Sermon for 3rd Sunday after Pentecost, 14 July 2015: Parable of the Mysterious Growth of the Kingdom

Sermon for the 3^rd Sunday after Pentecost: 14 June 2015

Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, Jerusalem

The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith

Mark 4:26-34

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Some days, it feels like nothing will ever change.  I read the other day that 82 percent of Israelis fully expect another war with Gaza in the coming months. Same suffering, different summer. Same wall, same illegal occupation, same dialogues happening with the same people, with no different outcome. Friends in the States, especially African-American friends, have lamented how tired they are of the same racist story coming out of a new city every day. Same human brokenness and sin, different context. This unrelenting status quo of human suffering means Jesus’ parable about the mysterious growth of the kingdom—and the sleeping farmer—is especially meaningful for us today.

Jesus said, “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.” The parables of Jesus use familiar images to reveal unfamiliar and challenging ideas. In this case, the challenging idea is that the growth of the kingdom happens only by God’s power, and in fact is happening right now. Something is happening, something is germinating, soon the change will come, although all we see now is a pile of dirt. This is a message of hope, an encouragement to disciples who wonder why, if the Messiah has already come, we don’t see more evidence of the promised kingdom of love, peace, justice, and abundance for all.

There is a history in the church, however, of interpreting this parable as a license to just “let go and let God” when faced with the injustices of our broken world. There is unfortunately a tradition of reading these words of Jesus as a call to quietism and calm, a bucket of water to drown the flames of passion and to cool the agitators for justice, revolution and change. The farmer in this parable, after all, is just having a good nap while waiting for the kingdom! The growth not only happens by God’s power alone—the farmer seems completely irrelevant to the story! Therefore, “Don’t worry, God’s got this, it’ll all make sense when we get to heaven” has been the message of many a preacher.

This is a convenient interpretation, especially for those whose lives and privilege will be disrupted by the coming of God’s kingdom. It allows us a theological excuse for doing nothing right now, and biblical justification for maintaining the status quo. God will take care of it, in God’s time.

One of the most memorable challenges to this quietist interpretation came from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” he quoted a message he had received from a “white brother in Texas”, which said:

"All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth."

To which Dr. King famously responded:  

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

The time is always ripe to do what is right. And yet Jesus says: “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.”

The growth of the kingdom happens only by God’s power, and the mature harvest comes only at a time designated by God. But injustices surround us, and the time is clearly now to speak up for our brothers and sisters. So are we to be sleeping farmers, or are we to be the “co-workers with God” Dr. King envisions?

Tractor blessing for Rogation Sunday
Capron Lutheran Church, Capron, Illinois
Photo by Carrie Smith

Not surprisingly, it was my time as a country pastor which gave me a new perspective on this parable. I knew nothing at all about corn or cattle or tractors or the seasons of a farmer’s life when I was called to be pastor in a tiny church in rural Illinois. I did arrive with stereotypes and assumptions about what farming was like. One of those assumptions, soon shattered, was the idea that farmers sit idle and mostly “hang out” during the growing season, once the seeds have been put into the ground. This is a lot like saying the pastor only works on Sunday mornings! (This is not true, in case you were wondering!)

The planting and harvest seasons on the farm are of course the busiest, but there is plenty of work to be done while the invisible growth is happening. Watering. Weeding. Tending to the animals. Watching the weather. Caring for the machinery. Caring for relationships, so there will be friendly neighbors willing to help when harvest time comes around.

In the end, of course, whether or not the crop is a good one is in God’s control, and the exact time of the harvest can only be guessed. But the growing season isn’t naptime! The time between the sowing of the seeds and the harvest isn’t lost time, it’s life! It’s the life to which we have been called as Christians. Sowing the seeds was just the beginning. Now is the hard part. Now is the time for loving our neighbors, building relationships, preaching the Gospel, and praying for those in need. Now is the time for challenging systems, advocating for change, and standing with the oppressed. Now is the time for sleeping, and rising, and trusting in God for the harvest—and doing it all again tomorrow.

It’s true that some days it feels like nothing will ever change, and the harvest will never come. Some days, we look at the empty field, the wall surrounding Bethlehem, the rockets coming out of Gaza, the police holding down 14 year old girls, and the children killed by ISIS, and we wonder if the seeds are really growing. We wonder if the kingdom of God is really on its way. Some days, we may be tempted to despair and passivity. Other days, we may consider possibilities promising a faster path to the harvest—like the invitation to extremism or violence.

But Jesus says, “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…But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.” Hear the Good News: The kingdom is coming! The harvest is near! In the meantime, our sleeping and rising, our laughing and loving, our praying and hoping, working and resting, our trusting in God in spite of the evidence, is not being idle. It is not being passive. It is not bowing to the voices urging us “Don’t fan the flame” or “just wait, God’s got it.” This is what it means to be a farmer. This is what it means to be a co-worker with God.

This is resistance.

Just as farmers resist the call to despair when the weather report is bad, and trust in the invisible growth happening beneath the soil, Christian discipleship and trust in God is a form of resistance. We resist the temptation to settle for faster-growing crops, for something lesser than the kingdom but still better than what we have. A kinder, gentler occupation, for example. A nicer, less offensive racism. An icy tolerance of each other instead of true peace with justice.

We resist, because Jesus has taught us that God’s kingdom is worth the wait. God’s kingdom is greater than we can ever imagine. God's peace is everlasting. God's mercy is boundless. God's love is for all people. God’s kingdom is like the “mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet 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.”

Thanks be to God, that kingdom has already come near in Jesus, our brother. We have already known the beauty of the kingdom through the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Dear sisters and brothers, we may not be able to see it, but things are changing. Growth is happening.  After all, we can’t see what happens at communion, and yet we experience Christ’s real presence in the bread and the wine.

We can’t see what is happening in the hearts of others, and yet we have seen broken lives restored to wholeness, and friendships formed from sworn enemies.

We can’t see how the occupation will end, how two peoples and three religions will ultimately live together in this place, what we can do about ISIS, or how poverty and racism and will be eradicated once and for all.

But because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we know that our faithful God will not fail to bring the harvest. God will not fail to bring justice and peace. God will not fail to bring salvation. Until then we will sleep and rise and love and live and resist and build relationships and prepare, for the time is at hand. The harvest is almost ready. The kingdom has come near. And it is worth the wait. Amen.