Mark 4:26-34
“Seeds, Sleep, Shade”
June 13, 2021 – Third Sunday after Pentecost
Barbara Kingsolver wrote,
One day we came home from some errands to find a grocery sack of [zucchini] hanging on our mailbox. The perpetrator, of course, was nowhere in sight … Garrison Keillor says July is the only time of year when country people lock our cars in the church parking lot, so people won’t put squash on the front seat. I used to think that was a joke… It’s a relaxed atmosphere in our little town, plus our neighbors keep an eye out and will, if asked, tell us the make and model of every vehicle that ever enters the lane to our farm. So the family was a bit surprised when I started double-checking the security of doors and gates any time we all were about to leave the premises.
“Do I have to explain the obvious?” I asked impatiently. “Somebody might break in and put zucchini in our house.”[1]
Toss out zucchini seeds and turn your back. When you turn around you won’t find nice, 6 inch green tubes like in the produce section or pictured on the seed packet. No, the ground will be littered with green monstrosities of dirigible proportions. You will then spend the next couple weeks trying to foist those pneumatic vegetables off on your friends.
Zucchini rewards the most inept gardener. It makes the novice look like a master of the soil. If all else fails, there is still a harvest. If every other plant dies, the zucchini vine will spread out its branches and fill up your backyard. Which is why it’s like God’s kingdom.
At the beginning of Mark 4 Jesus told a parable which might lead us to believe that God’s kingdom depends on careful, hard work in His garden. He talked about the Word being sown like seed on various sorts of soil. He warned how the spiritual equivalent of rocky ground, hungry birds and thorny weeds could spoil or destroy the crop.
That Parable of the Sower may make it sound like we all need to be extraordinarily diligent in our efforts if God is to produce anything. We need to chase away the birds of temptation that threaten the seeds, be constantly tilling the ground of our souls so that the Word sinks in, be carefully weeding out all our worldly cares about things like jobs or money. It’s only with the most intense cultivation that we’ll be able to see God’s kingdom arrive among us.
The notion that the kingdom of God depends on our constant care and labor is why Mark felt it important to include a small parable all the other Gospel writers left out. As a story, it doesn’t amount to much. It’s scarcely more than a brief observation on the natural order of the world. But the little “Parable of the Growing Seed” may be just what some of us need to hear in order to understand and grasp how profound is the gift and grace of God’s kingdom.
In verses 26 and 27, Jesus explains that a farmer plants seed and then goes to bed, like Toad finally did in the story I read to the children. What happens then is not up to the farmer. Time passes, night and day, and the seed just grows, all on its own, “he does not know how.” The whole process is mysterious, independent of the gardener, of the farmer.
Verse 28 begins with the Greek word automatē, from which we get the word “automatic.” The earth “automatically” produces the stalk, then tight little buds, then finally fully developed heads with grain in them. The crop grows by itself, produced by power God created in nature and the earth. But then in verse 29, the gardener is able to go out and reap that harvest which came up while he slept half the time it was growing.
Don’t get distracted by thinking through this parable in too much detail. Of course gardeners and farmers work hard. Of course they have to plow the ground, and irrigate, and fend off weeds and animals. Of course the production of a decent crop of anything, except maybe zucchini, is hardly automatic. There’s lots of work involved. But Jesus’ point is that the actual growth, the production of the grain or vegetables or flowers is still a mystery. It happens while we sleep, while we rest, while we do other things.
So that’s how we are to see our efforts for the kingdom of God, our spiritual work for the Lord. Whatever we do is not what finally produces a result. It’s the mysterious power of God, the work of the Holy Spirit, which grows God’s crop while we are resting and doing other things.
This is true of whatever spiritual work you care to think about, whether it’s prayer or evangelism, caring for the poor or social justice, teaching Sunday School or trying to raise your own children to believe in Jesus. You can work as hard as you like, but the results come from God, not from you and me. And, the results will come. God’s kingdom will grow in this world. It’s just that we can’t force it to happen. We must wait for what God has promised.
Jesus spoke this parable to a small handful of followers who lived in a tiny occupied country at the edge of a Roman empire which knew nothing about God. Those disciples couldn’t have imagined how Jesus’ words would come true. In about three hundred years the capital of the empire would become the central city for the faith being planted in them that day. In a few hundred years more, that faith would start to cover the earth.
You and I can’t imagine what God is doing now even as we listen to this parable and think about our own efforts for the kingdom. Week after week we pray for people who are sick and for people who don’t yet know Jesus as Savior. Month by month we send checks to mission work in another country or drop off cans and boxes for the local food bank. Night and day go by and it feels like nothing happens. But then every once in a while we hear reports. One of those we prayed for is in remission. Someone has accepted Christ as Savior. A village has a new well. A family says thank you for a box of groceries.
Please hear this parable for the work of God that is dear to your heart. Hear it for that son or daughter for whom you pray but who doesn’t seem to change. Hear it for that little ministry of Bible teaching or prayer or service to those in need when there seems to be no visible result. Your effort remains tiny; those you help are still homeless or poor or far from God. But He is at work. The seeds of the kingdom are growing. The harvest will come.
This parable speaks to me as a pastor coming out of pandemic times. For 14 or 15 months, “results” were even more invisible than usual. I preached a sermon every week to a camera, but couldn’t see if anyone smiled or nodded or even got angry at what I said. I thought up clever children’s messages that used tricks only the camera could produce, but most of the time I had no idea if any kids were even watching. And as I stand here this morning, I still can’t quite tell behind your masks if anyone cares what I’m saying.
So I think about how 28 years ago I was getting ready to leave the first church I served and come here. Things hadn’t turned out as I’d hoped in that first call. The congregation had grown a little. They would complete a building addition after I was gone. But I hadn’t seen the results I’d expected. I was discouraged. Then Rex turned up at my office door.
Rex had a nice fly fishing rod in his hand. He gave it to me and said, “This is to say thank you.” I said, “For what?” Honestly, I was barely acquainted with him. We had only talked once or twice, mostly about the baptism of their twin girls. What was he thanking me for? He said, “For my faith. You probably don’t realize it, but I became a Christian listening to you preach the last few years. My life was a mess and your sermons helped me find my way to the Lord.”
I had had no idea. I planted a few seeds, but while I was sleeping, God was at work in that man. I still have the fishing rod. When I catch a fish with it, I try to remember that God is the one who produces the harvest, and the fish for that matter. God is the Lord of the results.
That’s what the other, more familiar Parable of the Mustard Seed here means too. The kingdom of God is like zucchini or mustard seed. From a small start, it grows bigger than anyone expected. Jesus made His point not with something like an acorn or seeds from a cedar tree, as in our Old Testament lesson from Ezekiel. Instead, Jesus picked up the seed of an herb, mustard, a plant we typically expect to grow into a little bush.
From a tiny beginning, mustard can grow and put out branches like a tree, so that Jesus said, it “becomes the greatest of all shrubs.” In Matthew’s Gospel, He says the shrub actually becomes a tree. The lowly herb grows big enough that birds come and make nests in it.
In Ezekiel and in Jesus’ parable, part of the point is that God’s kingdom is big enough to include anyone who comes to it. The Old Testament prophet pictured a time when God’s people would grow to bless all other nations on earth. People from all those different countries would find rest and shade in the branches of the nation God would bring out of His people Israel. Jesus’ parable confirms Ezekiel. The kingdom of God Jesus brought is the tree in which all nations, all races, all languages and cultures, can find a home.
It has already happened. There is almost no place on earth where the Good News of Jesus Christ has not been heard to at least some degree. There are people from almost every country and language on earth finding a spiritual resting place in the kingdom of God which began in and through Jesus.
Small beginnings. Our Covenant denomination began as maybe a couple thousand Swedish immigrants who arrived here with almost no money and no English. But they had mustard seed hearts. From the beginning they sent missionaries to Alaska and to China. Now we have missionaries in more places than I can remember. Our “mission” in Congo is twice as large as our presence in North America, which is 170,000 people in 800 churches.
Small beginnings. Thirty-five years ago approximately fifty people had the faith to put up this church building and believe that God would fill it. 15 years ago maybe a hundred people believed the same thing about the newer building next door. Results haven’t always been exactly what either group expected. At one point 12 years ago there were no children here, much less all the youth the new building anticipated. This past year the buildings stood empty. Yet here we are again, with even new friends and new children among us.
The results come from God. His kingdom is like zucchini. In His plan for creation He designed mustard and zucchini to grow beyond our wildest expectations. His plan for His kingdom is even wilder, even greater. The seeds of that kingdom are growing all the time because He is at work even, maybe especially, when you and I need to sleep. In the reading from Ezekiel, God also did the planting. In the end, it’s all God’s doing.
Jesus teaches us to serve Him without getting too caught up in worry about visible results. That is true in two ways. The first is what I’ve already been saying, to not let ourselves get discouraged, to firmly believe it is God who produces the good fruit of the kingdom, not ourselves. In a prayer book I use, one of the petitions asks God to, “Be mindful of those who devote themselves to the service of their brothers and sisters, do not let them be deterred from their goals by discouraging results or lack of support.”[2] That’s a prayer we may all pray for each other and for ourselves.
There’s another, perhaps larger, lesson here though. To contemplate the mystery of growth in this world, whether it’s a plant in the ground or a baby in the womb, is to realize how very dependent we are on God and His gracious gifts poured out sometimes almost at random. It calls us not to give ourselves too much blame or too much credit for how our own or others’ lives turn out in this world. The “self-made” person is a modern myth, not a Christian idea. So much of what we are and possess in this world is not the product of our own efforts, but a gift, a trust we don’t even deserve, from God.
As she concludes her book Caste, thinking about how uncontrollable accidents like birthplace and other circumstances determine so much of our lives, Isabel Wilkerson asks us to remember what we do and do not control in our lives. She writes,
None of us chose the circumstances of our birth. We had nothing to do with having been born into privilege or under stigma. We have everything to do with what we do with our God-given talents and how we treat others… from this day forward.[3]
People will talk about school or economic prosperity or political voice needing to be “merit-based.” We Christians need to constantly remind ourselves and others that nothing we have or receive is ultimately merit-based. God is the source of it all. And we need to remind ourselves that God is still there in people and in the world, even when we cannot see practical results. That’s one of the reasons for what we do in Christian worship, things that produce no visible results, like putting flowers on the Communion table or singing beautiful songs or even constructing and caring for lovely building in which to worship. Skye Jethani who partners in the “Holy Post” podcast said this:
In the beginning, the Lord put some trees in Eden simply because they were a pleasure to look at. Likewise, art reminds us that some things have value apart from their usefulness… Christian worship has always valued the impractical gifts of artists. They help reorient our vision away from the utilitarian ethic of the world that merely wants to use, exploit, and discard. Beautiful Christian worship is meant to inspire us with a vision of the inherent value of things—starting with God himself and those created in his image.
If we are going to value those the world ignores—the poor, the orphans, the elderly, the handicapped, the pre-born, the outsiders, and the outcasts—then we must confront the utilitarian values of the world through the extravagant beauty of our worship. We must learn through artists to value the unuseful. In this way, beauty is inexorably linked to justice. One could even say that learning to value things apart from their usefulness, which is what beauty does, is a prerequisite for the pursuit of justice.”[4]
This is about doing what we heard in our reading from II Corinthians, walking “by faith, not by sight,” regarding “no one from a human point of view” by seeing only their pragmatic worth, but looking with baptized eyes for that “new creation” God brings when “anyone is in Christ.” As we interact with each other, whether at home, in society, or in the church, we are looking for, we are waiting for, what God is doing, for what God will do.
There’s much we don’t understand, of course. The last two verses of our text tell how Jesus spoke in parables, as the people “were able to hear it.” The Lord lets us in on the mysteries of His kingdom, as we are able to hear it. You and I don’t get to grasp it all at once. It will often seem like nothing is happening. But eventually, just like verse 34 says Jesus did for those disciples, it will all be explained, all come clear.
For right now, however it looks to you, however small the results might seem in your own life, in the life of those you love, in your church, in your country, don’t be discouraged. The seeds are growing. They are growing in that loved one you’ve been praying for. They are growing in your family. They are growing in your church. They are growing in your community and in your place of work. One day the harvest will come.
Until then, sleep in peace and in hope. Do your work and then let God do His. Our Lord’s kingdom will come. Then you and I will rest like nesting birds in the shade of its great branches and talk about how God did more than we ever asked or imagined.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2021 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
[2] Shorter Christian Prayer, Week III, Wednesday, Evening Prayer, p. 232.
[3] p. 387.
[4] “With God Daily” podcast, June 3, 2021, https://skyejethani.com/with-god-daily/