Kingdom Seeds Sermon – June 17, 2018

The lectionary texts for June 17, 2018, include Mark 4:26-34, Psalm 92:1-4 & 12-15, and 2 Corinthians 5:6-17. In worship this weekend, we had a baptism on Saturday night and then a traditional worship service in our fellowship hall worship space on Sunday as part of the combined summer worship. Here’s the sermon!

Please join me in prayer. Gracious God, you promise us that your kingdom is coming, and we long for the day when it is fulfilled. Through these parables, open our eyes to recognize your work among us. Open our hearts to receive your Holy Spirit in faith. Use us for your work in this world. Amen.

Today is a unique worship service because we’re following the traditional, hymnal worship order, even though we’re not in the sanctuary. The way we worship does not need to tie to the space we’re in, and in fact, since we have a screen available here, hopefully it’s a little easier to follow the service order if you’re not used to jumping around in the hymnal.

Since we’re in a different space today, I want to test how observant you are. Close your eyes. Without looking, how many candles are in this worship space? Hold up the number of fingers. (one)

What are the symbols on the stained glass windows? (dove, angel, fish/cross)

Last one – and you can’t answer if you’re on the altar guild: What color is the big banner hanging on the wall? (Green)

You can open your eyes. As you might know, each season of the church year has a different color.
Advent leading up to Christmas is a dark blue, the color of the sky right before the sunrise. Lent is purple, traditionally the color of royalty, the color of a king as we approach Easter, when Jesus is revealed as the true king.

Pentecost is red, like fire, for the coming of the Holy Spirit in the tongues of flame.




Anyone know the other two occasions we use red for? They’re both about the celebrating the work of the Holy Spirit. One is Reformation Day, remembering the Spirit’s work calling the church back to focusing on Jesus, and the other is any time there is an ordination. I’m going to one this afternoon in Mason City, for Bryan Odeen, the new pastor in Osage. Keep him and that congregation in your prayers.

Today is a little weird because we’re not really in a season. It’s the time after Pentecost, or sometimes it’s called “Ordinary time.” This is a side note, but it’s not ordinary like “boring” – it’s actually ordinary like “ordinal” meaning counting. Today is Ordinary number 6.

Anyway. The color for ordinary time is green because green is the color of growth, of plants and leaves growing. It’s intended to remind us to be growing in faith, throughout the year, even when it’s not a holiday season. The color will be green for the next 18 weeks.

During the summer, for at least the next 12 or so of those weeks, I’m going to keep bringing up our summer theme, “God is on the move.” Some of you have a that on a t-shirt. The shirts are bright green because I thought it was cute for a church in Greene to have green shirts, but it also works as a reminder to grow. Liturgically appropriate clothing!

The parables in today’s Gospel reading teach us something about God being on the move. The kingdom of God, Jesus says, is as if someone scattered seed on the ground, and then ignored it.

Well, this person doesn’t exactly ignore it, but he doesn’t seem to do anything with it besides check on it. There’s no fertilizing, or weeding, or picking off insects, or anything. And yet, without any more effort from the person who scattered it, it grows.

Dr. Matt Skinner says this:
“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 that exciting of a story, but perhaps that’s part of the point. So often, we want to make God’s kingdom come. We want to make the seed grow. But in Jesus’ parable, the seed grows without the farmer’s help. All he does is go and harvest it when it’s ready. God gives all the growth. It’s the Holy Spirit doing all the work.

There’s something there for us to learn as church. 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 explain it, but there’s still mystery to it. We can plan, we can nurture, but only God can give life.

We need to be clear on what our job is, and what it isn’t. 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.

In a few minutes we’re going to be celebrating Easton’s baptism. We’ll bring him to the font, and pour water on his head, but it’s not our actions that are important. God is the one doing the work, not us.

There are stories from different centuries of Christians who read these Bible passages promising a new creation in Christ and everything old passing away and everything becoming new, or images from Revelation of seeing a new heaven and a new earth and a new Jerusalem coming down from the sky and took them literally.

There were groups who sold all their possessions and waited on rooftops, and groups that went into the desert to wait for Jerusalem to 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. But more often, it just 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 kingdom of God comes through small things and ordinary acts, and although it’s God doing the work, we get to be involved. There’s a song by Jason Gray 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.

God’s kingdom is still coming. The seed is still growing. God can use everything we offer to build the kingdom, but even when we fail, even when we get tired and don’t do what we should, even when we get discouraged because there aren’t as many people in church as we’d like, or because we don’t see any change in our friends or family, God is still at work. God is on the move.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, writing to a church surrounded by a really messed up, broken culture, Paul writes about being always confident because we walk by faith, not by sight.

We can’t always see God on the move, working around us. But for those times when you get discouraged, Paul continues, “The love of Christ urges us on… He died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.”

And because of Christ, because we know Jesus died for us and was raised for us, Christians look at life with a different perspective. We are made a new creation in Christ. It doesn’t happen in a dramatic way like we get a whole new body and everything’s perfect—that doesn’t happen until this earthly life is over—but it does happen.

It happens in the ordinary waters of baptism, when we drown and are reborn as children of God. It happens because of the Holy Spirit working in our lives.

As God’s children, we can see the kingdom of God breaking in. We can see and trust and believe that God is on the move. 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.

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