Mark 4:26-34
June 17, 2012 Pentecost 3B/Proper 6
Several of my friends in school particularly liked an expression that drove me crazy. “That’s random” they would say when something just came up out of no where. Like a thunderstorm on a hot summer after noon that made the sky turn black for just a few minutes, long enough to make the air stickier than it was before, and then returned to a beautiful blue sky day. That would be random, if it didn’t happen with predictable regularity on hot summer days in the south. Or maybe somebody made a comment that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the conversation, but more often than not the person who deemed the comment random wasn’t listening.
My friends began saying it often enough that I realized it was just verbal filler. It was just something that made some noise without really saying anything. But the part that irked my inner grammar nerd was the fact that there are not many things that are really random. Most things have a reason, or they follow a pattern-- even if the pattern is not completely obvious.
But I caught myself saying that phrase when I read the first part of today’s passage. The Message translation phrases it this way, “ God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows--he has no idea how that happens.” Unlike the ways my friends used the word, this feels really and truly random.
First of all, who plants seeds and doesn’t give them any thought? We’ve established that I’m no gardener, but it doesn’t stop me from trying. Every now and then, I see a packet of seeds that look like they should produce a lovely bed of flowers, and of course I bring them home hoping that they will actually turn out to be more like Jack and the Beanstalk’s magic beans that just grow. Of course, I’m not really expecting that they will be magic seeds that will just find themselves having a lovely time in my yard and just want to bloom and bloom. So I follow the directions on the package exactly. Then I come back every few days waiting to see if they’ve done anything. Are there any sprouts peaking up or are those just more infernal weeds? Is the ground too dry? If it is, then I will water it. Wait, are they getting enough nutrients out of this sandy soil? If not, I have some miracle grow I can add to my watering can.
But I’ve never just emptied a package of seeds on the ground and then forgotten about them. Even kids don’t do that. Most kids probably planted a marigold or something in an elementary school science class, because the teacher hoped that would give them a place to talk about seed germination. And the kids do exactly what I just described. The find the cup with their name on it, and look at it every day. They move it to the best spot in the sunny window. Even the surliest of teenagers can’t stand to pretend they don’t care, as I discovered when I worked at the children’s home. For Ash Wednesday, my boss had each teenager add some seeds to huge planters that stood on each side of the chapel doors. And without fail, every Sunday, there was a crowd of teenagers closely examining the plants. Even the boys who loudly announced that they could bench press three hundred pounds were captivated by these seeds that, at best, might grow.
Nobody could pretend that the hope of life right under their fingertips was unimportant.
Except, apparently, this random farmer in our story, with his random seeds, that he apparently didn’t care much about.
“The kingdom of God is like a man who just throws some seed about and doesn’t worry about the success rate of what he’s doing?” Let’s push the metaphor here-- what would happen if we substituted the word “Church” for Kingdom of God-- that’s not too big of a stretch! And then what if we substituted “created programs and services without giving them too much thought.” Also not a big stretch. So we’d be left with a church who did things just to do them, without researching them or making a committee to oversee them.
I don’t like that a bit. Ask anyone who has ever been an elder what they think of that idea--they probably won’t like it much at all either. It feels careless and like poor stewardship. That’s no way to treat God’s kingdom.
And it’s definitely no way to grow God’s kingdom. And that’s what we’re about-- after all, Jesus himself commissioned the church “You are my witnesses” he said, or “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Jesus himself commissioned us to tend to the growing of the kingdom, and that is serious business.
It requires careful planning. It needs meetings and campaigns. We need to get everyone involved, and make sure that each person is using his or her spiritual gifts to promote the kingdom and the love of God. Posters and T-shirts would be helpful. Activities are a must.
If the kingdom and the church grow, then we make careful notes about what we did right. If it’s not growing, or worse, shrinking, we panic and wonder what we need to correct in order to see growth again. It’s the Lord’s kingdom, after all. And that’s how responsible church leaders and kingdom growers behave. Besides all that, it makes things a lot easier when we can plan and formulate and analyze. It’s good to have a formula that says if you do so and so, then such and such will happen.
Is there a formula for growing the kingdom of God? Is there a guaranteed way that we can grow the church so big and strong that folks from all over will flock to it’s branches to seek shelter? I, along with probably most of us, want there to be a formula-- something that makes sense. Something that we can work with and improve and... control.
What finally occurred to me though, is this question: What if we could find a formula that took care of all that growing? What if we could reduce the kingdom of God to a formula? Let’s follow that out for a second.
There would be no room for God’s surprising hand to do anything unexpected in our midst. There would be no place for the just-under-the-surface grace that all of us have experienced, in the church and in the world. In fact, if we could control God’s kingdom so precisely, then what need would we have of God?
Suddenly, I like this parable a lot more. As much as I don’t like thinking of God’s kingdom as “random”, even more than that, I dislike the idea that I or we have anything at all to do with controlling God’s kindgom. Because I wan’t God’s mystery to dance among us. I want God to surprise us with things that we had never thought of or dared to imagine. I want to wake up in the morning, delighted to see what has sprung to life in our midst. I want to be a sleeping gardener, not because I don’t care enough to plant, and water and watch, but because I know it isn’t my garden.
Of course, in order for that to be a joyful experience, we are going to have to set aside our need to control the garden and the kingdom itself. When we try so feverishly to be about the business of growing and control its seasons and workings, we’re attempting to take ownership of a garden that was never ours. That would be an awful lot like me marching over to Fred Comer’s garden and pulling up all of his hard work, and ruining his lovely vegetables, because I thought I knew best what he needed. Fred knows a lot more about gardening than I do-- and I could pretty easily destroy years of wisdom and experience.
We don’t know exactly how the kingdom of God grows, only that it isn’t at our hands. There’s a joyful, grace-filled mystery at work in the soil that causes new life to sprout up and flourish.
So what is it that we do? We must have a job here. We scatter the seeds everywhere we can--as if there is no cost to what we’re doing. There are an abundance of seeds, afterall. Then we rest like babies, safe and secure in their parents arms. And to trust this way is a lot better for us and God’s kindgom than it is to worry and fret over every little seed. As if God’s kingdom were a formula-- where we could control all the variables and produce the same result at any given time.
The harvest will come, not because we’ve made it happen, but the harvest will come because God delights in us, because the power of love is the thing that makes all things grow. Turns out there is nothing random about this-- only grace-filled workings that we can’t put our fingers on.
The kingdom of God is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows-- he has no idea how it happens... whenever the crop is ready, the farmer goes out because it is harvest time.
