’s going to be different, we can start with the soil of our own heart.

What prevents the kingdom from growing? What are the weeds and bugs and rocks and thorns?

Cynicism

Bitterness

Fear

These are toxins that poison the seed

We might also look at things like impatience

If you’ve ever had a garden you know that the one thing required is patience

It takes a while and half the time the seed is growing under the soil and you’re not sure if anything’s happening

So we want to adopt practices or skills of receptivity that help us address these things in our lives

Sometimes that withdrawing from things that breed cynicism and fear

Sometimes that means prioritizing relationships that seem to enlarge your capacity for faith

This is a question for us as a church, what are the practices that help us culvitate good soil in our hearts for the seed of the kingdom to grow

But we can also look at the soil around us.

How do we contribute to a collective soil that impacts others?

I would say that much of our problem in the American Church today is that the soil isn’t healthy.

It’s been stripped and over fertilized and mechanized

And NOW it’s fully of thorns too

If you know anything about the dust bowl in the 1930’s, it’s basically a parable

There was a greedy rush to the west where prospectors grabbed big tracts of land

Stolen from indeigenous people, which is another sermon

Then to maximize profit they worked the land too hard

And failed to understand the unique soil in each place

And created monocultures of ALL ONE TYPE OF CROP which isn’t good for health

And at some point the land just stopped producing

It gave up.

And all the people could do was wait and pray.

Interestingly in he scriptures we see God telling the people of Israel to avoid this very thing

He instructs them to give the land a Sabbath, every seven years, in Lev 25, and Exodus 23:10-11

'“For six years you are to sow your fields and harvest the crops, but during the seventh year let the land lie unplowed and unused. Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what is left. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove. '

What does this do?

It allows the land to heal.

AND i would argue, it disrupts the people who might operate in pure maximized production mode forever if NOT disrupted

I’m gonna argue that the next season of the church in America is going to be about allowing the soil to heal and doing our part in it

We have to stop trying to mechanize results

We have to slow down and address the toxins and the thorns and allow organic growth to happen when the soil is ready to produce it

The vision we’re casting for COTD has everything to do with this

The other aspect of this parable is the seed itself

In the parable of the soils the seed is the Word of God

That can mean the scriptures, but it also simply means all the ways God communicates with us and reveals himself

A beautiful moment of connectedness in prayer is a seed of the kingdom

An generous act of love by someone else is a seed of the kingdom planted in us

As followers of Jesus we should be people who scatter seed like that

And we should be people who want to cultivate any seed that we receive

If we’re attentive, we can recognize when God has planted a seed of hope and joy in us and we can say THANK YOU, I’ll take that and water it so that it grows

And however insignficant that seed seems it can grow into this beautiful reality in us, individually and collectively

Like a tiny mustard seed that erupts and flowers n a beautiful way

we participate in the process, but ultimately it’s God who makes it happen

And on that note I want to leave you with one more application

The fact that God can blossom a tiny seed into something great should be a great hope for many of us who feel like all I got is one tiny seed of faith left.

Theologian Karl Barth said this “Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices, for the devil has lost his game.”

In other words, focus on the one small seed, not the lack of blossoming crops.

Water the seed and tend to your soil and let God do what God does