I am quite intrigued as to why, when Jesus spoke in parables so everyone could understand them, he then felt the need to explain them to his disciples later. I wonder if it was to give his disciples a chance to challenge and question what he had said earlier. A chance to see the reasoning and the deeper message that are so often found in the parables when we really think carefully about them. Perhaps this was an early Faith and Worship course. For those of you who don’t know this course, it is a course that potential Local Preachers take to train them in their ministry. The trainees look deeply into the Bible to see what it says and how its message can become part of our preaching. Jesus had 12 people to teach but when I started with Charlie Fair there were three of us and at the end of my course I found myself on a one-to-one with John Woodbridge. I am not sure which of these three course leaders faced the greatest challenge!
Perhaps, as his disciples included fishermen, he had to explain some of the things that would have been more obvious to people around him who would mostly have been brought up in a farming community. If you read the earlier part of this chapter from Mark you will find the Parable of the Sower and the explanation given to the disciples. The parable tells us how life and the way we live changes who we are, just like the seeds that fell in different places grew tall or small depending on the circumstances in which they were planted.
Using the reasoning that Jesus gave then perhaps we can see what he was trying to say in these two parables. In the first parable we are told that the man scatters seed and then it grows all by itself. But the farmer would have known, as we do, that plants do not just grow by themselves. They need the soil to give nutrients and to grow in, the rain to water, the sun to ripen and the night to rest in. Yet the farmer has no power over when it grows. Whether he is awake or asleep it continues to grow.
Jesus is telling us that there is a seed within us which was planted there by God. Unlike the seed sown by the farmer which, when it has fully grown, provides food for the body, this seed, when fully grown, provides food for the soul. As the sheaves of corn declare the food there for the taking, so we show the love of God that is there for the taking.
Yet there is a problem, because while the farmer cannot make the plant grow, he can stop it from growing. The good farmer would do all he can to protect his harvest and help it grow. But a jealous neighbour could do much to destroy the crop. Then, as today, there are many different poisons that could be used to kill the plants. Some can be seen easily, some kill quickly. Others cannot be seen, take a long time to take effect or just stop the plant reaching its full potential.
We, you and I, have the seeds God planted in us. They can grow if we let them but there are so many poisons trying to kill or pervert our growth.
In our world today we are all being told that we are not good enough. Newspapers, TV programs and advertisements, wherever you find them tell us that, unless we do this or that or use this or that product, we have failed as a mother, father, husband, wife, son or daughter. We are encouraged to seek more and more. Better cars, bigger houses, more money, and exotic holidays. Even coming to church you can find the preacher telling you why you have failed. I, like many other preachers, have tried to encourage churches and congregations to show the love of God into the world, to become better Christians. Yet I have to wonder if sometimes we make you feel bad about yourself and have added to the poison we all face.
There is something behind what I preach that I think I might have taken for granted and assumed you already knew. It is this:
YOU are good enough. You ARE good enough for God. No matter who you are or what you have done, YOU are good enough to be loved and forgiven by Christ. I said loved and forgiven in that order because I believe that is the order in which God operates. He has loved us first and so he forgives us. I am not saying that we are perfect. Absolutely not. There is nothing we can do that gives us the right to be heard by God but because God planted the seed within us, he will care for us.
And because of this unconditional love I want to tell everyone about it and I want it to grow in you and everyone I meet.
As we tend our inward seed, we can become better and better Christians. Some of us will become the strongest tallest plants. Others will not grow so high. But we are all good enough to become part of the crop. However, some will become ensnared by the poisons of the world and the seed can wither and become smaller and smaller.
Yet even here, no matter how small our seed becomes, it can never totally die. Because, unlike the seed in the field, we can ask the farmer to take the poison away. We can, at any time in our life ask God to forgive our sins, and once forgiven, the seed starts all over again.
There is something I can do that God cannot. You can do it too. Well, actually there are two but I am leaving sinning to one side for the moment. What you and I can do that God cannot is to remember our faults, failings and our sins. God said, in Jeremiah 31:34 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Ps103:12
For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Once we have brought ourselves before God in confession and asked him to forgive our sins, we can be certain that we have been forgiven and God has totally forgotten those sins. Forever.
I think it is so hard to remember this. Because I know how hard it is to forget what we have done or had done to us. I know how hard it is for me to put behind me offences I have caused or grievances I have suffered. Forgive and forget is what we say. Yet so often we get the reply, I can forgive but I cannot forget. And because we cannot forget we feel that we are not good enough and that seed within us stops growing and withers a bit.
When the good farmer plants his seeds, he does not know just how each of them will grow. But he protects and nurtures each one of them. He gives them food as they need it and removes the poisons, planted by the jealous neighbour, as soon as he can find them. If he finds a plant growing just that little bit slower, he does not pull it out but just cares a bit more for it. He wants them all to grow the best that they can so he can harvest them when the time is right. Every seed that he planted in his field was good enough.
Just like every one of us here today and outside our doors is good enough for God. The seed is planted within us and all we have to do is help it grow. The wheat has the nutrients in the ground, the sun, the rain and the farmer. We have the Bible, prayer, worship and a loving God. We just have to remember we are each good enough for God. Good enough to grow the love of God and show it to the world.
Yet each one of us is only one person. What can just one person do? And that brings us on to the second parable in our reading. One voice, one person can change a world. We have just celebrated the 300th birthday of John Wesley. One person and what a change he made. Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Mother Theresa and many more showed what great changes one voice can make.
But we cannot all expect that our one voice will change the world, but it might make the small change that eventually makes the big changes possible. The one small seed that becomes the mustard tree. When we look at the people who are acclaimed as the starting point for some great change, it is easy to assume that they are the seed that the tree grew from. But perhaps the seed that started it all was someone who set that person on the path to do God’s work.
In the Bible we read of Phillip and the Ethiopian. Phillip spoke to and baptised the Ethiopian and both went on their ways. When other people went to Ethiopia to take the Gospel of Jesus, they found it was already there. John Wesley made Methodism come about. But would Methodism and its system of local preachers have come about without George Whitefield’s encouragement to preach outside, William Morgan leading John Wesley to visit the prisons and Susanna’s, his Mother’s, encouragement to use lay preachers? Who can say who was the most important? Because each was important in their own right and without one or another of them, Methodism may have died before it was born.
From a tiny seed grew the mustard tree. Without it the tree would never have grown. But which was the seed? Phillip or the Ethiopian? John Wesley or his mother or William or George or even, perhaps, someone who set these people on their path. One little seed, one really important seed, but who can tell which one it was.
Jesus told us his parables. He then taught his disciples and sent them out to teach his word. Each one was important. Over the years this process has been repeated. Priests, ministers, preachers, class leaders and ordinary people have taken the word out into the world. To tell people, to tell you, that YOU are good enough, YOU are special, not because of what you have done, but because God loves YOU.
You may not be the person to change a world. But you might be the person who, just by being who you are, makes a change is someone, who makes a change in someone else, who.. so and so on until another person makes a major change.
You may be the person, who by a good deed or maybe a smile helps someone along the way.
Yet, no matter how much or how little you may be called to do, you are still special because at the start of everything. God loves you.
I said earlier that perhaps I assumed that this was understood and this affected what I preach. Because I think that this absolute and unconditional love and forgiveness is so wonderful I want all the world to know and I want everyone to know this wonderful love.
And do you know what the really strange thing about all this is? It is that every time you help the seed to grow in someone else, it grows in you as well and becomes stronger and more able to withstand the poisons of this world. And it becomes easier for the world to see it and to want it for themselves.
The seed God planted is within you and within me. We can help it grow, in ourselves and others. And we can stop it growing, if we want it to. We can cut ourselves off from God. The choice is ours.
But remember this when you make your choice. God didn’t put the seed there because he didn’t care. He didn’t send his son to die because he didn’t care. He didn’t promise to forgive us and forget our sins because he didn’t care. He did it because he loves each and every one of us. Because you ARE special.
