Richard Davenport
June 16, 2024 – Proper 6
Mark 4:26-34
Today Jesus pulls out some more short parables on growing things. Like his parables of sheep and shepherds, Jesus uses parables the people could relate to. His parables describe the kingdom of God. It’s his way of answering the question, “What does it mean for Jesus to reign?” He says, “Here’s what it looks like when I’m acting as king.”
In this case, agriculture was something folks understood. Even in a big city like Jerusalem, most of life centered on growing food in one way or another. Everyone understood the basics of how farming worked, just like folks understood the basics of sheep and goats.
Nowadays I’m not sure that’s the case. Sure, most people have some vague sense of what farming entails. You see ads for corn and soybeans and such on tv. You drive by farms here and there and see the fields planted and the crops growing. Maybe you see someone driving a tractor here or there, or you see someone farming in a tv show or something like that, but that’s about the extent of what most folks know about farming. Perahps you farm or used to farm. Perhaps you have lived out in rural areas at one time or another, but here in modern cities, farming is kind of a foreign thing.
But that doesn’t mean Jesus’ parables have to be all that foreign. There’s still a lot of growing even here in the Fort Smith. I don’t consider myself to have much of a green thumb, but I do know a little about gardening. Flowers I don’t mess with a whole lot. I do have some favorites, but Laurie and grandma know a lot more about all of the different kinds of flowers and what they need to grow. I mostly just stick them in the ground.
Growing vegetables though, that I do know a little about. We’ve grown carrots, peas, and tomatoes in our garden in the past, as well as a few different varieties of peppers. Growing the kinds of peppers I grow isn’t much different than growing any other vegetable, but there are some important things to remember. Wearing gloves for instance. Even picking the peppers can get enough of the oil on your hands to cause some problems, especially if your rub your eyes. Better to just avoid that situation. Trying to grow peppers from seeds is something I haven’t had much success with. I’ve read some information on it and I’ve tried it a time or two, but haven’t had much luck with it. The peppers that I’ve had do well have been ones that were already started and I was able to just transplant. The couple of years I’ve done that I’ve had more peppers than I knew what to do with.
You may not be a big fan of growing hot peppers, but you probably have at least some exposure to growing other things. That means Jesus’ parables aren’t so out there after all. I certainly understand the mystery of planting things and watching them grow. Why do some plants grow well while others don’t? How is it you can put a seed in the ground, give it some water, and it just sprouts? Even the experts can’t answer all of the questions and can’t explain all of the nuances. These things just are the way they are. I’ve never grown a mustard plant or even seen them grown, but I can understand how that might work too. Seeing a tiny seed sprout into a big plant is something I can visualize. His parable isn’t all that strange after all.
It’s easy to translate what Jesus says into the language of the church. Maybe you know something about farming or gardening, but church things are something we can all understand. The seed that sprouts in the soil has always been understood as faith. We can share the gospel, but we can’t force someone to come to faith. It has to be the work of God in their hearts. You can put together any program you want, you can use any system for evangelism you can find, and still nothing is guaranteed. If you’re gardening, you can probably look at all of the details, the soil, the amount of water, the nutrients, the pests, and everything else and figure out why a plant didn’t grow. You can’t really do that with faith. There’s just too much we don’t know and will never know. Nothing we do will change that.
How do we deal with that? It’s tough not knowing, not being able to simply tweak how we present God’s Word to make it more appealing. The salesman mindset is easy to fall into, but it doesn’t work. We aren’t salesmen, we are truth-tellers. If we tell someone the truth and they refuse it, all we can do is keep trying, lovingly, patiently trying. And we have to accept that it may never happen. But, when it does, it is a beautiful thing to see.
The mustard seed is a similar story. The Word of God makes the church grow. The church grows and grows. It puts out branches for others to gather under. Sharing God’s Word gives others a place to find comfort and safety. Through God’s Word and through faith, people receive salvation and grace, new life in Christ. They come to the church and find shelter, shelter from sin and death.
We share God’s Word, but God makes the church grow. The two parables go together. The grace given by Christ isn’t something you can just list off like a bunch of bullet points and know people will listen. Trusting in God doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with facts. But, for those who do believe, they find shelter in the church and God takes care of them here.
The mystery only works so far though. God’s in control. God works in ways we don’t quite understand. We follow all of that, but at some point it stops being helpful. There may be individual churches that are growing, but not very many, and that’s true not just of our community, but of the rest of the US and Europe as well, probably Russia and a number of other places also. Of the churches that are growing, many of those aren’t growing because of anything God’s Word is doing. God’s Word might get mentioned and used here and there in those churches, but the primary draw isn’t faith or worship or anything like that. It’s greed, or a desire to have someone tell me God likes me just the way I am, or something else along those lines. Whatever the mysterious system God uses to build up his church, it doesn’t seem to be working. It’s all faulty and broken and because it’s broken, we are sorely tempted to fix it ourselves.
The farming and growing analogy Jesus uses is appropriate here. There’s something every farmer and every gardener should know, but probably doesn’t think about, at least not consciously. When I’ve been growing my peppers from year to year, I haven’t always succeeded, but I’ve always learned something. Whether I’ve gotten a crop that year or not, I’ve gained something from the experience and I’m thankful for the times when I’ve been blessed with a good harvest from the few pepper plants I usually have.
Year after year, planting, tending, harvesting, the plants aren’t the only thing growing, the farmer is too. The first person to get fed from the field’s harvest isn’t the customer at the grocery store, it’s the farmer. We get so caught up in looking around us to see if God’s Word is at work, to see if the church is growing, to see if God is really doing what he promises to do, we forget the growth doesn’t start out there, the first people to be fed with God’s Word are right here, the growth starts here in our own hearts.
When you look around and wonder why the church isn’t growing, the first place you should look is in your own life. Are you growing? God gives ample opportunities for growth. The church is here, His Word is here, creating a fertile soil for his people. But if you aren’t here to immerse yourself in God’s Word, if you aren’t here earnestly desiring the one thing that will give you life, you will never grow, and if you aren’t growing, you can’t help anyone else to grow either.
God’s Word is here for a reason. He shares the abundances of his grace and mercy as he tells you of what he has done for you and what he will yet do. God’s Word is mighty, able to bring the world into existence, able to give life, able to declare you righteous and free from your sin. Our growth is a life-long process. We need constant feeding to grow and grow properly. We need God’s forgiveness so we don’t wither and die. But “not-dying” isn’t really the goal. The Word of God grows from a tiny seed into a large bush that provides shelter. It needs to be allowed to grow in us. We are to grow and bear fruit, we are to live according to God’s Word and to share the love God has given us. We are not to sit here and look pretty, we are to spread the seeds of the gospel, that they take root in the hearts of others and grow there too.
If we aren’t growing, by living in the Word of God and following his commands, then we have lost our purpose in the world. The church won’t grow because it will have lost its purpose too. Jesus explains the kingdom of God in these parables and others. When he is reigning as king, his people grow and flourish under his protection because his Word and Spirit are in them bringing them up to bear abundant fruit. The Gospel spreads because his people are thriving in the Word. We may not know how God brings faith into the hearts of those who hear the Word, but we do know our place in it, to share that Word, to share the love of God and the promises he makes to his people in Christ Jesus.
Come and receive forgiveness. Come and receive his grace. He has planted the seed of the Gospel in you and nurtured you in the soil of the church where His Word is all around you. He has watered you in the waters of baptism. Come to his table and be nourished with the Word made Flesh who offers you eternal life. Come and listen as the liturgy speaks God’s own words to you in conversation. Come, study his Word and learn what he has to say, that you may grow tall and strong. Christ our King begins his work in weakness, but ends in strength. We start small, weak and infirm in our faith, but God’s Word works in us and through to do mighty works, bringing others to faith, showing his love, and establishing his kingdom in power and glory. We pray that God would do more than forgive us, we pray that he would strengthen us, help us grow so we may become the people, the church, the kingdom, we are meant to be.