A colleague of mine spent his sabbatical time looking at Jesus’ agricultural metaphors and finding more urban appropriate examples. Let’s face it most people today either live in an urban area or are moving there. Understanding the parables, the stories, the deeper truths of Jesus can be complicated by this shift of context. Most people reading the Gospels these days are not going to have intimate knowledge of sheep, seeds and rural landscape. When we hear the admonition to “bear fruit” that likely loses something in translation.
So here we are this morning, given a Gospel text that contains some of Jesus’ most profound wisdom, and the story is about seeds, a mustard seed in particular, and how they grow. The deeper messages contained in this story are obvious; patience, faith, and hope. We hear the words, “He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a 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.” There is way of hearing this text that sounds more like a gardening how-to article than a profound message on how we ought to live.
But the message of how to live and how to die is all there, Jesus has given us life and life in abundance. You know I visit lots of people; new people to Bethany, new people to Brunswick Street, new people in Dartmouth, I talk to people on the bus, I talk to people whom I have known over 40 years of living in Halifax, I talk to young people, I talk to seniors, I talk to new Canadians and people who have lived in this city for six generations or more, and I talk to you, and one constant is this, “Does it really matter Kevin, does anything I do or say matter to anyone?” Some have become jaded, cynical and impatient with their conclusions to that question. They throw up their hands and give up, they retreat, they just stick to their solitaire, their computer games, their homes, their routines, their jobs, etc… And they wonder, “does anything I do really make a difference?”
I usually respond to the question with a question, “How would you know that you had made a difference?” I think previous generations took a longer view of this question, most of us today expect to see a result in our lifetime, if not much sooner. And I think it is fair to say my contemporaries expect to receive some credit. People now see themselves less as a part of a larger institution or culture or movement and more as an autonomous individual. There are many pluses to this shift in mindset. People can no longer be pushed and shoved and manipulated into some box, the hand of conformity can longer do its will on those who feel God’s spirit moving in unique directions. As Paul’s letters make absolutely clear our gifts are unique and we serve no other cause than God’s covenant love. All too often women, children, people of colour, have all been shaped by a uniform conformity into a box where they never belonged and could not hold their deepest selves.
But this individualism has also brought with it an expectation that things can be accommodated to our needs and that we can see the results, soon.
Jesus’ parable this morning defies failure. It asserts optimism. The parable serves to assert hope despite what seems, at first sight, a rather meaningless exercise: burying the seed! The parable invites us to believe that God's reign - the good that God will bring and does bring - will happen. People have often wondered whether Jesus invented these parables to defend his ministry against the charge that it had achieved little success. His cross hangs a much larger question mark over his life. The parable of the sower doubtless served well to help the first Christians come to terms with uneven success. There is a sense in which these parables belong to notions of resurrection. They also have parallels in many of the world's religions and philosophies which hail the dying and rising of winter and spring or the dying seed and the sprouting green as a paradigm for hope in life. This should not surprise us. It is the common ground we share with all who see life as something positive and live it with hope.
Asserting hope can be rather meaningless unless we have some experience of fulfilment in the here and now. Without it, it is probably not even possible to hope. One can’t really see what’s happening until harvest time. But all the while, the thing you planted is developing into something valuable. Invisible, yes, but growing nonetheless. The kind way you raised your children will probably someday, some way, help to make them into kind people. The justice you work for now may not be harvested for years, even decades. The way you treat someone else will likely come back to you in similar form. The time you spend in volunteering or study or prayer and meditation or family life or your job will make you a better person, and those around you will also benefit. Patience is the key.
I go back to where I started, this notion that we live in more urban times, more individualized times, and that a parable told in the context of agriculture and a collective understanding of life may be hard to completely grasp. Here is what I would offer as another way of sharing Jesus’ good news of hope in our time, for all time. Rather than use the word “seed” I would use the word “witness”, that we “witness” to what we believe and see and do and hope that others will see what we see. More and more I am convinced in these cynical and jaded times we have to speak to the one who listens to our hope and responds, “show me!” To those of us from middle class backgrounds who accustomed to presenting their case by way of words and persuasion I can tell you this has limited effect in our current context. People want to see the hope alive, they want to see the hope lived out, they want to see how hope lives and breathes in their own context.
If a church wants to demonstrate justice it has to live out some aspect of justice. If a church wants to demonstrate hospitality it has to live out some aspect of hospitality. If a church wants to demonstrate deep spirituality it has to live out some aspect of spirituality. And if people see this witness that will have a profound effect on their souls, individually and collectively. Seeds will be planted, and growth will occur, maybe not right away, but hope will be alive.
I believe God nourishes and sustains and cultivates our seeds of witness, takes what we do in God’s name and brings it to life, maybe now, maybe later, maybe much later. Martin Luther King Jr once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Indeed, it does! But it bends around seeds of witness where people have faith in something bigger/larger than themselves and shows us the way by living it out for real. When the cynical and jaded see these things, see the seeds grow, watch a witness to something made living, they believe, they have faith, they want to join.
Here at Bethany we are attempting to live out, witness to, a community expression of covenant love, a way of being that respects and honours each other and weaves our various authentic gifts together into a fabric that can include all comers.
Plant your seed. Watch it grow. And with God’s help we will create large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade and we will know our lives matter, each and every one of us.
Do the right thing. Then just wait. The kingdom will grow. Amen.