“The seed would sprout and
grow, he does not know how.” As someone who grew up in the big city away from
farms, this sentence makes a lot of sense to me. I didn’t know any farmers and
really didn’t think a lot about the process of planting seeds and making them
grow. I just assumed it was easy as digging, planting, and waiting on the rain.
It just happens, right?
Now I live next door to a
farmer and understand better the complexities of planting and growing a crop. I
understand that a farmer can’t sleep through growing season and expect to yield
a profitable crop. I understand that while you want it to rain, it can only
rain on this day and that much. I understand that deer and grasshoppers can
destroy acres in a matter of days, and I understand that it is quite likely for
a farmer to have to replant an entire crop.
One thing is for sure,
this first parable in today’s lesson is a terrible description of what it is
like to be a farmer. But, as we know, Jesus isn’t talking about farming. Jesus
is talking about the kingdom of God in the form of a parable. Jesus is using a
familiar image to point to a concept beyond human understanding.
And the meaning of a
parable is discovered when the story takes an unexpected turn, when Jesus turns
our earthly assumptions upside down. In this first parable, the story is turned
upside down when we are told the farmer or sower does not know how the seed sprouts
and grows.
But this doesn’t make any
sense. Of course, the farmer or sower would know how the seed sprouts and
grows. The farmer is the one who pours his blood, sweat, and tears in making
sure that it does grow – his livelihood depends on it.
The kingdom of God is
different, however. The kingdom of God is a divine mystery growing in our
midst. Even when we fall asleep on the job, the kingdom of God is growing all
around us. The kingdom of God grows not because of our own blood, sweat, and
tears, but because of Jesus’ blood, sweat, and tears.
The kingdom of God
depends on the mystery of divine intervention, not on the effort of human will
and intelligence. And for us Anglicans or Episcopalians, the mystery of divine
intervention should make a lot of sense. We are a people who embrace mystery, a
mystery most clearly stated in our Eucharistic theology.
Instead of reducing the
Lord’s Supper to a memorial or trying to over explain it using a doctrine of
transubstantiation or consubstantiation, we simply proclaim the Real Presence. We
don’t know how Jesus is present but we believe that Jesus is here. In other
words, you can sleep through the entire church service (but I’m watching) and
the bread and wine will still become the body and blood of Jesus. Ultimately, we believe that God’s active
presence in the world is not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to grow into.
The point of our
Eucharistic theology, as is the point of the first parable, is that our lives
with God are driven by the greatest mystery of all – God’s grace – a concept
that we as humans have a difficult time accepting. But the truth of God’s grace
remains even when we don’t understand.
We belong to a God who
loves us even when we turn our backs on God and each other. We belong to a God
who is making paradise for a people who constantly reject God’s paradise in
favor of their own idea of paradise.
And as our story goes,
our own version of paradise quickly turns into hell. Anytime we try to control
what the kingdom should look like, anytime we try to twist God’s vision to make
it fit our own near-sightedness, we in fact, make kingdoms that are hostile to
the kingdom of God.
As we move into the
second parable of the mustard seed, we are confronted with the reality that no
matter how hard we try to replace God’s paradise with our paradise, God’s
kingdom will still sprout up and grow. It is like a scrubby, invasive mustard bush.
God’s kingdom simply won’t go away.
At our Tuesday Bible
study, we reflected on how we have romanticized the story of the mustard seed.
The way the parable reads to our modern ears suggests that a mustard shrub is a
beautiful shrub, a shrub that everyone would want to have planted in their front
yard. The reality, however, is much more humble. A mustard bush isn’t sought
after like our azaleas or hydrangeas.
From what I can tell, the
equivalent of a mustard shrub in Selma is privet hedge. Privet is that stuff in
your yard that won’t go away. It is that stuff that blooms in early spring and
makes your allergies go nuts. It grows anywhere and everywhere. It grows up
through your azaleas.
There is privet on my
creek bank that I have tried to destroy again and again but it won’t go away.
I’ve just given up and am letting it grow. The privet hedge won. You can try to
kill it again and again but it will come back – that is what God’s grace looks
like.
Again, this is the twist
in the parable that sheds light on what the kingdom of God is like. Despite our
best efforts to replace God’s kingdom with our kingdoms, God will make God’s
kingdom grow – anywhere and everywhere. At some point, we just have to give up
and accept God’s reality growing in our midst. We cannot stop God from moving
in this world. God wins – every time.
This is a truth that
William Wilberforce knew well. Wilberforce was the politician in the English
Parliament who spent his entire career working to abolish slave trade in
England. He was once asked why he did it. His reply, “Because if I didn’t do
it, then God would have found someone else to do it.”
In other words,
Wilberforce knew that God’s justice would prevail. His faith told him that God
would not let slavery last forever. He knew, at best, all humanity could do was
delay God’s justice in the world, and he didn’t want to be responsible for
delaying God’s work in the world. Wilberforce was a man who walked by faith,
not by sight.
If he walked by sight
alone, then he would have never had the strength and confidence to do what he
did. His human sight would have told him that it would be ridiculous to cut
down the azaleas and hydrangeas in order to let privet hedge grow. His human
sight would have told him to cut down the privet hedge in order to let the
azaleas and hydrangeas grow. But through Jesus, he saw the world not from an
earthly point of view but through God’s point of view.
At the end of the day,
the faith we are given in Jesus is about changing how we see the world. And by
changing how we see the world, our words and actions are changed too. Our faith
tells us that God’s truth and love will prevail, and we will be much better off
if we just let grace happen. We will be much better off if we stop trying to
build our earthly systems and kingdoms, built on power and control, and just
let God’s kingdom, built on mercy and grace, grow in our midst.
The problem with grace,
however, is that it is not a very efficient way to build a kingdom – grace
requires lots of detours. Someone compared the movement of grace to the
terrible speed of mercy. While God could snap his fingers and make everything
right, God lets us make mistakes in the hope that we turn back to God and claim
God’s truth as our own.
Our God isn’t interested
in making robots. Instead, God wants us to grow in the mystery of faith by
inviting us to grow in grace, and this growth through grace is what gives our
lives meaning and joy and beauty. This growth through grace is what creates in
us a desire to long for God, a desire to love God, a desire to love our
neighbor, a desire to live in peace and harmony with one another – no matter
how messy growth in grace can be at times.
Even after we have done
our worst, even after we reject God’s grace in favor of humanity’s perverted
sense of justice, the kind of justice that uses religion to distort God’s will,
the kind of justice that crucified our Lord, God’s goodness and favor toward us
will never leave us for our Lord and Savior is risen from the dead. We cannot
stop God. We cannot stop grace from happening. God will continue to make his
Kingdom grow on earth even when we busy ourselves trying to stop grace from
happening.
So, can we give up
already? Can we stop trying to play God? For the simple reason that we really
don’t have a clue as to what we are doing. Can we finally let the mystery of
God’s grace grow in our lives in a way that opens our eyes to the simple truth
that God made us to choose the way of love, a way made clear in Christ
crucified, a way established forever on the third day, a way that makes room
for all the peoples of this earth,
from every race and nation, to live together in the peace of God which
surpasses human understanding. Amen.
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