Proper 6 B
Like a Sower, Like a Seed
Mark 4:26-34
14 June 2015 – Redeemer
The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground … the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, which when sown on the ground, is the smallest of the seeds on earth.
These two parables might not sound strange to your ears, but they should. God’s reign and rule in the world, His attack upon the enemies of His creation, His chief assault into enemy territory, is like a man scattering seeds on the ground, is like a tiny little seed.
For a moment put yourself back in Mark’s Gospel. The Jewish leaders and people saw their captivity to Rome as their greatest enemy. They wanted to be self-governing and restore their stature as God’s people. They were looking for God’s Messiah to lead a military coup at the head of the heavenly host. Then Jesus tells them He’s going to work more like a gardener than a General.
But you don’t really need to imagine anything, because you too are under attack, struggling under the captivity of a foreign power, that unholy trinity of Satan, the world, and your own sinful self.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading a fictional story about a pastor, trying to care for a couple whose infant son died. The story begins in the child’s room with a father cradling his dead son while mom sheds tears at the infants lifeless little feet. That’s the battle front, where death comes unbidden, where Satan works fear, anger, and doubt, where own sinful self wants to lash out at anything because we wonder where in our hell is God when we need him.
You know exactly what you want when that happens. You want the Almighty God to tear open heaven and come down with His force and might. You would have Him turn back time and keep that drunk driver from leaving the bar or breath life back into your dead daughter, and chase those enemies seen and unseen who terrorize your life all the way back to the hell from which they came. You look across the battle lines and you wonder, why doesn’t God do something? I could use a little shock and awe of life and hope and victory.
In that story I’m reading a pastor stands in that room with that young couple and their dead son. He wishes he had wings so he could fly away. He is afraid and in pain himself. Then he becomes mad at himself for his fear. He draws near to the couple and says, “Jesus promises, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though he dies, yet will he live.’” They wanted a General, but they needed a Gardener. The pastor wanted to run, instead he sowed the seed of God’s Word into their broken hearts.
Doesn’t that seem insignificant? A family is mourning the loss of their beloved son and all the pastor can do is speak some words. A couple’s marriage is going to run aground on the cliffs of divorce and the pastor speaks of repentance and forgiveness. A child is born with severe health problems and a nurse baptizes her with water before beginning treatment. One of your children destroys his life by his own sin and wickedness and when he finally repents and returns home you open the door, grab hold of him, and plant a word in his ear, “I forgive you all your sin.”
The Kingdom of God is the insignificant sowing of God’s Word and that Word is Jesus – the Word of God made flesh. When Jesus walked around on earth, every now and then He let the enemy have it, right between the eyes. He sent the demonic hounds back to hell yelping with their tails between their legs. He healed spinal cords and severed nerves and made the paralyzed to walk. He touched lepers and they were cleansed. He even walked right into death’s victory parade a few times and ruined the funeral celebrations by raising the dead. But every time He does something like that in Mark’s Gospel He says, “Keep quiet. Don’t tell anyone, because that isn’t really what I came to do. And if you listen to my parables you’ll know that when I really do the work I came to do you won’t even see it. It’ll be as hidden as a seed sprouting to life in the soil and as tiny an event as a little mustard seed.”
You see the Word finally is Jesus. And it appears that His life ends, like every other man, when He is planted in a garden tomb outside Jerusalem. Even though He preached these parables, even though He said “the Son of man will die and be buried,” even though He said, “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed” even though all of that and more was said, only a few believers were with Him when He died.
What sort of a Savior dies? What sort of a liberating Messiah dies? What sort of a God dies? None, except the true God. Jesus is planted in your grave, having borne your sin to the cross. The death He died is your death. The death He died is the death of the true God. In that planting of Christ Jesus is forgiveness for the sin of the infant, toddler, and teenager. There is forgiveness for prostitute and pastor, for abuser and addict, for gossip and gang member. There’s room under the shade of forgiveness for anyone to find rest and shelter from their sins. There’s room for you and all that rest and relief stem from the one seed, Jesus, planted in that garden.
Because there is forgiveness from Christ there is also life – life for that stillborn child, for that teenager taken by alcohol, for that beloved grandpa drawing his last breath, for you. And with forgiveness, also comes the resurrection – the harvest of life by Jesus – and there by that tiny little seed you will again behold your loved ones who sought the shelter of forgiveness and did not despise the littleness of the Kingdom of God.
There’s something interesting about the end of Mark’s Gospel that you may or may not know. We have tens of thousands of copies of the New Testament documents dating back to the second century. Our copies of Mark end at two different places. The oldest manuscripts end at Mark 16:8 and end without anyone seeing the risen Jesus. The younger manuscripts end with some resurrection appearances. We know Jesus rose – 500 witness saw Him alive, but it is interesting that Mark may well have ended His Gospel with an empty hole in the ground and simply the Word spoken by the Angels, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him.” We live by faith and not by sight. We have nothing to see, but only the Word to hear. The little seed of Jesus, the little Word of His forgiveness, looks insignificant in the midst of our battles and fears and sins, but faith believes this is God’s seed and God’s Word and God’s Son and He does what He says for us in the name of Jesus. Amen