Mark 4:26-34 and Ezekiel 17:22-24
Grace and Peace to you on this wonderful day from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Growing up in the Midwest, farming was all around me. Even though I lived in a suburban community the news on TV, which was broadcast for the entire state of Minnesota, often included detailed segments on the successes or failures of crops.
I also had lots of friends in High School who spent the month of July getting some extra money by going out and de-tasseling corn – the sticky process of pulling the tassels off the corn by hand while it’s still on the stalk so that it does not inadvertently get pollinated by another species of corn perhaps from the neighboring farm which would produce a hybrid corn and not a true variety.
Because I grew up in the influence of farming, I understand that when corn stalks are standing stiff and look like they are reaching to the sky – they are experiencing drought. I can tell the difference between a field full of soybeans and one full of potatoes. And I remember driving on wide-open freeways and having small planes zoom overhead super low to spray their crops with pesticides and fertilizers while we frantically reached for the car window buttons to keep the fumes outside the car – when I was really young, we had to crank those windows up.
I share all this because it really shows how farming is an all-consuming effort. It is a lot of work. It requires vigilance and good timing and skill and luck.
The stories that I heard and the things that I saw farmers doing when I was growing up DO NOT align with the way Jesus seems to talk about farming today…
Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter the seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise – night and day – and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”
WHAT?!? Scatter seed so flippantly, so carelessly… that precious seed that we spent thousands to purchase from Monsanto or Cargill?
WHAT?!? Leave the seed after tossing it around and go to sleep…? I can hear the echoes of a tractor starting up at 4:30am tending to those seeds so carefully in my memories…
WHAT?!? I “don’t know how” the seeds sprout and grow?! The farmer in the airplane meticulously fertilizing and spraying for insects might have different ideas.
WHAT?! “The earth produces of itself”?! I think the farmers in Minnesota would be more likely to quote from Genesis chapter 2: “cursed is the ground… in toil you shall eat of the ground all the days of your life.”
I think these are the EXACT kinds of thoughts that Jesus was trying to bring out amidst the crowd of people that had gathered at the water’s edge where Jesus was teaching.
The people of Jesus’s time would have had a fairly deep understanding and connection with farming. Many people – if not most – would have been subsistence farmers as a part of their daily life. Most average people would have probably had a little plot outside their homes that might have had some veggies, a little spot for fruits, a goat for milk and maybe a few hens. We aren’t talking about acres and acres of corn or major dairy productions here - but these people were indeed farming people. Our scriptures are absolutely chocked full of farming, planting, growing, seeding, sowing, and harvesting metaphors because it is how people regulated their lives.
And what Jesus is presenting here for these people - and for us - is a stark contrast between the reality of the world as we know it – Think about that passage in Genesis 2: cursed is ground and in toil you shall eat of its produce for the rest of your life (pain, frustration, work, toil, exhaustion, etc) and Jesus is contrasting this with the promises that he is saying he will be the beginning of bringing about for all of creation – grace, eternal life, ease, joy, love. And Jesus is using a farming metaphor to make the point.
Jesus is saying the Kingdom of God will be a little something like the feeling we might get if we could just toss seed out onto the ground and have it produce a great harvest without us ever having to think about those seeds again.
What a beautiful metaphor for the pure grace of God that comes to us through Jesus who begins the revelation of the Kingdom of God on earth.
The farmer falls asleep, forgetting about his seeds, and yet they provide an abundant harvest. They don’t require a bunch of tending, no work, no pesticides, no weeding, nothing. Because God does the work.
God’s Kingdom is freely revealed and given to ALL people through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the seed that is providing an abundant harvest for us. Christ is the one who is sown into our lives and puts an end to all sin and death and sets us free to be living our fullest lives in God’s abundant grace-filled Kingdom.
We are set free to be People of God in God’s unfolding Kingdom – We become People of God who do choose tend the earth by serving our neighbors, doing justice, helping the poor, and healing the sick. But we don’t tend to the earth in order to maximize some harvest – we tend to the earth BECAUSE of the great harvest that God has already provided for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now, I’m going to stop extending the metaphor for fear of losing it’s meaning.
What I am hearing from this text today is a promise that through Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh, we are already reaping the harvest of a new and right relationship with God in God’s already-unfolding Kingdom. God has forgiven us our sins, God has showed us that death is not the final answer, and God has called us to live our lives in God’s Kingdom right NOW at the foot of the cross and the mouth of the empty tomb.
So, these farming metaphors are about how God is already giving us a harvest of grace-filled good news. Our toil is not required. Rather we glorify God and give thanks to God who does the sowing, tending and growing for us. Notice at the end of the first parable we heard today: all the farmer does is reap the harvest.
So, we pray that we can discern ways to be a part of this already unfolding of God’s Kingdom through our worship and our service to our neighbors as we echo the sounds of abundant love and grace that are sounding already from God through Jesus Christ to us.
Amen.
Pastor Ryan | June 16, 2024 | Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Comments