June 19, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
2 Cor. 5:6-10, 14-17; Mark 4:26-34
The Seeds of the Kingdom
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let’s pray: Almighty God, we pray, your kingdom come. Your kingdom certainly comes on its own even without our prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us. Amen.
Jesus tells many of his parables to explain the Kingdom of God. Parables are brief stories to help us understand something that’s beyond description. For instance, how would you describe the song of a robin to someone who had never been able to hear? Or how would you describe the color red to someone who had never been able to see? You would have to use metaphor. “Well, it’s like…” you’d say.
So this is what Jesus needs to do with the Kingdom of God. He uses parables – short stories. He uses something we can understand to describe something we can’t understand, the Kingdom of God.
What is the Kingdom of God? We don’t live in a society where we have a king or a queen. We’ve thrown off the yoke of our colonial state under England. Here in the United States, we bristle a little at the talk of kingdoms.
I came across a definition for the Kingdom of God from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and I really like it: The Kingdom of God is an influence which must permeate our minds if we would be one with Jesus and attain to his ideals.
What a great definition! It permeates into us. The Kingdom of God is an influence that slowly seeps into us. When I make sun tea, the brown tea from the bags slowly trickles into the clear water. It trickles down from above and infuses the water until all of it has become saturated with the tea.
That’s how the Kingdom of God works in us. Its influence slowly permeates into our minds, into our hearts, into our very beings. And slowly our thoughts and our actions take on the color of Jesus and his ideals.
Jesus uses two brief parables to describe the Kingdom of God. Both involve seeds. The first parable is about a seed growing secretly. The sower scatters the seed. But then he leaves. Night follows day, and day follows night. And in the dark, private realm of the soil, the seed germinates. The farmer did nothing to make this miracle happen. He doesn’t make the seed grow. It occurs all on its own.
We’ve had some grass projects going on at Hope. After the street work was completed along Eddy Lane, the new sod laid along our boulevard didn’t fare too well. So late last fall, T___ H____ and N____ H____ engaged in some dormant winter seeding. They raked up the turf and then scattered grass seed. That seed lay dormant all winter. You might recall how very little snow we had last winter. That seed lay exposed for most of the winter, instead of under a winter blanket of snow. All winter long, as we slept and rose night and day, the seed lay dormant. But this spring, that grass seed made a respectable showing with tender new green shoots.
And now this spring, phase two of the grass project was carried out. T____ spread grass over the patch where we pulled out the dead maple tree as well as along the Eddy Lane driveway. It’s been a good spring for growing grass. And again, as night followed day and day followed night, the slender green blades of grass have emerged.
If you’re a gardener, you know that watching the miracle of germination never gets old. The joy is new every spring. It’s just as exciting and miraculous every single year.
Both seed parables follow a similar pattern. The seeds mature into their full self. The seeds reach their final destiny. The seeds growing secretly mature into grain and are harvested. And the tiny mustard tree turns into a shrub so large, it provides shelter for birds to nest.
So what does this imply about the Kingdom of God? Back to our definition. As it permeates and influences our being, a transformation takes place. Something new is born – in us, in the world – and it’s something to behold. It’s a game changer.
The process of germination has a dramatic impact on the seed. It stops being the thing it once was. The seed is irretrievably altered. It can never return to what it formerly was. Water has converted the seed’s starches into sugar, and there’s no going back. All of the seed’s potential was locked inside its tiny germ. All of what it becomes was inside, just waiting to unfold.
The Kingdom of God is an influence which permeates our minds and our hearts. It aligns us with Jesus and his will for us and the world.
A new thing is being unleashed within you. What can be born? What will grow in you? What harvest will it yield? What shelter will you provide?
Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians shed light for us. Through Christ, God has been at work reconciling the world unto Godself. Christ has died for all, so that all might live. “Therefore,” Paul says, “we no longer regard anyone from a human point of view.”
The greatest realization of God’s kingdom is the coming of Jesus Christ in our world. Like a seed, he was sown into our midst. And as a kernel of wheat must first die before it can be reborn, Jesus poured out his life on the cross. There was no going back. The germination of what was about to be revealed demanded his everything. But inside his sacrifice lay the potential of all that was contained in his being. It was the light of the world, the light no darkness can overcome. He was buried in his tomb. Then night followed day and day followed night. Through the death of Good Friday came the light of Easter morning. His death has borne the harvest of reconciliation.
Let that new life in Christ seep into you. Let it permeate you. Come to see yourself as Christ sees you. You are a child of God. You are a new creation. Everything old has passed away! You are entirely made new in Christ.
And as this awareness increases, like the mustard shrub it will grow into a sheltering place for your spirit. And that sheltering place will continue to expand, for that’s how it is with God’s kingdom. It will grow until it’s big enough to shelter still more.
Paul speaks of a ministry of reconciliation. God has given us a ministry of reconciliation. We are called to be ambassadors of Christ’s reconciling work. This ministry of reconciliation is one of the church’s highest callings. And how desperately our world is in need of reconciliation!
• In our broken relationships, we can bring the oil of healing.
• Within the divisions of our nation, we can bring the golden cord to bind us together.
• When racism or other hatreds threatens to divide, we encourage one another to regard no one from a human point of view. For in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.
The church of Jesus Christ has been given a ministry of reconciliation. How those seeds of reconciliation might sprout and grow, we do not know. But let us be about this mission. We plow the fields and scatter the good seeds of reconciliation. But the harvest of concord and friendship belongs to the One who makes all things new. The harvest belongs to God.
