So, Jesus likes agricultural metaphors, does he? Mustard
seeds…birds nesting in branches…farmers planting things and then picking the
crops. Perfect! This stuff is right down my alley! Some of you might
know that I have a small vegetable garden in my backyard and that I’m more than
a little obsessed with it. In fact, I have become the butt of many jokes in my
family. My father, who was raised on a farm but raised his own children in the
suburbs, probably thinks I’m trying a little too hard to get back in touch with
our agrarian roots. Melinda, my wife, has complained I’m neglecting her in
favor of the sugar snap peas and the cucumber vines. I have been known to
arrive home from work in the afternoon and go around back to spend a little
time with the plants before I go in to say “hello” to her. In fact, she has
said more than once that if ever a garden grew from someone just watching it, it
would be mine.
The truth is I really don’t know what I’m doing and I worry
like crazy about it. This is the third year I’ve really ever tried to grow
vegetables, and I’m convinced they’re all going to die and all that time and
effort will just dry up to a crisp in the hot July sun. In addition, the other
pastor here is pretty competitive when it comes to tomato growing. I’ve been
feeling the pressure to produce. Maybe at the end of the summer there’s going
to be a big “tomato-off” or something. Nevertheless, I still don’t really know
what I’m doing, and so I watch it…vigilantly…as if I will catch the tiny green leaves
in the very process of unfolding.
And, to tell you the truth, sometimes I think I do. Sometimes
I check the strawberries and find nothing ripe enough to pick. I’ll walk away
for five minutes to study something else and come back and, what do you know? One
of those strawberries got just a little redder while I looked away! And then I pick
it to find that it’s mostly still white. I was just over-anxious.
Yes, Jesus’ agrarian metaphors and parables about growing
things are right down my alley. The only problem is that the seed planter in
his parable is the opposite of me. His garden grows whether he is vigilant
about watching it or not. In fact, it sounds like he’s downright nonchalant about
its well-being. “The kingdom of God is as
if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and
grow, he does not know how.” No
pacing around its perimeter, no daily monitoring of its progress. This garden
just grows, producing what it needs to regardless of how conscious he is of it.
Granted, he has work to do, but the gardener in the parable seems less
concerned with how to measure it and how to tweak it and certainly less
concerned with how to worry about it and more concerned with trusting that it
will do what it’s supposed to. Yes, it has more to do with a faith that, in
time—with the flow of seasons and the sunlight and the rainfall—things will
grow and flourish just like God wants them to. With that in mind, I think of
the Epiphany Gardeners here at church, who plant and work mainly on the odd
weekend and afternoon, but otherwise leave it to itself. They know to wait until the strawberry is ripe before they
go in with the sickle.
Yes, gardening may be right down our alley, but appreciating
the growth of God’s kingdom is not right down our alley much of the time. And
on some level, I find it easy to resent this simply little parable. Because—let’s
be honest—when it comes to faith and mission and service to neighbor, we like
to measure it. We want to see growth happen in the process. We want to catch,
for example, the new believer’s life unfolding in faith before our very eyes. We
want to be a part of the exciting new ministry that feeds the homeless, the
Youth trip to New Orleans, or the invigorating Sunday School class because
those are the times we’re sure the kingdom is breaking in all around us. We can
just feel it, see it.
But what about the day-in, day-out duties of prayer and
devotions? The commitment to weekly worship? Extending hospitality once again
to the Sunday visitor? Practicing routine forgiveness with the people you’re
living with? Those things not so much. And
what about, in the midst of everything, trusting that God’s kingdom is truly
unfolding, doing what it’s supposed to do, as all these more mundane,
run-of-the-mill activities take place? That’s perhaps the trickiest part of it
all.
Jesus’ lessons to his disciples about the kingdom are often
very tricky. In the first place, they’re tricky because they’re trying to
explain something that is essentially impossible to picture or place. Even
Jesus himself seems to search for a worthy metaphor—“Hmmm…with what else can we compare the kingdom of
God??”—choosing never to lecture or hold forth with some long-winded
theological description that would probably bore everyone to tears. No, Jesus
gives experiences, speaks in images. And in this morning’s first parable, God’s
kingdom can best be described as a growth that happens mysteriously and is
never entirely dependent on the work of you or me.
This is something his disciples will need to know before
they go much further. Right here at the beginning he’s telling them, “When
you’re out there ministering to people, doing the work of grace, spreading the
news of God’s love, don’t get distracted by the mechanisms of how it’s all
supposed to work. That’s not necessary for God’s kingdom to appear amongst you.
In other words,” Jesus tells us, “Don’t constantly pace the perimeter like that
silly Pastor Phillip, clinging to every leaf and blossom.” Do what you can and
let the rest take its course.
And, above all, don’t be too obsessed with grandiosity. That
is the lesson of the mustard seed. Don’t be obsessed with grandiosity, because
God’s not. What may look tiny and insignificant or ugly or paltry boring at the
beginning is still the perfect place for God to get a foothold. God is not
obsessed with grandiosity. And we know this as the Christian’s journey begins with
just a simple bath of water and the words of forgiveness. Jesus knows that we
often seek after the big and the great and the impressive, sometimes building
enormous cathedrals and dreaming up all kinds of flashy, fancy schemes. But God
isn’t obsessed with grandiosity, choosing to gather us for nourishment each
week with a small chunk of bread and a cup of wine. As his disciples venture
forth, they will need to know this because the world, by contrast, is quite
taken with the powerful and take-them-by-storm approach, and it will be
difficult in the church to fight that urge.
Yet, no matter how well they keep these lessons at the back
of their minds, they will never quite be able to predict just how unimpressed
with grandiosity and—on the other hand—utterly fascinated with the weak and
downtrodden Jesus’ Father actually is. At the cross, we all will see just how
God can use the weakest, ugliest, most insignificant of beginnings to grow the
grace of his kingdom. And, like the birds of the air, all God’s children may
come to roost in the branches of this tree.
My uncle, who is pastor at a congregation in South Carolina,
told me a story while I was in seminary of something that happened to him a
good twenty years after he was ordained. He had already served as chaplain in
the US Army for twenty years, having been stationed in three foreign countries and
at least twice that many US States. He had finally moved back to take a call at
this church in the Columbia area. One day, he was in the check-out line at a
grocery store when the guy in front of him turned around and said, “Are you
Vicar Bob?”
Surprised, my uncle responded, “Yes, although he hadn’t been
called “vicar” since those days in seminary. My uncle didn’t recognize this
person, but deduced that this man must remember him from over 20 years before. He
started to rack his brain, but he admitted he didn’t know the man’s name or
even how he might know him. The younger man said, “You were my youth director
at church.”
My uncle said he racked his brain again. He could only
remember being a youth director one time—it was for a brief 4 months interim
period at a rural church that happened to be within a few miles of that grocery
store during his first year of seminary. It had been such a short, almost
meaningless job at the time that he hadn’t really considered himself an
official youth director, much less a vicar. He vaguely remembered there had a
been a handful of youth there, and he had signed up for the position to get
class credit before he went away on internship. My uncle said something like,
“Oh, yeah, OK. I remember now. That was a long time ago.”
The man then went on to say, “You were great with us. I will
never forget the time you spent there. I still live around here, and am still
at that church and am so thankful you got me involved with those silly games
you taught us to play.”
My uncle thanked him and continued to bag his groceries, and
then they parted ways. Bobby told me that on the way out to his car he began to
recall in those short days at that rural church a particularly messy-haired kid
who never really fit in with everyone else, who he thinks might have attended
once or twice. That was the man in the grocery store line.
You just never know, do you? God is not obsessed with
grandiosity…at least not at the outset. In fact, it’s almost like God is
obsessed with the insignificant. And there is no need to pace the perimeter to
check and measure the growth potential of every little action and word. That
was just the story of one pastor. Imagine the breadth of your own ministries
and interactions! The kingdom can begin and grow right here, among us. Day in
and day out…we just never know how.
But God does. As it turns out, this kind of gardening—these kinds of holy and blessed encounters, sprouting
from what looks like nowhere but nevertheless reaching up, up, up to include
all kinds in his embrace—is right down God’s alley.
Thanks be to God!
The Reverend Phillip
W. Martin, Jr.