Growing

Pentecost 3B, 6/14/15
Mark 4:26-34

God, bless the reading, the hearing, the singing, and the preaching of the word today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This is a great time of year for growing things.

At least, that’s what I hear.

My experience this year has been a little bit different.

Sometimes, even in the growing season, the plants don’t cooperate.

My husband and I have a patch of our lawn that we’re trying to reseed this summer. There was basically a big dip in the front yard, I think because there had been animals living under there and the dens collapsed over the winter.

So, we filled in the hole with several bags of dirt – or soil, or whatever the correct gardening term is.

My husband even bought the bags that advertised that they were good for growing grass.

And then we poured on a bunch of grass seed.

And we watered it every day, unless it rained.

And we waited.

And nothing happened.

So we reseeded the whole thing, and continued to water it, hoping that some grass would start growing to fill in the huge brown patch that we had created in our front yard, which by the way, had done absolutely nothing to improve our curb appeal.

Some of the seeds eventually started to grow, and we’re pretty sure that some of the grass that was buried under a few inches of dirt just kept pushing through until it started peeking out the top.

Today, about half of that patch of our lawn has grass growing in it.

And about half of it doesn’t.

There’s no real rhyme or reason to it, we just have to take it for what it is, enjoy the grass that is growing, and have faith that the empty spots will fill in over time.

The kingdom of God is like that.

We scatter seed, we hope for the best, and sometimes things just don’t work out the way that we expect.

Now, in our front yard, as one of our friends reminded us, we could have just covered up the dirt patch with sod.

I don’t think there’s such an easy fix for the kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God involves people – imperfect, unpredictable, wonderful and frustrating human beings – so it takes a lot more work than just planting grass in our front yard.

But what the two things have in common – the kingdom of God and my front yard – is that they are both about growing things. 

In the kingdom of God, you can plant some seeds. You can sow your ideas among a group of people, you can encourage new growth, you can water and fertilize and aerate the soil, metaphorically speaking.

Communities of faith are fertile grounds for growth.

That’s why the kingdom of God is like planting and harvest, according to today’s parable.

The kingdom of God is like when we plant some seeds among our friends and family, and miraculously, some of those seeds start to grow, and even though we can’t fully comprehend the miracle of new life, we rejoice that the growth happens, and we depend on the fruits of our garden during the harvest season.

There’s something mysterious and complex about the kingdom of God, something so unusual about it that it can’t be described directly.

Jesus can only describe God’s kingdom to the disciples in parables.

Now, the passage from Mark says that Jesus explained everything to them in private, and they claimed to understand everything that he said, but I don’t think that’s really how it happened.

The kingdom of God is incomprehensible.

That’s why Jesus kept using parables, trying to get them to understand a little bit at a time, so that hopefully, eventually, the pieces would fall together in their minds and they’d have some idea of what he was talking about.

If you pay close attention to the disciples throughout the Gospel stories, it’s pretty clear that they don’t really understand everything that Jesus tried to teach them.

But that’s OK.

When Jesus taught in parables, the point wasn’t to comprehensively explain everything, to prepare the disciples for some final exam that they would have to pass before entering the pearly gates.

The point of the parables is to satisfy some of their curiosity while encouraging more conversation and exploration.

The disciples didn’t need to know it all – and neither do we. From the parables of Jesus, we can learn in bits and pieces about the mysterious, amazing, incomprehensible kingdom of God.

The kingdom of God is something that Jesus spent a lot of time describing, in parables, to his disciples. It was the primary topic of Jesus’ teachings.

During his ministry, Jesus talked about the kingdom of God more than he talked about anything else.

         Wanna know what was second? Money.

Jesus didn’t actually spend a lot of time talking about how to live a moral life, or how to worship, or how to be a good disciple.

He talked mostly about how to be a good citizen in the kingdom of God – and how to recognize that kingdom when it showed up around you.

That’s one of the things we can learn from today’s parables.

The kingdom of God is already around us.

The ground is fertile and ready for growth, it just needs some seeds and water and tender loving care.

There is going to be growth in the kingdom whether we participate in it or not.

Here’s an interesting thing about that patch of dirt in our front yard.

The weeds love it.

The conditions are perfect for them – fresh soil, regular water, plenty of sunlight. Even when the grass seed doesn’t take, the weeds have no problem growing in that spot of our lawn.

If we let them keep growing, the weeds would take over, and not leave any water or nutrients for the grass to grow.

The soil is going to produce plants one way or another.

The kingdom of God is like a newly tilled garden, where the soil is rich and the sunshine and water create the perfect growing conditions.

Jesus invites us in to that garden, to plant the seeds that we want to have growing there, to produce the crops that we will want to harvest down the road once they are ripe.

Sometimes we plant grass and get weeds.

Sometimes, like in the second parable today, we plant a tiny seed and get a huge bush!

Although, the mustard plant would have been considered a weed, you know. Really, a weed is just a plant that is growing somewhere it’s not supposed to be. Roses would be weeds in the middle of a cornfield.

But the kingdom of God is like that.

Sometimes we prepare a garden hoping for a particular crop to grow, and something else happens altogether.

Sometimes we plant one kind of seed and something unexpected grows up instead. Maybe there were already some seeds taking root in the soil before we got there, and we didn’t know that other plants were already starting to grow.

Maybe the packet of seeds you bought at the store was mislabeled.

Gardening can be an art for people who are really good at it.

But gardening can also be a mystery.

Things happen that are unexpected, plants grow faster or slower than we want them to, or they don’t take root at all.

         Tiny seeds grow into massive plants that take over all available space.

You plant grass seed and nothing happens, except that dandelions and clovers start to sprout… which actually means that a lot is happening, there’s plenty of new growth, it’s just really not what I was hoping for when I dumped all that dirt and grass seed out on our front lawn. 

The kingdom of God is like when it’s supposed to be the growing season where you live. You plant a bunch of seed, and some of it grows, but other patches are left bare.

We are not in charge of the growth of the kingdom of God.

We are not in charge of the plants in our gardens or the grass in our front lawns – all we can do is plant the seeds, and plant more when the first ones fail, and water and weed and hope for the best.

Isn’t that what ministry is all about?

When the time for harvest comes, along with the gardener in today’s parable, we can reap whatever has grown, and rejoice in the miracle of growth and new life from tiny seeds, in unlikely places.

But more importantly, at this time of the year – when it is the time for growing, not for reaping – we can recognize that the kingdom of God is present in our community just like God is working in the garden.

God is with us in our sleeping and waking, planting and weeding, working and resting… and the kingdom of God is here.                
Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Thanks and Praise

A Call to Worship
Written for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, year B, 6/14/15
Using Psalm 92

We gather as God’s people, one family, from many walks of life.

Give thanks to the Lord! Sing praise to God’s name!

We gather to sing, to pray, to listen, to speak, to touch, to eat, to be healed.

Give thanks to the Lord! Sing praise to God’s name!

We know we’re not perfect, and we give thanks that God still welcomes us.

Give thanks to the Lord! Sing praise to God’s name!

In good times and bad, we know that God works to make us flourish.
Shout for joy at the works of God’s hands!

Gracious

Pentecost 2B
6/7/15
Genesis 3:8-19

God of forgiveness and love, we cry out to you. Hear our prayers, guide our steps, strengthen our households, and help us always to turn to you in times of need. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

God is gracious, even when disciplining us.

In today’s first reading, we heard the story of Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

We’ve heard it before… God tells the humans that they can eat fruit from any tree in the garden, except for one… but the snake convinces them that God didn’t really mean it… so one at a time, the humans eat fruit from the forbidden tree.

And then God kicks the humans out of paradise.

In paradise, the humans had everything that they needed.

They were given food and protection, companionship with one another and a close relationship with God.

Once they were forced to leave paradise, the humans…

well… they still had everything that they needed.

God didn’t take away their food, it just becomes harder to find.

God didn’t take away their jobs as stewards of all creation, it just becomes a little bit harder to do.

God even lets the humans retain some divine powers – they still have the ability to create new life through childbearing – it’s just going to hurt a whole heck of a lot.

When God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, they really didn’t get anything taken away from them that was necessary for life.

Their lives just became a little harder.

God was gracious to them, providing them with everything they needed, even when God was punishing them.

Adam and Eve had to struggle more to get food, to care for creation, and to create new life. But they were still able to do all these things. If their existence had become a little harder, well, that was their own doing.

Let me be clear here. When I use the names Adam and Eve for the next several minutes, please don’t think that I’m trying to generalize about all men or all women. Adam and Eve may have been actual historical characters, or they may just be stand-in names for all of our ancestors.

Either way, as characters in the Bible, Adam and Eve serve to exemplify the sinful characteristics that any one of us could be guilty of.

Clear as mud?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, this story isn’t about men and women – it’s about humanity, the human condition.

When we talk about Adam and Eve, we’re talking about you and me, and our grandparents, and our grandchildren. Any one of us could have made the mistakes that Adam and Eve made, and any one of us could have had the same opportunities to talk to God and be in close relationship with our creator.

So don’t go trying to blame all women for being cast out of paradise. It just as easily could have been the man who took the first bite from the forbidden fruit.

The actions of God matter a whole lot more here than the actions of the humans.

And God’s actions are full of grace and generosity.

I mean, the entire premise of this part of the story of Adam and Eve is that God wants to hang out with the humans, so God comes down from the heavens (or wherever it is that God usually resides) and goes for a walk in the Garden of Eden. God is looking for Adam and Eve so that they can spend some quality time together.

Wouldn’t that be great?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if God just showed up here and interrupted worship to say, hey everyone, we haven’t been spending enough quality time together lately. Let’s hang out!

God comes to the garden to hang out with Adam and Eve.

And God discovers that the humans have messed up.

And like any good parent, God knows that the children need to learn that there are consequences to their actions, so God punishes Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit.

Adam and Eve broke the one commandment that God had given them.

God could have scrapped creation altogether and started over from scratch.

God could have created humans in such a way that they would not have been able to break commandments and betray the trust of their creator.

But instead, God chose to give humans the ability to choose relationship with their creator or not. And when they chose not, God gave them another chance.

God cast them out of paradise, yes, but that was their own fault. God still chose to give Adam and Eve everything that they would need to survive in the world outside of the garden.

God was even the one to make clothes for them when they discovered that they were naked and felt ashamed. He replaced their flimsy fig leaves with real clothes made out of animal skins.

Imagine that someone kicked you in the gut, and sprained their ankle when they did it. And then you bandaged up their ankle so that it would heal quickly and not cause them any more pain. That’s basically what God does for Adam and Eve in today’s story.

As we know, Adam and Eve weren’t the only ones to test the relationship between humans and God.

Moses killed a man, but God still made him the redeemer of the people when they needed to be rescued from slavery in Egypt.

David raped and impregnated a married woman, and then had her husband put to death, but God still allowed him to be king, and a great king at that.

Saul, or Paul, persecuted God’s people and watched as they were stoned to death, but God turned him in to the greatest missionary the world has ever known.

The list goes on and on…

The leaders of our country… a pastor you once knew… your crazy aunt or abusive step-father…

Your brother… your child… your partner… you…

Each one of us can find ourselves in this Bible story.

All of us have messed up at some point in our lives.

Any one of us would have probably done exactly the same thing as Adam and Eve did when the serpent started to plant doubts in their minds.

It is so easy for us to give in to temptation.

But God is gracious to us even in punishment.

Discipline isn’t meant to be crippling. It’s just what happens when we have to live with the consequences of our actions.

         Any good parent is going to get mad at their children from time to time.

But they don’t want to actually cause harm to their children.

Not really. Not for more than a few seconds, anyway.

They don’t want to do anything that will result in permanent damage or years of counseling. They just want their kids to learn how to live with the natural consequences of their actions.

Right? Even if you’re not a parent yourself – as I am not – you had parents, or grandparents or foster parents, or someone who raised you. 

That’s the kind of parent that God is to us.

We need to learn that our actions have consequences.

But even when God is teaching us that difficult lesson, God still provides for us, protects us, and gives us an incredible amount of freedom to make our own choices in life.

Adam still gets to eat, and harvest food from the earth, and provide for his family. It’s just a little harder in today’s world than it was in paradise.

Eve still gets to be as close to a god as humans will ever get – she is able to create new life. It’s just going to be incredibly painful now that she has left Eden.

Adam and Eve – humanity – you and I – we’ve messed up. So God made life a little more complicated than it needed to be, though really, that’s our own fault. When we look at what God gives to us, we still are provided with everything we need, and then some, thanks to God’s grace.

Ultimately, this is the central point of the Christian message.

God gives us all that we need to get by in life.

No matter what we do in life – how bad be are, or how good we are – God looks out for us. And God wants us to live well.

When we mess up, we have to live with the consequences of our actions.

But God still loves us. God blesses us, and helps us to move forward, by grace, through faith.

God is gracious.

Even when we mess up and deserve punishment, and God has to do some disciplining – our relationship with God is defined by God’s grace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

We Wait for the Lord

A Call to Worship
Written for the Second Sunday after Pentecost, year B, 6/7/15
Using Psalm 130

We gather as God’s people, one family, from many walks of life.
We wait for the Lord. Our hope is in God.

We gather to sing, to pray, to listen, to speak, to touch, to eat, to be healed.

We wait for the Lord. Our hope is in God.

We know we aren’t perfect, and we give thanks that God still welcomes us.

We wait for the Lord. Our hope is in God.

In good times and bad, we know that God is with us and redeems us.

God’s steadfast love is with us. Thanks be to God!