Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
June 14, 2009
Mark 4:26-34
I am a city boy. I grew up in Phoenix, went to college in a large city, and attended seminary in Berkeley – not exactly rural America. I don’t know much about agriculture and growing plants – as demonstrated by all the dead and dying plants I have used to illustrate children’s messages over the years! I have never been close to farming and have never known many farmers…except for one year.
During seminary I accepted a fulltime, one-year internship at a UCC church in a small town in Michigan - Manchester, Michigan – a little south of Ann Arbor. You want to see college football fans? These were college football fans! We were less than an hour from the University of Michigan stadium. They could be playing a local high school and a hundred thousand people would show up. Many of the folks in the church worked for Ford Motor Company – there were a number of Ford plants all around us. But there were also a number of people involved in agriculture – farmers and those who supplied farmers. I told you on Palm Sunday about the parade in town each year which was mostly tractors, with farmers throwing out bags of potatoes as they went by. You can’t have too much fun trying to catching a ten pound bag of potatoes thrown from a moving tractor!
It was during that year that I, for the first time, witnessed and gained a measure of understanding of the energy that is suddenly unleashed when planting time finally arrives. Nothing else can interfere, teenagers are taken out of school, so that the fields can be planted – wheat, corn, potatoes. Tractors are fired up and everyone is off and running, twenty four hours a day. And it does not stop until all the precious seeds are duly planted in the soil. It is an exciting and anxious time – can’t have a frost now, we could use a little rain but not too much, have you heard the latest forecast, I hope that tractor holds out for one more season. There was a coffee shop in town and about mid-morning during planting season, you could go there and gain quite an education in the many hopes and anxieties of farming. Also at times, one’s vocabulary was expanded in fascinating ways.
All of which makes the beginning of this morning’s text sound absolutely ridiculous. I’m not sure how I would preach this text in Manchester, Michigan. Jesus introduces us to someone who has to be the worst farmer in the history of the world. He makes me look like a master gardener! He goes out, throws a bunch of seed, goes home, drinks a tall cool one, and goes to bed. That’s it! Planting’s done! Tractors, fertilizers, university extension service, drip systems, weather reports…who needs them? If the food system depends on farmers like this, then we are in a lot trouble. What is going on here?
A word about parables, at least as Jesus used them. They are intended to be disruptive, surprising. Just when we think we know where they are going, they take us in a radical new direction. I’ve heard Jesus’ parables described as a “wedge” into reality as we know it. They have a way of turning conventional wisdom on its ear, and inviting us to see reality with new eyes.
“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…then go home and go to bed.” Well, it is obvious where this is going. The seed doesn’t stand a chance. These crops are going to fail! Jesus must be telling us that Kingdom of God doesn’t stand a chance. This is good news?
As you know, I recently went to a conference on preaching. There were over 1500 preachers there – which all by itself is a frightening image – and we heard some of the top preachers and teachers of preachers in America. One of them shared this about preaching: “I’ve been preaching now for over three decades. That’s a lot of sermons! And the longer I preach there is a sense in which I know less about preaching. When I was a young preacher, just starting out, I knew a great deal about preaching. I knew the best form for sermons, the form that leads most directly to congregational approval. First say this, then that, and the congregation responds, ‘You nailed it, preacher! We get it!’ But now, more than a thousand sermons later, I know less about preaching than I once knew. Why do some of my best sermons, on which I have expended much effort, simply fall flat, roll over and die?” I can’t tell you how many miserable Sunday nights I have spent wondering what went wrong with that sermon that I felt so good about on Saturday.
He continues, “And even more mysterious, why do some of my worst sermons – slapped together on a Saturday night, held together with tape and twine – succeed? I mumble something about God, wander around in the scripture, throw out this or that undeveloped idea, conclude with an unrelated illustration and people come out at the end of the service, shake my hand, and say, ‘Thank you, thank you. You really spoke to me today, God really spoke through you today. Thank you!’” I don’t even want to confess how many times that has happened to me! What happens?
The minister concludes, “Here is what I think happens. Maybe I know less and less about preaching because I know more and more that preaching is not really something I do. Preaching is what God does. It’s not a sermon until God’s speaking makes it a sermon. Perhaps the greatest challenge of preaching is investing oneself in a craft over which one has no control. God is in control, and God’s word is a gift only God can give.” To which I think Jesus would say, “Finally, you are beginning to understand.”
“The Kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground…The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed.” Why does he tell these parables, parables of a planting that seems doomed to fail? I think it is all about seeing reality with new eyes. He wants us to know, finally, we are not in control here. I think he wants preachers to know that no matter how eloquent or clever or prepared we might be, each Sunday we are subservient to the power of God to scatter the seed of the word and to give it growth. And this message is the same for all of us. Look what happens! This hopelessly incompetent farmer ends up with the most successful farm in the county. Throws some seeds out and has a rich harvest. Could Jesus be saying to expect the same in your own lives? Things might seem bad now. The world might be a mess; your life might be a mess. Maybe nothing seems to be turning out right, no matter what seeds you sow, everything seems to wither and die. And yet, when that lousy and careless farmer woke up, what a harvest. And that insignificant little mustard seed? Again, what a harvest. What looks like failure becomes an abundant and successful harvest.
I think with these parables, Jesus is saying, “People, take another look. Can you see it? Don’t give up hope too easily, don’t close your imaginations too quickly. There is a dynamic, vital power at work in our lives and in our world that is mysteriously beyond our comprehension and our control and our grasp. From seeds like us, as weak and inadequate as we may feel – as we may be - from seeds like us, God is going to bring forth God’s kingdom. The outcome finally is in God’s hands, not ours, so don’t you dare give up on yourselves and don’t give up on our God. In these parables, despair is really a form of atheism.
I don’t know if you remember the film, Oh God. A very young John Denver plays a produce manager at a super market who finds himself confronted by God, played by George Burns. When he meets God, his whole life goes to pieces. You think it would be comforting but he has nothing but trouble. His marriage is in trouble, he is going to loose his job, people are protesting, he is sued and taken to court all because he is trying to share this message God gives him to share. Towards the end of the film he is convinced that the whole project has been a complete failure. (film clip from Oh God is shown)
God’s only uses good seeds, only good seeds, and believe it or not, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, some of those seeds grow and the harvest is abundant. We gotta keep planting those seeds, we have to keep being those seeds. Who knows what impact we may have? We might be part of a harvest we may never actually see.
A Fred Craddock story: “A young woman said to me, during her freshman year of college, ‘I was a failure in my classes. I didn’t have any friends and I didn’t have as much money as the other students. I was just so lonely and depressed and homesick and not succeeding. One Sunday afternoon, I went to the river near the campus. I climbed up on the rail and was looking down into the deep dark water below. Then, for some reason or another, I thought of the words from the Bible, ‘Cast all your cares upon him for he cares for you.’ I was able to step back off that bridge and here I am today.’ Says Craddock, “I asked, ‘Where did you learn that line?’
“She said, ‘I don’t know.’
“Did you go to church as a child?”
“No…well, except when I visited my grandmother in the summers. We went to Sunday school and to church.’
“I said, ‘Ah…’”
Who knows? Who knows? All we can do is keep planting the seeds – seeds of justice and mercy and faith and hope – plant the seeds and leave them in God’s hands and trust that God will see to their growth.