God Grows Seeds | June 16, 2024

In today’s Gospel reading from Mark 4:26-34, Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a seed sown by a farmer. The seed grows, even though the farmer does very little. It’s not a particularly dramatic illustration, but perhaps that’s part of Jesus’ point.

God’s kingdom grows in the small, ordinary acts of love we offer. Our call as Christians and as church is to do the next right thing, acting faithfully, and trusting God to provide the growth.

This sermon draws heavily from my previous sermons on this parable, preached on June 17, 2018 (influenced by Matt Skinner’s commentary here at Working Preacher and June 13, 2021 (influenced by interim bishop Andrea DeGroot-Nesdahl’s sermon [here’s the service with her sermon] as well as Janet Gwin’s GodPause devotionals for June 10 and June 11 and Debie Thomas’ essay The Sleeping Gardener.)

Here’s the sermon podcast audio and the livestream from Living Hope.

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Grace to you and peace from the One who was, who is, and who is to come, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

I saw a video clip on TikTok from a sermon, and I don’t know what church it was, but I think the topic was stepping out in faith or something like that, because during the sermon—in the sanctuary—the pastor was preaching from a boat.

And not just a boat on the stage—this megachurch had an actual rowboat floating in their baptismal pool as a prop.

I think it was supposed to help the sermon be more engaging, because people remember sermons with props, right? I don’t want to end up on the internet with people making fun of my sermon props, but I thought I’d try it this week, with the parable we just heard Jesus tell in Mark 4.

So, I have here some seeds—these are grass seeds, and I’m going to enact what Jesus says to do. The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and then wait for it to grow.

[Scatter seeds outside]

So if we wait, perhaps those seeds will grow. How will they grow? We don’t know. Can we help them grow faster? Well, we could water them, pluck out the weeds, make sure they get sunlight. We can help with the conditions for growth. But the actual growing is up to God. Once they’ve grown, if we planted wheat seeds, or corn, or something else for food, we can go and harvest, but we can’t make the seeds grow. It just happens.

This is not a very exciting illustration to watch, because this is not a very exciting parable. The kingdom of God is like a plant that grows. Thanks, Jesus. What are we supposed to do with that?

Dr. Matt Skinner says, “No other Gospel contains this parable. Probably because it’s boring. Its plot has all the suspenseful drama of an ordinary elementary-school life sciences textbook. There are no surprises. Everything proceeds according to plan. Jesus simply speaks about seeds and what they are supposed to do. They grow and produce. Moreover, they grow and produce without your help or your intricate knowledge of germination or photosynthesis or palea, thank you very much.”

It’s not an exciting, dramatic story, but perhaps that’s part of the point.

So often, we want to change the world, to work to fix what’s broken around us, we want to make God’s kingdom come. We want to make the seed grow. All good goals. But in Jesus’ parable, the seed grows without the farmer’s help.

The farmer scatters the seed, then pretty much ignores it. There’s no fertilizing, or weeding, or picking off insects, or anything. And yet, the seed grows. All the farmer does is check on it and go out to harvest it when it’s ready. God gives the growth. It’s the Holy Spirit doing all the work.

There’s something there for us to learn as a church. We want to grow, we want to do more. We want to share the good news with more people, and that’s good. But there are limits to our control over what God is doing in the hearts of our neighbors.

So often, it’s a mystery how the kingdom of God is coming, just like how a big plant grows from a tiny seed. We might be able to scientifically describe it, but there’s still mystery to it. We can plan, we can nurture, but only God can give life.

Pastor Laurie Neill from Fargo says“Our job as God’s people is not to make people believe, or to judge people, or to convert anyone. Only God can do those things. Our job is to introduce people to the person of Jesus Christ.”

Our job is to scatter seeds, and sometimes that’s not very glamorous. It’s a lot slower than we’d like, less dramatic. In the history of the church, there are many stories over the centuries of Christians who read Bible passages like we just heard from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, passages that promise a new creation in Christ, and proclaim that everything old is passing away and everything is becoming new, or other images from Revelation of seeing a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem coming down from the sky, and people take them literally.

More than once, a group of people have sold all their possessions and waited on rooftops to welcome Jesus. There’ve been groups who went out into the desert to wait for the new Jerusalem to come out of the sky and land in front of them. It sounds silly to us, but we humans kind of like the idea of God doing something dramatic.

And sometimes, we do get to see exciting glimpses of God’s kingdom. Lives are transformed, miracles happen. Sometimes God’s kingdom comes in a big, visible way. I hope VBS next week will be one of those big moments for some kids.

But more often, God’s kingdom comes in a little bit at a time. More often, as Jesus says, the Kingdom of God can be compared to a mustard seed, a little tiny thing scattered in the dirt. If you’re only waiting for a big dramatic second coming, then you’re missing the work God is doing here and now.

The seeds from which God’s kingdom grows are often small, ordinary acts, and although it’s God doing the work, we get to be involved.

Jason Gray has a song called With Every Act of Love—maybe you’ve heard it. The chorus says, “God put a million, million doors in the world, for His love to walk through. One of those doors is you.”

God takes you just as you are and uses every act of love you do. Even when you don’t follow up on it. Even when you don’t do it as well as you should, or you miss an opportunity. Even when you think what you’re doing is so small it doesn’t matter.

Being church in this time and place is challenging. Covid accelerated some of the cultural shifts, but it was happening long before 2020. Our neighbors don’t automatically come to church the way they used to when this church was founded. We can’t just assume people will show up, or sit here wondering where everybody else has gone.

And of course, that produces anxiety for us, because we believe church is important. This is where we encounter God. I know church is meaningful for you, or you wouldn’t be here. So what do we do? Well, there’s a temptation to say we need a new program, or we need the synod to do better, or if only we had more money in the budget, or if only there weren’t sports all the time, or if people weren’t so busy. I fall into those temptations too.

But the good news of this parable is it’s not up to us.

Within my lifetime, the institutions of this church are pretty much guaranteed to look different than they do right now. And I hope you know I’m preaching to myself here, because I have a hard time accepting that sometimes.

The way people practice faith and connect with God will look different, already does look different than even a few years ago. Our power to change that is limited. And yet the kingdom of God grows. God is growing a harvest.

Institutions won’t save us. Budgets won’t save us. New programs won’t save us. Fancy expensive sermon illustrations and props won’t save us.

But that’s ok, because Jesus has already saved us. God has been at work through the church the way it has been and the way it is, and God will continue to be at work in the future.

Any farmer or gardener will tell you that when you plant a crop, there are things beyond your control. We can’t make it rain, or this year, make it stop raining. We can’t control the temperature. There are factors we can manage, things we can do to give the best possible chance of a good outcome, but ultimately, as Jesus says, the earth produces of itself.

We are called to share the good news we have. We’re called to introduce people to the love of Jesus. But ultimately, we are called to faith, to trust in God, and to join in the work God is doing as much as God enables us.

That might sound pessimistic, but it’s actually optimistic. We’re not giving up on church; exactly the opposite.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The world needs the Gospel message we have as much as ever.

In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther says when we pray “Thy kingdom come” that “in fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us.” God’s kingdom is growing no matter what we do, and what a gift that you and I get to be part of the work God is doing.

Pray for God to use you to plant seeds. Again, I hope VBS is one of those seeds, but I don’t always know what those seeds look like, or which of our efforts God is going to bless.

I think of it in terms of a song Anna sings in Disney’s Frozen 2. Have any of you seen it? When everything’s falling apart, she sings, “Do the next right thing.” Our call is to do the next right thing, one step at a time, trusting in God.

Listen to what Paul says in 2 Corinthians: “We are always confident…for we walk by faith, not by sight. Whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please the Lord…the love of Christ urges us on.”

Plant seeds, and let God do the rest. We don’t need to save the world; our call is to do the next right thing, to share the love of Christ with our neighbors one person at a time.

As children of God, we can see the kingdom of God breaking in. Not all at once, often not in the ways our world expects, but we trust God is at work.

What we once saw from an earthly, human point of view, we can now see with the eyes of faith and notice God at work, growing the kingdom from even tiny seeds. Through what we do, sometimes despite what we do, even when we don’t do anything, God is still working. Thanks be to God.
Amen