Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
June 18, 2006

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

There’s a really important fact about our relationship to the Bible that I think most Christians don’t pay enough attention to, or even go out of their way to deny or ignore. That fact is that we know a whole lot more about how the world actually works than the people who wrote the Bible did. I was reminded of that fact when I read today’s lectionary Gospel selection. In the first of the two little seed parables that we just heard, Jesus says that when a seed is scattered on the ground it sprouts and grows, but we do not know how. Well, people in Jesus’ day didn’t know how, but we do. At least, we know a lot more about how than they did. They didn’t know about genetics and pollination, DNA, cell division, and molecular biology; but we do. Or I should say, some of us do. Heidi, for example, knows a lot about such things. I just know that they exist. After all, I flunked plants in high school biology. Still, just knowing that such things exist is a lot more than the people who wrote the Bible knew. So I have to ask: If the people who wrote the Bible knew so little about how seeds grow, do these Biblical parables have anything to say to us about how the Kingdom of God grows?

Yes, they do, despite the limited knowledge the author had about the biology of plants. To the people who wrote the Bible, how a seed grows was a great mystery. Mark’s Jesus says that a person sows a seed, and it grows "he does not know how." The growth of a seed into a mature plant was to people of his time a great mystery of life before which they could only stand in awe and wonder, giving thanks and praise to God. Despite all of our scientific knowledge, I hope that we have not lost that sense of awe and wonder at the miracle of life. Biology may explain how a seed grows into a plant, or at least it may describe the process with scientific precision. However, to me at least, that explanation doesn’t remove the mystery. Life is still a mystery. I still stand in awe and wonder before the miracle of a flower, before the life-sustaining miracle of a grain of wheat, before the beauty of a delicate butter cup in the meadow and the majesty of a towering fir in the forest. I hope you do too. We know more biology than Mark or Jesus did, but I hope we share their wonder at the mystery of life, at the miracle of the plant in the seed.

It is that sense of wonder to which these parables speak. About the Kingdom of God they say: Its growth is a mystery, and with that we can all readily agree. But let’s take a closer look at these parables to see if they have anything more to teach us about the coming of the Kingdom of God. Of course, I think they do.

To the ancients, and I hope to us, the mysterious growth of a seed says that living things have within them their own life force. There is in a plant a drive for life. Something within it drives life forward. Plants will drive toward life wherever they possibly can. A dandelion will force its way through a crack in the driveway, a seemingly most inhospitable place for life. Why does it bother? Because it has within it a powerful drive for live, a Sturm nach Leben, which sounds so much more impressive in German than it does in English. Mosses and lichen grow in arctic environments so hostile that you’d think they’d just give up. Why? It’s the Sturm nach Leben, that drive for life. Plants grow in deserts so hot and so arid that we can’t understand how anything could possibly survive. Why? It’s that inherent, mysterious drive toward life. In the book and the movie Jurassic Park, which is about animals not plants but the point still works, scientists have brought dinosaurs back to life. They think they’ve genetically engineered them so that they can’t reproduce, but the one scientist who has deep reservations about the whole undertaking, played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie, says: "Life will find a way." It’s a profound truth. Life will and does find a way. That inherent drive toward life in all living things will not easily be overcome.

Our two little parables this morning tell us: That’s how it is with the Kingdom of God. It has within it a drive toward life, a Sturm nach Leben, that will not easily be overcome. The Kingdom springs up in places where we’d think it couldn’t possibly. It springs up wherever a person faces death, or life, with courage and peace. It springs up in a Calcutta slum where Mother Theresa and her sisters care for the dying. It springs up in a Nazi concentration camp, where a Catholic priest offers his life to save another when the guards say they are going to kill one prisoner as a reprisal for something that happened. It springs up when Rev. Craig Rennebohm, a UCC minister, spends months gaining the trust of a mentally ill homeless women in downtown Seattle so that he can lead her to the services she needs to get on the road to health and wholeness. It happens when a little church in a conservative town welcomes people most churches reject and isn’t afraid to take a public stand for God’s gay and lesbian children. It springs up wherever people care for the poor and speak out for justice and peace. It springs up wherever someone reaches out to a troubled teen and helps him find his way in the world. It springs up wherever people resist the efforts of our culture to reduce us to mere consumers whose only function if life is to make money for the wealthy. The Kingdom of God is like that dandelion pushing through that crack in the driveway. Give it the slightest opening, and it will burst through, bringing its beauty (yes, I think dandelion flowers are beautiful) and its brightness into the world.

There is, however, another truth about seeds that also tells us something about the Kingdom of God. Seeds have a drive for life, but our parables this morning make it sound like the growth of a seed is inevitable. The parable of the sown seed says "the earth produces of itself." The parable of the mustard seed says that when the seed is sown on the ground "it grows up and becomes...." Neither parable betrays any awareness that a sown seed may not sprout up, that it may not grow; yet any of us who have ever tried to grow plants know that the sprouting up and growing of a seed that we hope for is hardly inevitable. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all. If the conditions aren’t right the seed won’t sprout. If the soil is bad, if there is no water, the seed will die in the ground. Once it does sprout, it still has needs that have to be met if it is going to continue to grow. It needs nutrients and water. It needs sun, but not too much. It needs room to grow, and it can be choked off by other plants. It may be attacked by aphids or eaten by deer. And I don’t even need to mention slugs. No, as strong as the life force in a plant may be, the sprouting of a seed and its growth into a strong, flourishing plant is far from inevitable. If we want to make sure that a particular seed grows, we need to tend it.

The Kingdom of God is like that too. It has a strong life force inherent within it. It has a strong Drang nach Leben, but its growth is not inevitable. If we want the flower and vegetable seeds that we plant in our gardens to sprout and flourish, we need to tend them. If we want the seed of the Kingdom of God to sprout and flourish in our hearts and in our world we need to tend it too. We need to prepare the soil for it. We need to weed around it. We need to water it and fertilize it. We need to protect it from pests. We need to see that it gets enough light, but not too much. The Kingdom has its own inherent life force, but it needs our help too.

Well, enough metaphor. What does all this mean as a practical matter? That’s a really big question, but let me share a few of my thoughts on the subject. To do that I want to look at two aspects of the question because there are two important aspects to the Kingdom of God.

The first place the Kingdom of God grows is in the individual human heart, and we need first of all to cultivate its growth within ourselves. What does that mean? It means growing in the love of God. It means living ever more deeply into our faith. It means strengthening our connection with Christ. It means growing the fruits of the Spirit within us--peace, joy, courage, hope, love. We do that mostly by praying. We pray, as Paul says, without ceasing. Beyond that, we worship. We are regular in our attendance at our corporate worship here on Sunday morning. We study. We deepen our understanding of the faith, for faith is an act of the whole person, the head as well as the heart. We use the symbols of our faith, for symbols connect us with God. Do you wear a cross? Do you have one hanging on the wall in your home? If not, consider getting one. All of these things strengthen our faith, and strengthening our faith grows the Kingdom of God in our hearts.

Then we need to cultivate the Kingdom of God in our world. If you have truly cultivated the Kingdom of God in your heart, you will inevitably cultivate the Kingdom in the world; but you can do it even as you work in growing the Kingdom within. How? First of all, serve others. Contribute money to charitable causes, but more importantly, if your are physically able, get involved. Find ways to volunteer helping children, the poor, the sick, the prisoners, the shut-ins. Beyond that, work to change the systems that perpetuate injustice and war. Demand that our elected leaders adopt policies that truly make for justice and for peace. It’s so easy to become discouraged and disillusioned in that work today. Neither of our major political parties truly stands for justice and peace, but we can’t give up. The Kingdom needs us. It needs our cultivation. It has its own inherent life force, but it needs us to tend it too if its life and its light are to burst forth in the world.

And here’s the good news. If we don’t give up, if we keep tending the seed of the Kingdom in our hearts and in our world, the Kingdom will, eventually, burst forth in its full splendor. We already see it in places. We see it when the world joins as one to help tsunami victims in Indonesia and when the wall falls in Berlin. We see it when peace comes to the Ivory Coast and when apartheid crumbles in South Africa. Life finds a way. The Kingdom finds a way, but it finds a way when people like you and me step up and cultivate it. The seed of the Kingdom grows when ordinary people like us find the courage to take the risks that are necessary for peace and for justice. The Kingdom of God cannot be stopped in the long run, so let’s get on the winning side. Put on your gardening gloves, get out your trowel and your watering can. We’ve got a Kingdom to grow. Amen.